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callmemadamWriting about Donne’s life and works is like a paperchase through history. He would write a poem and send it to a friend, who would then copy it and send it to another friend and so on. Which copy is the ‘true’ poem? Think of the loss of paper during the Great Fire and the Blitz and wonder what might have been lost. Amazingly, even today a piece of paper will turn up in some dusty archive. Donne’s friends and contemporaries admired his poetry but later critics were not so kind. Dryden, Dr Johnson, Pope, Coleridge, all took him to task for his scansion. Perhaps it took a twentieth century mind to appreciate what was *deliberately* written to be unusual and difficult. ‘T S Eliot, a man who had in common with Donne both poetic iconoclasm and good clothes, loved his writing.’ ‘Poetic iconoclasm and good clothes’; this is the sort of little gem scattered throughout this brilliant book.
John Donne was born in dangerous times. His family were Catholics; a great uncle was executed, his younger brother died in jail after foolishly trying to hide a priest in his rooms. Donne’s mother remained Catholic until her death but at some time, it’s not clear when, John switched his allegiance. He had great intellectual gifts, which he was well aware of, yet he was forty-nine before gaining fame and fortune. This was partly the result of his reckless marriage to Anne More, a teenager from a rich family. He must have been madly in love to have done anything so unworldly. He lost the post he had with Sir Thomas Egerton and was thrown into prison, as was the friend who had officiated at the wedding. Poor Anne. When her new husband was released, she had to start married life in relative poverty; in a sixteen-year marriage, she had twelve pregnancies. The last one killed her, at thirty-two. She was survived by seven of her children.
Donne was grief-stricken and worried about how to support his now large family. As he grew older, he was often ill, with recurring violent fevers. It is painful to read the flattering, almost cringing letters, full of hyperbole, which he wrote to various people, not so subtly hinting that they might find him a job. In doing this, he was no different from any other man of his class not born to wealth. This was no meritocracy; the only way to find a ‘place’ was to get the patronage of someone rich and influential. When it was suggested that he might enter the church, he refused at first but changed his mind. This gave him more financial security and made him famous as a preacher. A book he had written arguing that Catholics owed allegiance to the Crown pleased the new king, James VI & I. Donne was given an honorary doctorate and appointed Dean of St Paul’s, an astonishing leap of preferment for someone fairly new to the priesthood. The job brought with it duties but also many opportunities to make money, because of the number of benefices now at his disposal. He made the most of it. Was this expediency? Surely, no one could read the holy sonnets and not see a man who had thought long and hard about his relationship with God.
When he became Dean, Donne had ten more years to live and they passed in spending, illness, marrying off his children, illness, writing, illness and preaching. Sermons were taken seriously in those days and were much discussed. Such was the charismatic draw of Donne in the pulpit that thousands flocked to hear him and they often heard naught for their comfort as his words became harsher with age. It was for his sermons, not his poetry, that Donne became famous in London.
I seem to have written a lot about Donne and not enough about what makes this book so good. Rundell is obviously a little in love with her subject; she makes Donne sound wildly attractive. She shows us late Elizabethan/early Stuart London with all its crowds, smells, outbreaks of plague and other dangers. No wonder that Donne was obsessed not only with sex but with death. He was aware always of the fragility of human life and the deaths of six children made this more personal. He thought constantly of his own death. Rundell says that ‘he walked in darkness so often, it became a daily commute.’ He wrote a book about suicide in which he argued (against the law and all the teachings of the church) that suicide was not always a sin, even suggesting that Jesus, in going willingly to his death, was committing suicide and then used his powers to die quickly. This book was such a hot potato that he sent it to a friend, asking him to keep it safe but hidden. It was an age of memento mori (think of all those skulls on the monuments and gravestones of the time) and Donne had a painting of a skeleton in his house. He often thought he was dying and when he knew that he really was, he actually dressed in his own winding sheet to pose for the artist who would make his effigy for St Paul’s. Macabre? Yet he wrote, ‘Death, be not proud’. Death was inevitable even before the child emerged from the womb, yet man was a wonder and ‘infinite’.
Why call the book Super-Infinite? Donne often added ‘super’ to words which would seem strong enough already, for example, preaching about death, ‘my soul shall evaporate: a joy that shall pass up and put on a more glorious garment above, and be joy super-invested in glory.’ He also invented words which suited his purpose more than existing ones. Is the moral, life is good but death is better; to see God is to see oneself at last? Donne was so complicated, it’s hard to say. The famous passage beginning, ‘No man is an island …’ was written at the very end. Rundell’s message is: ‘Read Donne!’ Few writers are able to combine scholarship with humour as she has done.
