John Donne

First off, I thought I'd share the funniest video you will see in the next 3 days.

When you watch this video pay attention to the subtitles. The best one is "Quiggley finds his 2,000 word vocabulary insufficient to express his emptiness."


Scientists Successfully Teach Gorilla It Will Die Someday


Anyway, to a post. Today someone mentioned a John Donne poem, and it made me think about poetry a bit. Here is a John Donne poem that I really like. I actually shared this poem on this blog when I first started blogging, but back then I didn't explain it all. So, here is the poem with commentary.

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.
by John Donne


As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

explanation: in this poem a man is leaving the woman he loves. He seems to do this often. We don't know if it's for business, family, or even by force. We just know that he is leaving and she is sad, and he's trying to soften the pain of his departure. The imagery here is how he wants her to feel about his leaving. The assumption is that a virtuous man passes from this life prepared and confident for what comes next (pass mildly away). Also, the death here described is one so natural and mild that you can picture his friends surrounding him, wondering if that breath was the last because it was so gradual and restful that the transition from life to death would be unrecognizable. This is how he wants her to feel about his departure.


So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

explanation: this is him playing off the last imagery of passing peacefully, he then argues that the weak expressions of failed love expressed by so many (crying and wailing etc) is not fit for the higher love that they experience. Because their love is so secure, the common (or lay) expressions of sorrow are inappropriate. Also, he doesn't want people to know of he sadness they both feel. He wants to separate with a dignity appropriate for his elevated feelings.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

explanation: here he is talking about how as the earth turns (representing time moving and the day to day life) it brings temporary fears and discouragement, and people seem to want to make sense of all these trifling matters. But then he points to the spheres (the stars in the sky) and notes that these stars are so much greater in size and scope than anything on this planet, and yet they sit there apparently unmovable and unchanging, causing no sorrow or pain (innocent).

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

explained: sublunary lovers means lovers under the moon....and under the moon means on this earth (only thing under our moon). So he's really saying "earthly lovers." As we learned from the last stanza, earthly lovers are those who are tempermental and changing, who as the world turns change their feelings. They are also constantly trying to find meaning and substance in fleeting and changing things.

When he discusses the absence and the removing of what elemented it, he's pointing out how most loves are found in particulars, in accidental and changing properties. And that when those properties are gone, the love is gone (because that which elemented it (element being the most fundamental part of a thing) is gone). He is saying that their love is based on something more, it is based on the person, but the intrinsic part of that person that is uniquely them, not some accidental property like profession, hair color, or favorite activity.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Explanation: here he compares he says that there love is so refined that they don't really understand it. It's impossible to understand what makes a person uniquely them, and since that is what he loves, he cannot express his love. But what he does know is that his love is secure in his mind, he knows that even though he will miss looking in her eyes, holding her hand, and kissing her (eyes, lips, and hand), he knows that they are connected at a level that transcends these expressions, he doesn't confuse the expression of emotion with the emotion itself, and he's sure that they have nothing to fear, cause their love is something higher than both of them.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

explanation: this is a beautiful stanza. Here he is saying that they are two people, but really one, so rather than think of his leaving as a separation, he thinks she should think of it as an expansion, because since they are the same, his traveling does not separate them (can't separate when you are of one substance) so the result is that it is merely a stretching. As he travels distance, their relationship expands to overcome and encompass that distance. He compares this to gold. If you try to pound gold it gets paper thin, and it is smooth and beautiful. The thinness he is describing is so thin it could rest on the air (aery thinness). So, their love is like gold, and it's like a gold that is spreading out very far to take in whatever distance he must go.

If they be two, they are two so 25
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

explanation: and here he is saying that if they do need to think of themselves as two separate things, then they are two separate things in the way that a compass is two separate points conjoined at the center. She is the foot of the compass placed firmly, and he's the writing part of the compass off doing something. But when he moves, she moves also with him, she is there with him in some way that he can't really express.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

explanation: Here he continues the compass metaphor, and points to how the compass will move with his travel, and perk up (grow erect) when he comes home. So, he's saying she'll be glad to see him, but all along she moved and felt with him.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

Explanation: here he is saying they are that compass, that he will always return to her, that she is the center, and no matter where he goes he will always come back and end where he began.

Another point here is that when John Donne wrote this he was familiar with symbols we don't use very much. The circle represents eternity, and the compass makes circles. So, the thing they create together through his movements also represents the eternal nature of their love.

Anyway, that's that poem. Poetry is good times. I've been trying to read more of it lately. Hope you're all doing well.