Holy Sonnets: An Informal Metaphysical Inquiry

John Donne, generally regarded as the father of metaphysical poetry, writing in the late 16th-early 17th century, has given critics ever since no shortage of literary puzzles. His style ranges from sexually aggressive (and progressive) carpe diem poems with a quirky application of logic (The Flea) to poems that champion love/sex as the new religion, which controversially and blasphemously crowns lovers as Saints or other, unnamed religious figures (The Relic, The Canonization). In addition to these, he also compiles a curious collection of religious verse—the Holy Sonnets.* These feature a central speaker who cries out earnestly in search of God and comes forth unrestrainedly about the blemishes and gaps of his own faith. Donne’s vivid depiction of this speaker renders his poetic commentary and reflection on the many faces of faith still resounding and relevant in the modern context. Donne’s own motivation or impulse behind writing these disturbingly truthful soul-searching sonnets precipitates directly from a rocky start in religion. Born into strict Catholic rearing literally as Protestantism begins to topple Catholicism’s monopoly hold on England’s religious pulse, Donne grows up in a hostile environment both damaging and dangerous to Catholic practitioners whose faith remains public. Donne abandons his born-into faith at a young age, later he refuses the Anglican order, and even later becomes an Anglican preacher as the Dean of St. Paul’s. Under the supposition that Donne writes the Holy Sonnets out of an effort to sift through some personal anxieties and confusions he experiences in the unpredictable religio-political climate, it seems feasible that Donne picks up where Spenser, Sydney and Shakespeare had left off, and reworks Petrarchan sonnets and Elizabethan lyric poems, giving the tradition a distinctly metaphysical flavor.
Traditional sonnets almost as a rule feature some young lover who pursues a maiden and attempts to encapsulate her loveliness in verse; in fact, sonnets originally comes from a tradition of love letter correspondences. A common construction emphasizes the inadequacy of language as the poet laments either his love’s magnificence rendering him inarticulate, or the failure of commonplace words to express such a wonder to behold as his beloved. Spenser’s speaker, for one, encounters this very problem: “[s]o when my toung would speak her praises dew,/it stopped is with thoughts astonishment” (Sonnet 3 l. 9-10), which he resolves by using heartfelt language rather than attempting vacuous and ornate verse: “[y]et in my hart I then both speake and write,/[t]he wonder that my wit cannot endite” (l. 13-4). Sydney also perceives virtue in the idea of a love that triumphs over the inadequacies of language. In Sonnet 1, Sydney’s speaker suffers seemingly no end of frustration for “words came halting forth” (l. 9) until a muse chides him “[f]ool…look in thy heart and write” (l. 14).
Donne uses the sonnet format to treat a different subject, God, and transforms the pursuit of a physical affair into a quest for spirituality. In Donne’s Holy Sonnets, the limited expressiveness of language presents not as a lack of words for the beauty of the maiden in question, but as a failure to reach an ever-distant God. Indeed, Donne’s frantic central speaker demands severe forms of punishment from God—“[b]atter my heart” (Sonnet 14 l. 1), “o’erthrow me” (l. 3), “break, blow, burn, and make me new” (l. 4); he admits attempting to “court God” “in prayers and flattering speeches” (Sonnet 19 l. 10). Donne’s speaker certainly assigns to himself a task more difficult by far, to provoke an answer from the Divine rather than any female. So it seems, even though he draws all his material from his heart, resolution does not come readily available to him as it does to Sydney and Spenser’s speakers—a notion which holds thematic relevance to Donne’s work at large. It might prove useful to consider the subject matter change as preceding all other stylistic or content-related shifts; because the act of ‘courting God’ has infinitely more complications than courting a young maiden, so the Holy Sonnets tend to lack any sense of progression or resolution, and its central speaker exhibits major internal contradictions creating a more realistic description of the devotee.
The stock sonneteers (Sydney, Spenser and Shakespeare) have already once revolutionized the use of opposites and apparent contradictions in sonnets which they inherit from Petrarch and Elizabethan lyric poems. In Queen Elizabeth I’s On Monsieur’s Departure, the speaker repeatedly contrasts a pair of apparent contradictions in a line, and uses that contrast to capture her emotions. Sometimes the contrast denotes the struggle between an internal state and the outward appearance of things, for example, she begins “I grieve, and dare not show my discontent” (l. 1). Here she uses “and” instead of “yet” to show that both conditions must persist simultaneously. Sometimes she speaks of a very literal contrast—“I freeze and yet am burned” (l. 5); here, present-tense verbs (“freeze”, “am”) not only create the contradiction (since these things cannot occur together), but gives it a near real-time quality. In two lines (or rather, two contradictions), Queen Elizabeth I lodges in the reader’s mind, an image of a speaker torn under some internal struggle. Other sonneteers alter the use of this apparent contradiction method, and employ a single metaphorical opposition throughout the sonnet to thematically thread together the lines in order to present a coherent argument. Spenser, for example, in sonnet 3 juxtaposes the elevated beauty of his beloved against the baseness of everything that she does not embody. Upon the sight of her “soverayne beauty” (l. 1), the “wondrous sight of so celestiall hew” (l. 8), the speaker confesses “my fraile spirit […] from basenesses raysed” (l. 4) and “base thing I can no more endure to view” (l. 6).
