LENA PERRIÈRE

12104437

JOHN DONNE, THE WILL

If it is very common ground in poetry to state that no man is an island entire of itself, John
Donne established himself as the man of contradiction he was through his work. Donne who studied
theology and christian laws while writing love and religious poetry during his youth, became minister
of the Anglican church ; he gravitated between deep spirituality and a carnal lust for life.These
conflicting proclivities led him to restitute contrary realms at work, as he once wrote “all Divinity is
love or wonder”. Perfect instance of how circa 17th century metaphysical poetry could display wit,
The Will is a seemingly playful poem whose logical symmetric construction allows an eccentric chain
of thinking exposing women’s cold heartedness. This essay will firstly expose the true love eulogy
this diatribe really is, in order to show secondly how metaphysic poetry articulates in this text, to
finally bring an overall understanding of post Shakespearian scenery.

William Butler Yeats wrote : “Donne could be as metaphysical as he pleased and yet never
seemed inhuman and hysterical.. Because he could be as physical as he pleased.” The Will, as the
name suggests, is a 6 stanza long testament where John Donne bequeaths his belongings before death.
Donne made his romantic devotion work alongside spirituality; spending his learning years
contemplating death and God’s omnipresence, Donne struggled with faith but eventually became a
preacher. In 1624, after getting typhus, he wrote Devotions upon emergent occasions where he
explores what was Elizabethan sickness through death and their relationship to God and morals This
prose work is somewhat shaped similarly to The Will : it is composed first of a meditation, an idea
then of an argument to form a prayer. The Will presents a more binary setting. Each stanza can be
roughly divided in two; the beginning of the stanza where the poet bequeaths his gift to uncanny
receivers, and the end of the stanza where he addresses the figure of Love explaining why so. In the
first stanza for instance, he passes: “mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see”, “my tongue to fame”
or “ to ambassadors mine ears”. Then goes on: “Thou, Love, has taught me heretofore By making me
serve her who had twenty more That I should give to none, but such as had too much before” - He
makes paradoxical gifts to whom would have already enough, to whom they would be wasted. The
second stanza states “my consistency I to the planets give” or “my truth to them who at the court live”
to end up addressing God by “Thou, Love, has taught’st me, by appointing me To love there, where no
love received can be, Only to give such as have an incapacity.” The poet bestows to those whose
nature unables to make use. Love made him fancy a woman incapable of love because of her frivolous
nature. Stanza 3 gives “my best civility and courtship to an university” or “My modesty I give to
soldiers bare” to conclude “Thou, Love, taught’st me, by making me Love her that holds my love
disparity, Only to give to those that count my gifts indignity.” - he gives to those who regard his love
as an insult since his love seemed to be a disgrace to her. Stanza four states “I give my reputation to
those which were my friends; mine industry to foes; to schoolmen I bequeath my doubtfulness”,
Donne make gifts to those who are the real source of the-said gifts then says “Thou, Love, by making
me adore Her, who begot this love in me before Taught’st me to make, as though I gave, when I do but
restore.”; the source of Donne’s attachment to his beloved is her beauty. Loving her means merely
giving back what belongs to her. Stanza 5 gives “to him for whom the passing-bell next tolls, I give
my physic books” or “to them which pass among All foreigners, mine English tongue” concluding
that he gives his gifts to those whose could not want : “Though, Love, by making me love one who
thinks her friendship a fit portion For younger lovers, dost my gift thus disproportion”. Lastly stanza
6 reads : “Therefore I'll give no more, but I’ll undo The world by dying, because love dies too. Then
all you beauties will be no more worth than gold in mines, where none doth draw it forth; And all
your graces no more use shall have , Than a sun-dial in a grave: (...)” In this closing stanza are no
gifts but a promise to end his life, hers, and Love’s because if he dies true love will die with him, and
her beauty therefore is useless. Duchamps stated that “La beauté est dans les yeux du regardeur” and
Donne wanted his beloved to know that as mignonne as she is, she will eventually “ses beautés laissé
