John Donne

Before I get started talking about two or three of Donne's poems, I want to say that I have not looked at British sixteenth and seventeenth century for about five or six (since my M.A.). Coming back to it now, I am completely engrossed in it. Why? I don't know. I think part of it has to do with the teachers I had at ULM and the ones I have now at ULL. For some reason, they were, and are, some of the most enthusiastic teachers I have ever had, and that enthusiasm, of course, rubs off on the students.

Now, there are two poems I really want to talk about: "Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness" (1623?) and "A Valediction: Of Weeping" (1633). I may also sprinkle in a little of "The Flea" if it fits my fancy.

Upon first reading the poems, the use of maps and cartography drew my attention. In the second stanza of "A Valediction," which I believe was one of four poems speculated to be have been written about his wife's trip to the European continent in 1611, the image of freshly minted tear turns into a image of a globe:

On a round ball
A workman, that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, all.
So doth each tear,
Which thee doth wear,
A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mix'd with mine do overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolvèd so.

The globe begins as an empty "round ball" that can become populated by the workman something. In the same way, the tears become something, a message of sadness at their departing. The other part that caught me here comes in the penultimate line of this stanza. In "The Flea," the lovers' blood mixes within the flea. Here, the tears mix, but I still got the same feeling. The two, separate, individuals become one. After the second stanza, the image of the globe disappears and a deluge comes about at sea. Since I am concerned with the cartography right now, I will move on.

Donne's "Hymn to God" also uses map imagery. It, supposedly, was written about 12 years after "The Valediction," Here, while the speaker, Donne, lies in bed sick, the doctors come in and look to him. the second stanza begins the map imagery. Here, the physicians become cosmographers:

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie
Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
That this is my south-west discovery,
Per fretum febris, by these straits to die ;

The doctors map out Donne's body and trace his "south-west discovery." The south represents heat, and since the sun sets in the west, it represents death. From here, he moves to a discussion of the straits he must go through on his passage to the "holy room" he references in stanza one.

I joy, that in these straits I see my west ;
For, though those currents yield return to none,
What shall my west hurt me ? As west and east
In all flat maps—and I am one—are one,
So death doth touch the resurrection.

He can only travel one way through the straits to the west; however, the further west he moves, on a globe, the further east he travels also. So, does the movement east reflect the end? Or, does it reflect the beginning? What does all of this cartography mean? I have to assume that part of it has to do with the fact that England started colonizing America around this time. In 1607, settlers founded Jamestown. 1620 saw the Pilgrims arrive at Plymouth Rock, and in 1630, the Arabella, with John Winthrop, Anne Bradstreet, and others, arrived in Massachusetts.

Finally, if you are interested in this, the geography department at The University of Wisconsin has a cartography project and both of these poems are in it. Another tool to use if you are interested in Donne is Texas A&M's Digital Donne.

P.S. "A Valediction: Of Weeping" really reminds me of Blindside's "Across Waters" and "Across Waters Again."