On Death E-Book

John Donne

• Herausgeber: Hesperus Press Ltd.
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: On Series
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 170

Beschreibung

This volume collects together four of celebrated poet and preacher John Donne's most passionate sermons On Death. Dean of St Paul's, John Donne was fêted in his day not just as a poet but also as an inspired and energetic preacher, and these four extended meditations On Death are amongst his most powerful and dramatic writings. The magnificent 'Death's Duel' is published here alongside his Lent sermons for the two previous years (1629 and 1630), along with his Easter Day sermon of 1619, preached on the occasion of the King's sickness. Together they create a fascinating study of early seventeenth-century attitudes towards death.

Leseprobe

On Death

John Donne

Foreword byEdward Docx

‘on’

Published by Hesperus Press Limited

167-169 Great Portland Street, London, W1W 7RD

www.hesperus.press

First published 1632–40

First published by Hesperus Press Limited, 2008

Digital edition published in 2024

Foreword © Edward Docx, 2008

Designed and typeset by Fraser Muggeridge studio

Printed in Jordan by Jordan National Press

ISBN (paperback) : 978-1-84391-600-0

ISBN (e-Book): 978-1-84391-627-7

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.

Contents

Foreword

An Easter Sermon

28th March 1619

A Lent Sermon

20th February 1629

A Lent Sermon

12th February 1630

Death’s Duel

Or, a consolation to the soul against the dying life and living death of the body

25th February 1631

Notes

Biographical note

Foreword

On picking up this book, two questions will no doubt present themselves more or less immediately: why John Donne and why John Donne on death?

The first is less difficult to answer: to my mind John Donne (1572–1631) is the most interesting English poet of whom we have any decent record. Artistically, he is almost unique in his ability to render the action of the mind, body and spirit with equal fidelity in a single work–sometimes, indeed, in a single line. His reputation is founded, of course, on his poetry and there we find the verse vividly alive with the astonishing energy of his character: he is libertine, supplicant, mourner and sensualist by turn; the heartless rejecter and the heartbroken lover; the tender companion and the scornful enemy; the jocular rake, the consoling admirer, the lawyerly counsellor; both egotist and reticent. But in the sermons, though he is an older man living in dramatically different circumstances, Donne’s startling animus is still present. He remains wrathful, artful, generous, vicious, brilliant, too clever for his own good; elegant, concise, ingenious, long-winded, crude, disgusting, paradoxical, morbid, supremely original and supremely inventive. More than all of this, he retains his breathtaking facility with our language and some of the lines he writes are both exquisite and eternal. Indeed, it is something of an eye-opener for most people (myself included) when they learn that his two most famous lines–‘no man is an island’ and ‘never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee’1–are not taken from The Songs and Sonnets of his younger days but the later period of the sermons when Donne was well into his fifties and a man of the cloth.

So much for his art. But what of the life? As ever the two are intimately related—and it is no coincidence that the great stylistic master of antithesis lived in the most compellingly antithetical age of our history. At its manly noon, England swarmed with spies, significant and petty; plots and counter plots were hatched, foiled and revisited; ruin was a whim and fortune a favour. Remember, this was the time when the Churches of Rome and of England were at one another’s throats, without let or very much mercy, through reign after reign after reign. Parliament was a wasps’ nest of intrigue, rivalled only by the bear’s pit of the court and the weasel-warrens of clergydom–all of which institutions intrigued against each other constantly. Everything was political (including and most of all religion), and everything was religious (including and most of all politics). There was actual war, the constant threat of war, or someone busily trying to stir up one of the two. Meanwhile, men were tortured and murdered, casually, regularly. And pretty much everyone, from monarch to manservant, was required to contend with the endless resentments and factionalism and rivalry and blood that such circumstances engendered.