choir”. Absence of appreciation therefore makes her beauty useless. The poet writes: “Thou, Love,
Taught’st me by making me Love her who doth neglect both me and thee, To invent, and practice this
one way, to annihilate all three.”. He takes on his revenge on Love by committing suicide, punishing
them both for being cruel. In his Songs and Sonnets written in 1633 Donne expresses that lovers are to
be but a world to each other. Two individuals in love are everything in the world of their own - they
are the world, all previous experience was but anticipation of this.
But happiness is only real when shared and to Donne affliction is too. One sided love is not love and
only love saves from time. The stake of this poem resides in the understanding of what consistent love
was to Donne. Love is a finality, if love not than death there is. Ben Jonson who first theorized
metaphysical poetry during the late 16th and early 17th century wrote that Donne would perish for
want of being understood- he undresses himself of his abilities in front of both Love and the beloved
in a last vow.
This vow reads fluently, like we are hearing the poet in his intimacy. The stanzas recreate the
rhythm of thoughts itself, the uncanny comparisons simply accompany the flow. Ben Jonson wrote
very famously : “About the beginning of the 17th century appeared a race of writers that may be
termed the metaphysical poets.”These poets used queer images associated with metaphysicals :
science, alchemy or travel, through oblique reasoning in sentences. They overall employed unusual
verse forms, complex figures of speech to elaborate on metaphorical conceits. They mastered
paradoxes. Metaphysical poems clashed with traditional poems and were brief - briefer than
Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Metaphysical poets used wit with the intent to display implication, cleverness,
originality. Stanza 2, Donne writes : “My consistency I to the planets give” engaging the useless
stability he has to offer to always moving orbs, parallel to the useless love he has to offer to a playing
woman. He takes the occasion to ….. and therefore bequeaths “My truth to them who at the court do
live”, addressing lawyers living on lies, “My ingenuity and openness, To Jesuites'' known for their
secrecy, or “my money to Capuchin'' who renounced the world and therefore have no use for money.
Wit is a political playground, and stanza 3 starts by giving his faith to Roman Catholics, really giving
Donne’s faith to fanatics.The sharp use of imagery surprises the reader by the sentences' unexpected
machinery. That tendency led to the development of conceits, comparisons between things that
seemingly have nothing in common but end giving a striking-rather-than-correct effect. Metaphysical
texts hold a passionate address: addressing the God of Love every end of stanza : “Thou, Love hast
taught me heretofore by making me serve her who had twenty mode” (stanza 1) or “Though, Love, by
making me love one Who thinks her friendship a fit portion for younger lovers, dost my gift thus
disproportion.” (stanza 5), offers a direct way of addressing one’s complaint. The opening line :
“Before i sigh my last gasp, let me breathe, Great Love, some legacies : (...)” commits that vivid
dramaturgy legacy of the great era of English drama Donne was born into (he attended a lot of plays
during his youth). Rhythm in itself conveys the ordinary speech of Shakespeare’s both songs and
sonnets. During the 17th century, love and religious poetry came from common inspiration.
Metaphysical poetry traditionally takes on Elizabethan love poetry imaginary and to transfer it into
poems expressing love of God; Donne’s view on spiritual love was strongly influenced by this very
tradition meeting his personal experience between contemplation of God and romantic content.
 Shakespeare wrote in A Midsummer’s Night Dream : “The poet’s eyes in a fire frenzy rolling,
doth glance from Heaven to earth, from earth to Heaven; and as imagination bodies forth the forms of
things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them into shapes and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and
a name.” John Donne lived a generation after Shakespeare and therefore stands by post Shakespearian
poets. That very period, more than being the beginning of what would later be called metaphysical
poetry, established a consistent use of the first person. Early Stuart period (circa 1603), and more
exactly the Jacobean era, held a failure of consensus caused by the political collapse and insurgencies
of the 1640s after the First English Civil War. That general and yet very plural and built-up crisis
