Poetry for All

Transcript for Episode 7: John Donne, ÒHoly Sonnet 14Ó

Joanne: 	

Hello, IÕm Joanne Diaz, a poet and English professor at Illinois Wesleyan University.

Abram: 	

And IÕm Abram Van Engen, an English professor at Washington University in St. Louis.Ê

Joanne: 	

And this is Poetry for All.

Abram: 	

This podcast is for those who already love poetry and for those who know very little about it.

Joanne: 	

In this podcast, weÕll read a poem, discuss it, learn from it, and then read it one more time.

Abram: 	

Today, we thought weÕd talk about another sonnet: John DonneÕs ÒHoly Sonnet 14.Ó Should I read that?

Joanne: 	

Yes, please.Ê

Abram: 	

ÒSonnet 14.ÓÊ

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Joanne: 	

This has to be one of the most emotionally urgent poems I have ever read in my whole life. Um, the levels of religious despair that this poetic speaker is feelingÉthis is a person in a lot of trouble. He feels like a prisoner. He feels like Reason, which is GodÕs gift to man, has left him and has aligned himself with sin. He wants to be close to God, but he simply can't. So in all of the history of English literature, I feel like this is one that really gives us a sense of how lonely it can be to feel this level of religious crisis and despair. Could you talk about what you see happening as the central problem or tension of this poem, Abram?

Abram: 	

Yeah, so, basically you can get that central problem pretty well if you isolate all the verbs. So this is a sonnet loaded down with verbs: Òknock, breathe, shine,Ó Òrise,Ó Òbreak, blow, burn,Ó Òmake,Ó etc. ItÕs just verbs everywhere. And yet, only two verbs are ascribed to the ÒI,Ó and they come at line five and six, ÒI É / Labor to admit you,Ó and then at line nine, Òdearly I love you.Ó So ÒI É / Labor to admit you,Ó and ÒI love you,Ó and that is the central problem of the poem. This is a poet who is desperate to be made one with God. ÒI love you,Ó ÒIÕve labored to admit you,Ó and yet, itÕs not happening. And you can get at that problem a little bit as well through the second line. So, right now, basically what heÕs saying is, ÒJesus is standing there very kindly at the door knocking on it. And actually thereÕs a whole tradition of images about this that come from Revelations 3:20 where Jesus stands at the door and knocks. And these were hung in churches, they were all over the place, and this tradition goes back a long ways with Jesus standing at the door and knocking. And he says, ÒThatÕs very polite of you. ThatÕs very nice of you. Except, the problem is that IÕm not opening the door.Ó

Joanne: 	

Mhh.

Abram: 	

And the only way for you to get in is to break it down.

Joanne: 	

Wow.

Abram: 	

And you, in a certain sense, have to obliterate me to make me new, because this whole process of conversion isnÕt going anywhere. You gave me this faculty of reason to use and yet, itÕs allied with the enemy. ItÕs making all the wrong decisions. And IÕm doing all the wrong things. And so, uh, what I see happening here is John dunne is playing off of exactly what Paul is talking about in Romans 7. So just to read that very briefly, I see this sonnet drawing on a whole tradition that Paul encapsulates at the end of Romans 7 when he says, ÒI find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in GodÕs law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man am I! Who will rescue me?Ó And thatÕs Paul, and that is the poet here. Who is going to rescue me from myself?Ê

Joanne: 	

Wow, Abram. That passage from Romans is amazing and I think you can agree that, if John Donne had written this poem in our creative writing workshop in the year 2020, weÕd ask him some questions about plagiarism, would we not?

Abram: 	

[Laughing] Yeah! HeÕs pulling directly on a Pauline tradition of conversion that requires, in a certain sense, two selves to wage war against each other and for one to be obliterated in order to be made new.