Donne lived busily in the dangerous thick of all this and his life provides us with a spellbinding commentary. In his sixty odd years, he journeyed from the committed-though-covert Catholic family circumstances of his boyhood to become the most celebrated protestant preacher of the times, the Dean of St Paul’s. He converted himself from the devil-may-care philandering poet of his youthful verse to the conscientious, God-fearing, forensic theologian of his sermons. He was lawyer, soldier, secretary, social pariah and parish pillar. He saw it all. And he adjusted and accommodated himself, sometimes year by year, to what he saw.

In short, though the poetry of the younger Donne will always be his principal legacy, it is only in the sermons of his old age that we can enjoy the full and fierce convening of all of that life and all of those times. Here you find Donne attempting to account for and synthesise the contortions, contradictions and conflicts that raged about him and that burned within him This is the voice of the wiser man, deeper and more seasoned, a survivor, a veteran of life and death.

Which brings us to our second question: why Donne on Death? The answer here takes us into territory less widely known. But to put it baldly: there can be no other front rank writer in the English language who has thought, written and talked about the subject more. And once again, Donne has every angle covered–intellectual, spiritual, physical (those three again). If Love was the boon companion-adversary of Donne’s youth, then Death was no less the intimate of his old age.

The reasons for this familiarity are legion but, for the sake of brevity, they are to do on the one side with the extraordinary amount of death that Donne himself personally lived through, and on the other with the nature of his particular struggle with his faith, his God, and more specifically his own personal salvation. Or possible lack of it.

A quick inventory of the people Donne lost before he himself died reveals his personal sufferings at Death’s hand: his father, when he was four, three of his sisters by the time he was ten, his brother when a young man, his wife, at least eight of his own children (including still births), his best friends, male and female, his favourite correspondents, not to mention dozens of others with whom he was cordial. Then, right at the end, his mother. In addition, during his later years, the plague returned and ravaged London like no time since the Black Death–in 1625 people were dying at the rate of 4000 a week. It is also worth noting that Donne himself thought he was several times going to pass away from his various sicknesses, fevers and ailments: ‘I think Death will play with me so long, as he will forget to kill me’, he wrote to Mrs Cockayne, one of his close correspondents in later years. Moreover, on more than one occasion, several people in and around the court assumed he actually was dead and various informal obituaries began to appear.

Donne’s intimate friend-and-foe attitude to Death is perhaps best illustrated by an extraordinary ‘Death be not proud’2 piece of theatre he himself orchestrated in the last weeks of his life. Knowing full well that the bell was greatly overdue for tolling, he carefully assembled various props–a wooden platform cut in the shape of a funeral urn, a shroud, a life-size board–and had a final likeness of himself drawn. And very scary it is too: a withered, wizened, emaciated old man stares out from the hooded folds ‘with so much of the sheet turned aside as might shew his lean, pale and death-like face’, as Izaak Walton, Donne’s first biographer wrote in 1639. Stranger and more macabre yet, he so loved the portrait that he had it placed beside his bed; to all intents and purposes, for the last few days of his life, John Donne slept with his own death’s-head.

This real and ongoing experience of death is nowhere better illustrated than in Death’s Duel–collected here. This was Donne’s last public oration and it is an extraordinary piece of work if for no other reason than that it is totally and utterly saturated in death, the central thesis being that everything that happens to a human being–everything–is at root a preparation for, or a premonition of, Death. Listen to this, for example, where he manages to make even the womb a presage; remember, too, that shroud of his death’s-head portrait, and the fact that Donne’s mother has recently died:

We have a winding sheet in our mother’s womb which grows with us from our conception, and we come into the world wound up in that winding sheet, for we come to seek a grave... we celebrate our own funerals with cries even at our birth; as though our threescore and ten years of life were spent in our mother’s labour, and our circle made up in the first point thereof... And we come into a world that lasts many ages, but we last not.