Donne does not use contradictions as a controlled method, or literary device; rather he expresses a single contradiction in the Holy Sonnets, which exists between his speaker’s near uncontrollable bouts of faithfulness and faithlessness. This single struggle dominates the entire schema of sonnet 19 in which the speaker admits that his “devout fits come and go away” (l. 12). In fact, contradictory pairs (“as praying, as mute; as infinite, as none” (l. 8) etc) are not used here as small, self-contained metaphors for his condition, rather they present as a subset of aspects of the main and singular struggle. In other words, when the speaker uses “cold and hot”, he does not use it as a metaphor for his will towards and away from God; he actually means his struggle causes him to experience cold and hot. A claim substantiated by a later statement that his “devout fits come and go away/[l]ike a fantastic ague” (l. 12-3), as in, like a fever.
Traditional sonneteers tend to provide their speakers with some form of fulfillment towards the end of series, thereby denoting a sense of progression throughout the collection. Spenser’s speaker, ultimately aiming for marriage, in sonnet 3 (while presumably still courting his young maiden) laments his inability to translate his admiration into words. Yet by sonnet 74, the speaker describes himself as happily and devotedly married. Spenser repeats a line in sonnet 74 almost identical to one found in sonnet 3, to remove any doubt that the two poems feature the same speaker and by implication the same beloved. In sonnet 3, the speaker confesses that “[his] fraile spirit by her from basenesse raysed” (l. 4), and in 74, he refers to his wife as “my love […] by whom my spirit out of dust was raysed” (Sonnet 74 l. 9-10). Spenser makes only one alteration in the depiction of the speaker’s relationship with his beloved—he removes the speaker’s inability to express his admiration for his lover (a change which also suggests progress.) In sonnet 3, though the sight of her raises him from baseness, the speaker nevertheless says that “when my toung would speak her praises dew,/[i]t stopped is with thought astonishment” (l. 9-10). In sonnet 74, the speaker finds that his spirit was raised precisely for “to speake her prayse and glory excellent,” (l. 11). Sidney’s speaker also finds, in sonnet 1, that trying to put the loveliness of the maiden his pursues into words, difficult and almost maddening. A muse instructs him to “look in [his] heart and write,” at the end of sonnet 1. By sonnet 21, he can hardly stop from writing praises of the maiden “[h]ath this world aught so fair as Stella is?” (l. 14), even though he appears somewhat apologetic about the quality of the work: “mine own writings […] show/[m]y wits quick in vain thoughts, in virtue lame” (l. 3-4).
Donne, on the other hand, as if following around his confused and frantic speaker and jotting down the speaker’s thoughts in real time, ultimately pens a series of sonnets with no sense of progression over time. The speaker experiences neither loss nor gain in the course of the collection, but starts anew with each sonnet, testing a different method in order to solicit a response from God, with varying amounts of confidence that he can accomplish the task. In fact, sonnet 10 exhibits signs of deeper and more resolute faith than sonnet 14 and 19. Presumably when the speaker scorns “[d]eath be not proud” (l. 1), he actually feels proud enough to assert his triumph over and above death. It follows that the speaker feels most confident in his assertion when he feels most connected with God, the only entity able to rise above death. In sonnet 14, the speaker begins with the supposition of defeat. His language corresponds to an image of battle (“o’erthrow” (l. 3), “usurped town” (l. 5), “defend” (l. 7), “captive” (l. 8), “imprison” (l. 13)) which he regards himself as having lost. The confidence in his close relationship with God from sonnet 10 disappears, and sonnet 14 instead paints a despairing and violent picture of how far away he feels from God. Likewise, sonnet 19 begins anew, and re-narrates the speaker’s struggle to close the gap between himself and God.