Joanne: 	

Oh my god, thatÕs so powerful. WhatÕs poignant to me about this poem, uh, what is also maddening to me, is that, again, God gave man rational faculties. When we say this, I mean of course, IÕm thinking of Genesis. IÕm thinking of when he first created, uh, man and woman, he gave them, uh, rational faculties so that they could do all the things that make humans singular, whether its establishing law, as you say, making ethical good judgements. This is the thing that distinguishes us as GodÕs children, right?Ê

Abram: 	

Mh-hm.

Joanne: 	

But itÕs as if, John Donne in this poem is looking a gift horse in the mouth!Ê

Abram: 	

Yeah.

Joanne: 	

HeÕs saying, ÒThis gift you gave me is no good!Ó ItÕs like, I mean, what is he hoping to achieve in this conversation heÕs having with God? Obviously the answer is, he has no reason left. ItÕs not there for him anymore. ItÕs not working for him. And so thatÕs why this poem feels so emotional, feels so urgent, and everything feels like a command to God.

Abram: 	

Right. Emotion is going to be the solution in a certain sense to the fact that Reason is now allied with the enemy. And so, what do you notice when you get into this sort of emotional dynamism and force of this poem? How does he achieve that effect of so much emotional power?

Joanne: 	

Part of it is, he...we know heÕs building upon a very vast sonnet tradition in English. We know that heÕs writing this poem in the midst of a tradition in which poets have written thousands of sonnets to objects of desire that are of this world. WhatÕs interesting is that he is addressing instead of a woman or object of desire, heÕs addressing God. So thatÕs a really innovative thing that heÕs doing. The other thing that heÕs doing is, heÕs working with the iambic pentameter line, and heÕs creating variations within that line so that, Abram, when you read it a few minutes ago, I could really hear where he was speeding you up, and where he was slowing you down. And one way he was doing that for you was with commas within the lines, and we call that Òcaesura.Ó Whenever there is a deep pause in a poetic line, thatÕs called Òcaesura.Ó So, look at just, uh, lines one and two: ÒBatter my heart [comma], three-person'd God [semi-colon]; for you / As yet but knock [comma], breathe [comma], shine [comma], and seek to mend.Ó So by inserting all of those commas, it makes me pause on the knocking, the breathing, the shining, and the seeking, all of which feel respectful, gentle, courteous. This is a new testament God that is assuming...that heÕs encountering a rational being whose faith is strong and that this individual let him in. But if you look at line two against line four, then you see a whole other set of commas and caesura. So, ÒAs yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend / That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend / Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.Ó So look what heÕs doing: heÕs aligning line two and line four. HeÕs saying, ÒDonÕt just knock. Break the door down. DonÕt just breathe a little breath, blow! Right? Blow a crazy strong wind at me. DonÕt just shine with your typical divine radiance. Burn! Burn. Give me a sunburn so I know youÕre here, right? Uh, donÕt just seek to mend me. Make me new. Destroy me and make me new again. This incredible violence suggests just how radical a transformation will be required for him to feel his faith again.

Abram: 	

And just to build on the way in which heÕs playing with the sonnet tradition to get at the emotional dynamism of this poem, the twisting that heÕs doing, the despair and the hope and the longing are brought together by essentially having two turns back to back. So a sonnet usually has a turn at line nine, sometimes at line thirteen. And here he has that turn at line nine, ÒYet dearly I love you.Ó That Òyet,Ó that indicates to us that heÕs got a turn in the poem. And we expect a kind of resolution to begin emerging here. And yet, immediately following that line, in the next line, he turns back: ÒYet dearly I love you É / But am betroth'd unto your enemy.Ó The ÒbutÓ there is a turn back on the turn that just happened. And so you get that sense of a person almost twisting on the hook. I love you but I canÕt love you. I want to be with you, but I canÕt be with you. I want to do the good, but I do the wrong thing. Uh, and this is how he builds in that sort of twisting, warring self into the poem.

Joane: 	

Could we backtrack just a little bit? Uh, I love what youÕre saying about the turn. But in order for us to earn the turn, if you willÉ

Abram: 	

Yes.

