It's all Donne!

By Smriti Daniel

John Donne can be like a disease. He seeps into your blood, crawls into your brain, infects your thoughts…and suddenly you find yourself chuckling quietly in the middle of an ordinary day, because the world you see is now a different place: a little strange, a little absurd, and entirely, profoundly beautiful.

If it weren't for all the weird spellings, one would find it hard to believe that Donne was actually born in (gasp!)1572 and that a man who indulged so thoroughly in all forms of love actually became a priest. He was the rock and roll star of his time in some ways: his scandalous poetry dismissed and ridiculed by some, considered immoral and licentious by others. It didn't help that Donne had little patience for fools, as he demonstrated memorably with the line: "For God's sake, hold your tongue and let me love!"

His personal life was colourful (to put it politely) and often placed Donne in real physical danger. A highlight: being thrown into prison by Sir George More after he secretly married the man's underage daughter Ann More. His love for her – unsurpassingly tender and consuming – shines through many of his poems. For instance when he asks:

"I wonder, by my troth, what
thou and I
Did, till we loved?"

However, even as he indulges in the most irrational of loves, Donne never seems to stop laughing a little at everyone, including himself.

"I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying
so
In whining poetry."

Is it any wonder I love the guy? Donne being Donne was intensely passionate about everything and it's not surprising really that he preached a fabulous sermon. In fact, in the last decade of his life, before his death in 1630, Donne concentrated more on writing sermons than on writing poems. One of his most famous ones contains the passage beginning, "No man is an island" and ending, "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

However, when we remember Donne today, it is for those delightful poems of his.

Labelled 'metaphysical poetry,' they were full of the most extraordinary, exaggerated sentiments and comparisons. His eccentric reasoning makes Donne a challenging read as does his occasionally weird language structures. But is he worth it? Obviously yes. Even today, his consistently brilliant handling of his great obsession – the clash between spiritual purity and physical carnality, as represented in religion and love – remains unparalleled.