The Holy Paradox in Donne's Batter My Heart
The great paradox of the Christian faith lies in the condition that in order to be truly free, the soul must first be rescued from the bondage of sin, then recaptured and completely conquered by God. One of the most profound expressions of this paradox is to be found in John Donne' poem, "Batter My Heart" (Meyer 882). Donne expresses this spiritual transformation in intensely passionate language, using rhythm, figures of speech, and sounds to convey this theme.
The poem opens with a bang as the speaker addresses God as "three-personed God" (1), hence the Christian God, with a desperate demand. The opening line uses iambic pentameter meter with a rhythm that suggests the sound of someone beating on a door, with the "bam, pa, pa, bam" sound, repeated: "Batter my heart, three-personed God," (line 1, italics mine). The poem begins with alternating trochaic and iambic feet, which make the drumbeat rhythm, and enhance the tone of desperation in the voice. The urgency of the plea is expressed by the direct command, which suddenly ends with a caesura. This is followed by the opening line's enjambment that rushes the plea forward into the next line to explain this urgency. The rhythm then changes to a slower tap, tap, tap, ta tap, ta tap as the speaker tells God that He has been gentle and kindly, "for You/ As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend" (1-2). The spondee stresses on the third foot of the line suggest a deliberate knock, knock, knock, yet the verbs reveal God's quiet, but persistent concern, which the speaker suggests has been too easy, thus far: God, as Holy Spirit, breathes, shines, and mends. The verb "knock" in line two could well refer to Revelation 3:20: "...
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...s most notably in Bemini's seventeenth century statue of "The Ecstasy of St. Theresa." She is portrayed reclining in an attitude of total submission, with an angel standing over her, which is very reminiscent of Donne's poem.
John Donne's use of the language is masterful in several ways. He is able to convey the spiritual theme of a sudden violent act of God in order to convert a seeking, but weak human soul. He does this by using the carnal act as a metaphor for the mystical work of the Holy Spirit. He also uses human experience as a way to interpret the mystical experience, which would otherwise be inexpressible.
Works Cited
Meyer, Mchael. The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000.
"Ravish." The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1971.
Marvell’s is concerned with seizing the moment and living life to the full, and satisfying his need for sexual intercourse in his relationship. The narrator is more concerned about lust than love.
The speaker of the poem believes himself to be weak in his faith and he wants to be conquered by God and not by Satan.
Donne, John. “Hymn to God, my God, in My Sickness.” Poems of John Donne. vol I. E. K. Chambers, ed. London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 211-212.
...al in lines one and two with enjambment between the words “digest” and “my soul.” He even goes so far as to conflate God the Father with depraved man through enjambent and the phrase “robbed man” in line 9. In fact, this line seems to actually serve as a kind of “volta” due to the ultimate extreme of conflation, thus following the traditional Italian sonnet form. This emphasizes the purity of the form as representative of the Trinity in this sonnet. Donne’s use of the form of the poem itself as an embodiment of the Trinity seems to further emphasize the perceived interrelatedness of all things, and therefore supports the mutual statement of love that opens the poem. So, the conflation rises to yet another level, where the poem itself is a resonation of God’s love as a manifestation of the trinity, and Donne takes the role of creator, thus acting in the image of God.
The poem begins with the speaker addressing God as “Our Father who art in heaven” (1.1). If this prayer is a metaphor for writing, it would seem that the he is actually speaking to the audience, the group of people who will ultimately judge his writing and his ideas. The casual nature of the prayer is partly based on the fact that the speaker is admittedly drunk on red wine, but also because the writer is trying to establish a relationship with his audience: A rapport with his readers is important to a writer’s success. He thanks his readers for the red wine, because it is they who have made it possible for him to maintain a lifestyle wherein he can afford the wine, and this wine acts as the liquid courage he needs to write in the first place.
In the poem “To His Coy Mistress”, the speaker is trying to seduce his wife. In the assumption the mistress is his wife; she is being bashful towards losing her virginity. The speaker, which is the mistress’s husband, develops a carefully constructed argument where the speaker seeks to persuade his lady to surrender her virginity to him.