Joanne: 	

...we have to get through...And Donne is a metaphor making machine, right? Like, itÕs never enough for him to just have one important metaphor in a sonnet, but one of the most important ones is the idea that the poetic speaker is like an usurped town, a town thatÕs now been invaded and occupied to another due. And that ÒanotherÓ is sin, right? He should be this, this sovereign state or this sovereign town that is independent and has free will thanks to God but has been invaded and is occupied by sin. And thatÕs where the labor comes from. He labors to admit God, but itÕs futile. And then the other metaphor within the metaphor, the usurped town, is the idea that his rational faculties, his reason, his freewill, which is a kind of governor or viceroy in him, should be defending him but canÕt because itÕs been kidnapped or captive by sin. So then, on top of that metaphor, we have this idea of this notion that heÕs betrothed. So heÕs not only been usurped, not only been occupied, but now heÕs saying that heÕs betrothed to sin which is the enemy of God. Could you talk about what happens then in those final lines, the violence of the request for a divorce, for an enthralling, and for a ravishing?

Abram: 	

Yeah, so I think it is important to note that violence because this is a kind of violence that we could all agree would not be good for one human being to do to another. Divorce me, take me, enthrall me, ravish me: these are not good things. Uh, and so, part of the paradox of the poem are these are the things that heÕs begging God to do to him. And only God, uh, can make these kinds of things Ògood things,Ó because these are the only kinds of acts that can overcome him enough to bring him to what he actually longs for which is union with God. And so, the end of this sonnet, the last six lines of this sonnet, are their own sentence which shifts the metaphor again to this sense of erotic union.

Joanne: 	

Yes.Ê

Abram: 	

And, of course, that builds off of this whole sonnet tradition except now turned to God, and, in a certain sense, heÕs building off of his own experience, uh, which he wrote plenty of erotic poetry before he became a minister, and heÕs basically using that experience and that sense of union to think about what a real spiritual union ought to look and feel and be like in life. Uh, and so heÕs pulling these traditions together here at the end of this poem. 


Joanne: 	

That is so powerful and you know, he has a sort of Òif/thenÓ conditional at the end of this poem. HeÕs basically saying, unless you enthrall and ravish me, I will never be free.Ó And yet, God doesn't speak back at the end of this poem. We have no...we have no sense that this ravishing will happen. So when you think about the insight of this poem, why, if at all, would you commit such a thing to the page? What is it that John Donne is trying to achieve in the articulation of this poem, do you think?Ê

Abram: 	

I think thereÕs a basic sense in which the desperation he feels is, on the one hand, very particular to him, and on the other hand, something that he is preaching about on a regular basis. He knows people going through this exact same experience. They are, on a certain sense, on a journey to God. They want God. They long for God. And the longing for God is the beginning of the journey to God. But the question is, how does that journey end, and does it end, and will it be consummated? And here, itÕs an open question. ItÕs left hanging. And again, if you think about the sonnet tradition, itÕs often written to a beloved who the poet never actually gets with [laughs] in the end, right? So, it is always this distant, uh, sense of love. This love that is never consummated, uh, and so, even writing into that tradition creates almost a sense of despair behind this longing. Will it in fact ever be consummated? ItÕs left uncertain by the end.Ê

Joanne: 	

That actually is really helpful, because it suggests to me that to feel...to truly feel a faith and a closeness with God is a struggle, itÕs a journey, it has many highs and lows, and bumps along the way, but even knowing that could provide some kind of consolation to anyone who reads this poem. I find that very moving.Ê

Abram: 	

Yes. So, would you read this poem for us?

Joanne: 	

I would love to. This is ÒSonnet 14.ÓÊ

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Abram: 	

Thank you. For more on this poem and for some notes, uh, for an image of Jesus knocking on the door of oneÕs heart, please visit our website, and please follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Joanne: 	

Thank you for listening!