SONNET ARGUMENT PORTRAYING DONNES WIT AND SYMBOLISM
HOLY SONNETS VIII AND XVII
The two subjects in which John Donne went deepest are those which try the understanding most _ love and religion mentions George Williamson. Furthermore he pointed out From these twin sources flow significant currents in English poetry. Love poetry could never be quite the same after him, and religious verse that is also poetry descends from him. Many critics for years focused on one of these currents _ The Songs and Sonets. While more recently Donnes sacred verses turned to be the matter of concern for many critics. Mary Grenandar believed there is now doubt that this shift in critical emphasis owes much to the appearance of two exhaustive and extremely informative works of scholarship: Helen Gardners edition of the Divine Poems and Louis L. Martz The Poetry of Meditation. Gardner pointed out that the divine poems are great poems of their kind, and she remarks in her preface:
No poet more needs or more repays commentary than Donne With a poet so difficult as Donne the plain meaning is sometimes overlooked, and a wrong explanation may at least provoke someone else to provide the right one. The Attempt to understand the exact meaning of the words, and to recognize the sources or the fields of reference of a poem brings great rewards. Indeed it places some poems in quite a fresh light.
Since the first edition of Donnes poems in 1633, the Divine Poems (A title not used by the author) have had several additions from later collections. Excluding the two presentation sonnets to patrons, they number thirty-eight, one Latin poem to Mr. George Herbert being accompanied by an English version. Among these Divine Poems, the nineteen Holy Sonnets are of particular importance and interest. Mr. Martz has demonstrated their intimate relation to the Jesuit tradition of meditation, concurring with Gardners division of them, on the basis of an exhaustive textual study, into three groups. With the first of these, which she treats as a sonnet cycle, we are not concerned due to the lack of time. The remaining poems she has put into two categories: a set of penitential meditations on sin (I, V, III, and VIII; and a group of three unrelated sonnets form the Westmoreland MS (XVII, XVIII, and XIX). I have chosen to consider for analysis one poem from each of these two latter groups, as contrasting examples of two instances of Donnes wit pointed out by Louis I. Bredvold: a plain and straightforward reasoning about his subject, and symbolism, the most characteristic form in which Donnes poetic genius expressed itself. I do not intend to suggest that an interpretation of these poems is, in any sense, a substitute for the poems themselves, or an intellectual puzzle to be played with for its own sake. But the relationship between understanding and appreciation is an intimate one, and a precise explication may even contribute toward learning up textual problems.
I have taken the text of both poems from Helen Gardners edition which differs slightly with that of Griesons in term of a few propositions and punctuations despite they do not provoke any contradiction in term of analysis.
The first sonnet which I have selected as representative of the mentioned group of sonnet is sonnet VIII which I would like to read it first.
If faithfull souls be alike glorifid
As angels, then my father's soul doth see,
And adds this even to full felicitie,
That valiantly I hels wide mouth o'erstride:
But if our minds to these souls be descryd
By circumstances, and by signs that be
Apparent in us not immediately,
How shall my mindes white truth by them be tryd ?
They see idolatrous lovers weepe and mourne,
And vile blasphemous Conjurers to call
On Jesus name, and Pharisaicall
Dissemblers feign devotion. Then turne
O pensive soul, to God, for He knows best
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