resulted in growing socio-cultural divergences. The Nation was still a whole, but the court was
regarded in distrust. The court was influenced by Baroque from the Continent, remote from the
country. Such a climate resulted in a growing separation between polite and vulgar literature, and
overall establishing long term intellectual schisms dismissing Elizabethan writing. Poetry until then
aimed to idealize what was depicted rather than to restitute it truth likely. Like many periods in time
indulging drastic changes of point of view, the early Jacobean hosted a loss of agreement over
transcendent absolutes; scientists, puritans and skepticists couldn’t agree altogether. Poetry as an agent
of a no more actual virtue couldn’t exist anymore, naivety of depicting some ideal truth could not live
on. Metaphysical poets were poets of the individual feeling. They responded to their troubled time and
its pressure by introspection, and the period witnessed the apparition of contemplative verses. The
consistent use of the first person narrative, between the “I” and the “eye” of the poet, conveys a focus
on private experience and on self analysis as if he writes as he experiences. Contrary to Wordsworth’s
concept of poetic creation “emotion recollected in tranquility”, during which the poet experiences
passions in order to recollect emotions in tranquility all being chaperoned by thoughts, the
thoughts-like rhythm of such prose bears the immediacy of thinking. The early 17th century can be
seen as an age of transition; The Renaissance and its exuberance got shut down by political distrust
and disillusion. If Elizabeth was popular, her successor James I wasn’t and criticism of the court
became more and more present. That satire impetus reflected of course in literature in general, and got
infused by the general dissatisfaction with the established order- literature personalities gravitated
around decay and disease. As many historic eras before them, and many after or yet to come,
Jacobean intellectuals therefore questioned the world and the place of the “I” in it. Machiavelli’s The
Prince widespread under that political doubt and engendered a new and materialistic view on the
order of the world. Heroes turned into villains and utters disregarded morals- like the courtship James
I ruled. Philosophy evolved into new philosophy compared to the “old one”, astronomers finally
explored cosmology, the earth no longer was to be the center of the universe; Men’s faith in one’s own
importance as the planet’s was shaken. New philosophy and political views bumped into old
cosmology and created chaos. Is it surprising that such eras produced such pieces of work as The Will?
The poet writes a testament while denying being concerned with not-being. The canonical goal of a
testament is to paliate going into non-being by bequeathing to your loved ones what could assure your
memory- the ways in which you’ll outlive death. But in the end, he bequeathes nothing : John Donne
self-consciously calls off the ulterior donation of his love. The poem fluctuates from non-entities,
“nothing”, and himself along with his poem. Donne hides the non-existing object of his text behind
“being”, and this text hides his written nature behind orality and speech-likeness. This double game
unveils the self-deconstructing stance of the poem and the process of writing it, highlighting its
nothingness.

If life has its intricacies to part our ways, romanticism had Lord Byron write to Mary-Ann
Chaworth-Musters Well thou art happy, and I feel That I should thus be happy too, and metaphysics
had Donne write thou, Love, taught'st me by making me Love her who doth neglect both me and thee,
To invent, and practise this one way, to annihilate all three. This poem seems to be a simple love cry,
if are such oxymorons, but really is an existential piece that silences itself. John Donne bequeaths
himself but ends up giving nothing; enjoying the view from halfway down, in front of
not-being-anymore he takes everything back.
More than being a self-(un)conscious reflection on existence, this piece is to me a canonic
demonstration of the lasting obvious, of what an impact socio-political settings are to mankind. If
anything ever be but cyclic, some moments in history birthed some of the greatest artists by their
troubleness. Like Yeats came from the parted waters of the UK and cried the fall of Troy and of
Ireland, like Ginsberg chanted America I've given you all and now I'm nothing. If love is evidently
universal to Humanity and a roof to many sub-problematics, it sure is a cathartic shelter to timeless
aches.