Using the final couplet to provide some resolution within each poem, Sidney and Spenser tend to echo the fulfillment that they have fixed into their sonnet series as a whole. Spenser’s sonnet 3 divides neatly along the lines of presentation of an issue (first twelve lines) and the solution to the issue presented (final couplet). Sidney’s speaker spends twelve lines convincing himself to “[l]et her go” (l. 12) and in the last two lines find out that though he could say “[g]o to,/[u]nkind, I love you not” (l. 12-3), his heart immediately recognizes it as a lie. Here, the negation does not mean the speaker is irresolute; rather the very last line confirms the resolve of his heart when it denies the claim made by his tongue. Though in Shakespeare’s sonnet collection, the sense of progression does not present very strongly, he nevertheless designs each final couplet so that it concludes the sonnet assertively. In some instances, Shakespeare uses his last lines to affirm the conviction delineated earlier in the sonnet; for example, sonnet 55 examines how a subject’s praise preserved in rhyme will outlast “marble” and “gilded monuments/[o]f princes” (l. 1-2), and it concludes “[s]o till the judgement […]/[y]ou live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes” (l. 13-4). In another sonnet, Shakespeare may choose to deny or refute the disposition argued by preceding lines, in his final couplet. For example, sonnet 29 features a speaker who considers himself an outcast, always “[w]ishing [himself] like to one more rich in hope,”(l. 5) or “like [another] with friends possessed” (l. 6) and “[d]esiring this man’s art and that man’s scope” (l. 7). But in the final couplet, he claims instead “sweet love remembered such wealth brings/I scorn to change my state with kings” (1. 14). Whichever strategy he chooses, Shakespeare allows his speaker to reach some clarity of mind by the end of the sonnet, and settle the matter raised in earlier lines.
Donne’s sonnets, though preserving the volta (or dramatic shift, pivot) at the octave/sestet line break from the Petrarachan tradition, does not offer any resolution in the final couplet. In sonnet 19, the speaker bewails the fact that he sways to and fro between faithfulness and faithlessness unceasingly. The speaker does not attempt or even express any desire to discipline himself in any way in order to maintain faith. The whole sonnet is just laden with “contraries” which presumably all “meet in one” (his mind, or more generally, his body), and at the end, he resigns: “save that here/[t]hose were my best days, when I shake with fear” (1. 13-4). The final couplet here presents some mild nostalgic longing towards a vague notion of fervent religious devotion which the speaker never embodies for more than a few days at a time. In sonnet 14, the final couplet depicts imageries and emotions more violent and aggressive, yet still it leaves the issues presented in the preceding lines unaddressed. In the first twelve lines, the speaker at times find his falling away from God analogous to war, and he imagines himself an “usurped town” (l. 5); or he imagines him and God like star-crossed lovers: “dearly I love You, […]/[b]ut am betrothed unto your enemy” (l. 9-10). Up to this point, he has employed various imageries to capture the distance he feels from God, building up a desire in the reader to find some resolution in the last lines. In the final couplet, however, he declaration to God: “for I/[e]xcept You enthral me, never shall be free/[n]or ever chaste, except You ravish me” (l. 12-4), a declaration which bears no alleviation for the reader’s anxiety, or his own internal conflict.
Noting that Donne pens these piercing verses as a literary exercise for the sorting out of his own religious confusion, the reader may find it conceivable that Donne chooses the format of the sonnet to suggest some aim more grandiose than a reworking of the specific poetic form, perhaps a reworking of how to understand and reach true faith. Conventionally stocked with use of contradictions, the sonnet is the perfect literary vehicle with which to carry the opposition between the conflicting forces that propel a subject to and away from faith. The speaker of the Holy Sonnets, standing in place for Donne, performs a series of religious introspection, and when he comes perilously close to denying God’s existence, Donne saves him by referring to the contradictory nature of the sonnet convention. This move has aesthetic as well as practical value. Indeed some of Donne’s most haunting and beautiful paradoxes, juxtapositions, and contrasts precipitate right out of the form as it hinges on the blurred lines of content and form. Since the content deals with a troubled mind in search of a seemingly absent God, too much affirmation of faith will subtract from the intensiveness and realism of the internal struggle, while too much negation of faith (in a sense, a denial of God’s existence) borders on blasphemy. The ambiguity of where the contradiction lies (whether in form or content) creates a sort of safety net wherein Donne could simply claim that the dichotomized set-up depicts a fictive opposition, and does not correspond to any real struggle with religious belief, either on the part of the imagined speaker, or for himself. In other words, within the sonnet, Donne enjoys the opportunity to freely explore and engage all the troubling and confusing aspects of his faith, including doubt. Donne appears to thinks that a subject cannot understand (much less reach) true faith, if when he explores and engages his beliefs, he ignores the presence of doubt. Donne’s rendition of the sonnet elevates the discussion by changing its subject to a transcendent entity—God, while still using ordinary constructs to illustrate the discussion. In the Holy Sonnets, Donne stamps the sonnet tradition with the mark of a metaphysical poet.