“The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”.(Matthew 26:41) These words of Jesus are thematic in both the novel, The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene, and the poem, “Batter my heart, three-personed God”, by John Donne. Both the whiskey priest and the speaker of the poem are involved in a battle between their sinful flesh and their spirit, which seeks the Divine. They also admit their sin and commit themselves to God. In both the novel and the poem, the authors use similar paradoxes to describe the character’s relationship with God while the search for holiness takes each on a different path.
...) This is one of the most important claims that Donne makes because he indirectly inducts himself and Anne into the canon of saints, thus making them sacred. The poem ends with Donne calling upon all those who have suffered from similar criticisms; this further dignifies Donne as a saint-like figure. Therefore, both of Donne’s latter poems expose the transformation that Donne acquires when he meets Anne. His sexist attitude and views transcend to a more spiritual and emotional one.
The overall gist of "To His Coy Mistress" is established in the opening stanza of the poem. It describes a sceneario where a girl has the option to either give in to the young persuaders sexua...
In both ‘The Sun Rising’ and ‘The Good Morrow’ Donne presents the experience of love, in a typical Metaphysical style, to engage his reader through sharing his own experiences. These poems show distinctive characteristics of Metaphysical poems which involve colloquial diction, drawing inventive imagery from unconventional sources, passionately analysing relationships and examining feelings. Donne presents the experience of love through conceits, Metaphysical wit, language techniques and imagery, in a confident tone using logical argument. The impact of Donne’s use of direct and idiomatic language shows the reader how he feels about a woman and ultimately love.
[6] Donne, John. “From Meditation 17”. Excerpt from McDougal Litell’s “The Language of Literature”, Page 455. McDougal Litell Inc., 2000.
John Donne will not accept death as the finale, his religious conviction supports in the belief of eternal life proceeding death. Throughout the poem Donne’s main purpose was the personification of death, his use of figurative language gave death humanistic characteristics and made death vulnerable and unintimidating. The structure of three quatrains and a couplet for the poem allowed for easier understanding of the context because the layout and rhyme scheme helped the poem flow and also revealed the tones. The imagery of death described by Donne breaks down death’s pride and bravado, as well as shine an encouraging light past the process of dying, on to the hope of delivery to eternal life. Each element played a significant role in the interpretation of the paradox of the poem, that ultimately death is not the universal destroyer of life.
By making many references to the Bible, John Donne's Holy Sonnets reveal his want to be accepted and forgiven by God. A fear of death without God's forgiveness of sins is conveyed in these sonnets. Donne expresses extreme anxiety and fright that Satan has taken over his soul and God won't forgive him for it or his sins. A central theme of healing and forgiveness imply that John Donne, however much he wrote about God and being holy, wasn't such a holy man all of the time and tried to make up for it in his writing.
John Donne is known as being one of the most famous and influential metaphysical poets. The term “metaphysical," as applied to English and continental European poets of the seventeenth century, was used by Augustan poets John Dryden and Samuel Johnson to reprove those poets for their “unnaturalness.” As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, however, “The unnatural, that too is natural," and the metaphysical poets continue to be studied and revered for their intricacy and originality. Due to Donne’s personal experiences with spirituality and love, he is able to grasp the true meaning of metaphysical poetry (Brief Guide to Metaphysical Poets). Using all the aspects of metaphysical poetry, Donne creates a mysterious metaphoric poem titled, “The Flea.” Throughout this poem, the use of metaphors and breaks into the separate stanzas allow for the audiences to understand what The Flea is really about. At first glance, many read The Flea as a poem that compares sexual intimacy with an animal, but when broken down, it can be seen that the meaning is much deeper than intimacy, but it
No poem of John Donne's is more widely read or more directly associated with Donne than the tenth of the Holy Sonnets,"Death, be not proud." Donne's reputation as a morbid preacher was well-known. He had a portrait of himself made while posed in a winding-sheet so that he could contemplate a personalized memento of death. Donne draws upon a popular subject in medieval and Renaissance art, Le roi mort or King Death. His fascination with death reaches another plateau with this poem. He almost welcomes it and denounces the process as being neither horrifying nor the "end-all be-all." In a contextual point of view, he works to rupture habitual thinking and bring attention to the intensity and depth of a situation by creating doubt or offering a new aspect of his subject. Donne takes this poem and pours forth an array of visions that directly connects to the contextualist in a look at death, the pa...