Even when considering the other side of Donne’s struggle with death–the less corporeal, more theological side–it is important to keep in mind that the concepts of heaven and salvation were not to Donne concepts at all, but twin realities. Twin realities that he lived in genuine fear of not attaining. It is not that much of an exaggeration to say that the Donne you will find in these sermons was, from time to time, absolutely terrified that the licentious braggart of his younger days would never be forgiven. Worse still, as a Protestant minister, he could no longer even shoot for purgatory. Or at least not officially. In these lines from the 1629 sermon (also collected here), you can hear him talking to his congregation; but what gives the address that extra energy and dramatic power, I think, is that you can also hear him talking to himself:

Therefore to that mistaking soul, that discomposed, that shivered and shrivelled and ravelled and ruined soul, to that jealous and suspicious soul only, I say with the Apostle, Let no man judge you, intruding into those things which he hath not seen. Let no man make you afraid of secret purposes in God... The law alone were much too heavy if there were not a superabundant ease and alleviation in that hand that Christ Jesus reaches out to us.

In truth, many of the passages in these sermons sound as much like prayers as preaching.

Thus the reasons to study Donne, and Donne on Death in particular. But one more thing needs to be pointed up before we take the plunge: that these sermons are primarily performances not essays; and that a sermon is a very particular form of drama–full of rhetoric and gesture, exhortation and refutation. A sermon lives when it is heard and seen–even if only in the imagination.

Perhaps it will be helpful, therefore, to imagine yourself in his congregation, and to conjure up Donne himself, speaking aloud, standing up there in the pulpit, arrayed in his holy vestments.

Remember, too, that Donne was conscious of his own appearance–especially by the time of Death’s Duel–and that this was also part of the theatre. You have before you a cadaverous man of long fame and varied reputation, a grey bearded veteran of three monarchs, ferociously intelligent, eloquent and impassioned, though well informed and scholarly withal. While all around you sit the most important people in England, many of whom have come especially to hear him, often times including the King. And be in no doubt; though he faces some formidable competition for the crown of the greatest poet of his age, John Donne bows to no one when it comes to sermons.

– Edward Docx, 2008

An Easter Sermon

28th March 1619

Preached to the Lords upon Easter Day, at the Communion,

the King being then dangerously sick at Newmarket.

What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? Psalm 89:48

At first, God gave the judgement of death upon man, when he should transgress, absolutely, Morte morieris, Thou shalt surely die. The woman in her dialogue with the Serpent, she mol-lifies it, Ne fortè moriamur, Perchance, if we eat, we may die; and then the Devil is as peremptory on the other side, Nequaquam moriemini, Do what you will, surely you shall not die. And now God in this text comes to his reply, Quis est homo, shall they not die? Give me but one instance, but one exception to this rule, What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? Let no man, no woman, no devil offer a Ne fortè (perchance we may die), much less a Nequaquam (surely we shall not die), except he be provided of an answer to this question, except he can give an instance against this general, except he can produce that man’s name, and history, that hath lived, and shall not see death. We are all conceived in close prison; in our mothers’ wombs, we are close prisoners all; when we are born, we are born but to the liberty of the house, prisoners still, though within larger walls; and then all our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death. Now was there ever any man seen to sleep in the cart, between Newgate, and Tyburn? Between the prison, and the place of execution, does any man sleep? And we sleep all the way; from the womb to the grave we are never thoroughly awake; but pass on with such dreams and imaginations as these: I may live as well as another, and why should I die, rather than another? But awake, and tell me, says this text, Quis homo? Who is that other that thou talkest of? What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death?

