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Imagery Inspiration

● The imagery in lines 5–16 of A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning is drawn from a view of the universe that many people held during the 17th c. In this view, Earth was the center of the universe, and the other heavenly bodies were located on spheres around Earth. God and angels controlled the entire system. Life on Earth was “sublunary,” or below the sphere of the Moon, and considered inferior because it was subject to change. Only in heavenly spheres beyond the Moon could one find a perfect existence.

● The central imagery in Meditation 17 refers to the ancient European custom of ringing the bells of the village church to signal that someone was about to die. When villagers heard these death knells, they would know to pray for the salvation of the dying person’s soul.

Literary analysis: metaphysical conceit

A device that often appears in metaphysical poetry is the metaphysical conceit,a type of metaphor or simile in which the comparison is unusually striking, original, and elaborate. While all metaphors and similes show likeness in two unlike things, a conceit compares two unlike things that may at first seem to have no connection whatsoever. In Meditation 17, for example, Donne compares humanity to a book in which each person makes up a chapter. As you read these selections, look for other examples of metaphysical conceits, and notice how Donne’s elaboration allows you to make sense of the unusual comparisons.

Reading skill: interpret ideas

For centuries, Donne has been acclaimed for his ability to convey complex ideas in poetry. Sometimes these ideas are expressed in the form of a paradox—a statement that seems to contradict itself but reveals some element of truth. To uncover Donne’s ideas in this type of statement, you will need to interpret,or explain the meaning of, the paradox. Some paradoxes may be complex and not easily understood, so it is important to

• read the sidenotes or footnotes

• examine the surrounding words and phrases

As you read the selections, use a chart to record the paradoxes and your interpretations.

 

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

        As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say The breath goes now, and some say, No;   So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move, ’Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love.   Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears, Men reckon what it did and meant; But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent.   Dull sublunary lovers’ love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it.   But we by a love so much refined That our selves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind, Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.       Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat.   If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if th’ other do[119]. a   And though it in the center sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home.   Such wilt thou be to me, who must Like th’ other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.

Holy Sonnet 10



    Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery. Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Meditation 17

            Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me and see my state may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another[120]. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. . . . Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee[121].

After Reading


Date: 2016-03-03; view: 872


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