Postscript. Reading this book, I constantly saw parallels between the lives of Donne and Dickens, although they were so different. Both were aware when young of their own superior abilities (Donne far better educated and more intellectual), were ambitious and wanted money. Both wore dandified clothes and were fond of jewellery. They wrote furiously throughout their lives. Marriage was a problem for them. Passionate men, they could neither live without sex nor live with its inevitable consequence: large families. Rundell says that Donne seemed most interested in his children when they died. None of their children inherited the father’s genius. Only one of Dickens’ children, clever Henry, became distinguished in his own right; the rest, like Donne’s, never amounted to much. The two men also shared a brilliant wit and attraction that made them good company and were charismatic enough to move vast crowds to tears: Donne with his sermons, Dickens with his readings. It would be hard to say which was the more unhappy genius. Just a thought.
John Donne was born in dangerous times. His family were Catholics; a great uncle was executed, his younger brother died in jail after foolishly trying to hide a priest in his rooms. Donne’s mother remained Catholic until her death but at some time, it’s not clear when, John switched his allegiance. He had great intellectual gifts, which he was well aware of, yet he was forty-nine before gaining fame and fortune. This was partly the result of his reckless marriage to Anne More, a teenager from a rich family. He must have been madly in love to have done anything so unworldly. He lost the post he had with Sir Thomas Egerton and was thrown into prison, as was the friend who had officiated at the wedding. Poor Anne. When her new husband was released, she had to start married life in relative poverty; in a sixteen-year marriage, she had twelve pregnancies. The last one killed her, at thirty-two. She was survived by seven of her children.
Donne was grief-stricken and worried about how to support his now large family. As he grew older, he was often ill, with recurring violent fevers. It is painful to read the flattering, almost cringing letters, full of hyperbole, which he wrote to various people, not so subtly hinting that they might find him a job. In doing this, he was no different from any other man of his class not born to wealth. This was no meritocracy; the only way to find a ‘place’ was to get the patronage of someone rich and influential. When it was suggested that he might enter the church, he refused at first but changed his mind. This gave him more financial security and made him famous as a preacher. A book he had written arguing that Catholics owed allegiance to the Crown pleased the new king, James VI & I. Donne was given an honorary doctorate and appointed Dean of St Paul’s, an astonishing leap of preferment for someone fairly new to the priesthood. The job brought with it duties but also many opportunities to make money, because of the number of benefices now at his disposal. He made the most of it. Was this expediency? Surely, no one could read the holy sonnets and not see a man who had thought long and hard about his relationship with God.
When he became Dean, Donne had ten more years to live and they passed in spending, illness, marrying off his children, illness, writing, illness and preaching. Sermons were taken seriously in those days and were much discussed. Such was the charismatic draw of Donne in the pulpit that thousands flocked to hear him and they often heard naught for their comfort as his words became harsher with age. It was for his sermons, not his poetry, that Donne became famous in London.
I seem to have written a lot about Donne and not enough about what makes this book so good. Rundell is obviously a little in love with her subject; she makes Donne sound wildly attractive. She shows us late Elizabethan/early Stuart London with all its crowds, smells, outbreaks of plague and other dangers. No wonder that Donne was obsessed not only with sex but with death. He was aware always of the fragility of human life and the deaths of six children made this more personal. He thought constantly of his own death. Rundell says that ‘he walked in darkness so often, it became a daily commute.’ He wrote a book about suicide in which he argued (against the law and all the teachings of the church) that suicide was not always a sin, even suggesting that Jesus, in going willingly to his death, was committing suicide and then used his powers to die quickly. This book was such a hot potato that he sent it to a friend, asking him to keep it safe but hidden. It was an age of memento mori (think of all those skulls on the monuments and gravestones of the time) and Donne had a painting of a skeleton in his house. He often thought he was dying and when he knew that he really was, he actually dressed in his own winding sheet to pose for the artist who would make his effigy for St Paul’s. Macabre? Yet he wrote, ‘Death, be not proud’. Death was inevitable even before the child emerged from the womb, yet man was a wonder and ‘infinite’.
Why call the book Super-Infinite? Donne often added ‘super’ to words which would seem strong enough already, for example, preaching about death, ‘my soul shall evaporate: a joy that shall pass up and put on a more glorious garment above, and be joy super-invested in glory.’ He also invented words which suited his purpose more than existing ones. Is the moral, life is good but death is better; to see God is to see oneself at last? Donne was so complicated, it’s hard to say. The famous passage beginning, ‘No man is an island …’ was written at the very end. Rundell’s message is: ‘Read Donne!’ Few writers are able to combine scholarship with humour as she has done.
Postscript. Reading this book, I constantly saw parallels between the lives of Donne and Dickens, although they were so different. Both were aware when young of their own superior abilities (Donne far better educated and more intellectual), were ambitious and wanted money. Both wore dandified clothes and were fond of jewellery. They wrote furiously throughout their lives. Marriage was a problem for them. Passionate men, they could neither live without sex nor live with its inevitable consequence: large families. Rundell says that Donne seemed most interested in his children when they died. None of their children inherited the father’s genius. Only one of Dickens’ children, clever Henry, became distinguished in his own right; the rest, like Donne’s, never amounted to much. The two men also shared a brilliant wit and attraction that made them good company and were charismatic enough to move vast crowds to tears: Donne with his sermons, Dickens with his readings. It would be hard to say which was the more unhappy genius. Just a thought.