In these words, we shall first, for our general humiliation, consider the unanswerableness of this question, There is no man that lives, and shall not see death. Secondly, we shall see how that modification of Eve may stand, fortè moriemur, how there may be a probable answer made to this question, that it is like enough that there are some men that live, and shall not see death. And thirdly, we shall find that truly spoken which the Devil spake deceitfully then, we shall find the Nequaquam verified, we shall find a direct and full answer to this question; we shall find a man that lives and shall not see death, our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus, of whom both St Augustine and St Jerome do take this question to be principally asked, and this text to be principally intended. Ask me this question then, of all the sons of men, generally guilty of original sin, Quis homo, and I am speechless, I can make no answer. Ask me this question of those men which shall be alive upon earth at the last day, when Christ comes to judgement, Quis homo, and I can make a probable answer: fortè moriemur, perchance they shall die. It is a problematical matter, and we say nothing too peremptorily. Ask me this question without relation to original sin, Quis homo, and then I will answer directly, fully, confidently, Ecce homo, there was a man that lived and was not subject to death by the law, neither did he actually die so, but that he fulfilled the rest of this verse: Eruit animam de inferno, by his own power, he delivered his soul from the hand of the grave. From the first, this lesson rises, general doctrines must be generally delivered: All men must die. From the second, this lesson, collateral and unrevealed doctrines must be soberly delivered: How shall we be changed at the last day, we know not so clearly. From the third, this lesson arises, conditional doctrines must be conditionally delivered: If we be dead with him, we shall be raised with him.

First then, for the generality. Those other degrees of punishment which God inflicted upon Adam, and Eve, and in them upon us, were as absolutely and unlimitedly pronounced as this of death, and yet we see they are many ways extended or contracted. To man it was said, In sudore vultus, In the sweat of thy brows, thou shalt eat thy bread, and how many men never sweat, till they sweat with eating? To the woman it was said, Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee, and how many women have no desire to their husbands, how many over-rule them? Hunger and thirst and weariness and sickness are denounced upon all, and yet if you ask me Quis homo? What is the man that hungers and thirsts not, that labours not, that sickens not? I can tell you of many that never felt any of these. But contract the question to that one of death, Quis homo? What man is he that shall not taste death? And I know none. Whether we consider the summer solstice, when the day is sixteen hours, and the night but eight, or the winter solstice, when the night is sixteen hours, and the day but eight, still all is but twenty-four hours, and still the evening and the morning make but a day. The Patriarchs in the Old Testament had their summer day, long lives; we are in the winter, short lived; but Quis homo? Which of them or us come not to our night in death? If we consider violent deaths, casual deaths, it is almost a scornful thing to see, with what wantonness and sportfulness, death plays with us. We have seen a man cannon-proof in the time of war, and slain with his own pistol in the time of peace. We have seen a man recovered after his drowning, and live to hang himself. But for that one kind of death, which is general (though nothing be in truth more against nature than dissolution, and corruption, which is death), we are come to call that death natural death, than which, indeed, nothing is more unnatural. The generality makes it natural. Moses says that man’s age is seventy, and eighty is labour and pain; and yet himself was more than eighty, and in a good state, and habitude when he said so. No length, no strength enables us to answer this Quis homo? What man? &c.

Take a flat map, a globe in plano, and here is East, and there is West, as far asunder as two points can be put; but reduce this flat map to roundness, which is the true form, and then East and West touch one another, and are all one. So consider man’s life aright to be a circle, Pulvis es, & in pulverem reverteris, Dust thou art, and to dust thou must return; Nudus egressus, Nudus revertar, Naked I came, and naked I must go. In this, the circle, the two points meet, the womb and the grave are but one point, they make but one station, there is but a step from that to this. This brought in that custom amongst the Greek emperors that ever at the day of their coronation, they were presented with several sorts of marble, that they might then bespeak their tomb. And this brought in that custom into the Primitive Church that they called the Martyrs’ days, wherein they suffered, Natalitia Martyrum, their birth days; birth and death is all one.

Their death was a birth to them into another life, into the glory of God. It ended one circle, and created another; for immortality, and eternity is a circle too: not a circle where two points meet, but a circle made at once. This life is a circle, made with a compass that passes from point to point. That life is a circle stamped with a print, an endless and perfect circle, as soon as it begins. Of this circle, the mathematician is our great and good God. The other circle we make up ourselves; we bring the cradle and grave together by a course of nature. Every man does; Mi Gheber