An intimate dialogue with God in John Donne’s "Holy Sonnets": Petrarchan context

Such a parallel usage of the same language units in completely different discourses is fixed lexicographically. Thereby, it is not difficult to find out that in the 17th century, the verb “to ravish" utilized by J. Donne in sonnet XIV was used in two main meanings: 1) to abduct, rape, carry away by force and 2) to exalt or transport with joy [Schwanda, 2012, pp. 164-165]. The modern Oxford English Dictionary also captures both of these meanings [Simpson, Weiner, 2000, p. 235]. In the works of Christian mystics, they mostly merged, as, for example, in the texts of Bernard of Clairvaux, who described his state of union with the Creator precisely as "enrapture" or "divine rape"; as a perfect lover, God was depicted by the obscure thirteenth-century spiritual writer Gerard of Liege [Newman, 2004, p. 86]. Eleanor McCullough sums up on that: “For medieval mystics, to be possessed by God is to be ravished by him. In being ravished by God, the soul becomes chaste” [McCullough, 2007]. She is also convinced that J. Donne “deliberately gives both a sexual and sacred interpretation of the word 'ravish'” [McCullough, 2007].

According to the Ukrainian researcher Tetiana Riazantseva, this combination of erotic and religious, sacred and profane is one of the extreme manifestations of the “presence of thought in an image” characteristic of metaphysical poets [Рязанцева, 2014, р. 39]. The search for analogies between the physical and spiritual aspects of human life, the external and the internal, quite often resulted in their texts in the use of poetic images related to the sphere of the bodily. At the same time, metaphysical poetry was also characterized by a contrasting tonality in highlighting spiritual phenomena through the physical ones, the ability to interpret this type of images in the opposite way [Рязанцева, 2015, р. 480]. In this sense, the analyzed line by J. Donne is an exemplary metaphysical paradox, which, combining within itself the most distant semantic elements, can never be unambiguously or exhaustively explained.

Thus, considering the fact that in J. Donne's lifetime, “ravissement could denote either the crime of rape or the experience of mystical ecstasy” [Newman, 2004, p. 86], it is pretty impossible to set what the author meant precisely. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the trope under the analysis clearly correlates with the main idea of Protestantism, formulated by Martin Luther, which consists in denying salvation by good deeds or any human efforts. Salvation in Protestantism is achieved exclusively through faith in Jesus Christ's sacrifice and depends only on God's mercy. It is precisely that mercy that J. Donne's persona seeks in the poem.

The sexual metaphor is the very essence of the couplet in this J. Donne's text. According to the established poetic practice, it was in the last two lines that the solution to the controversial issue raised in the sonnet should have been proposed. In the aforementioned poem, this practice manifests itself in the fact that the protagonist abandons attempts to save himself from the enemy independently, and gives himself completely into the hands of the Lord. Although, the sorrows and difficulties of J. Donne's persona have not disappeared, he is filled with trust in God, thereby achieving a certain mental balance.

Generally speaking, the entire palette of the protagonist's emotional fluctuations is well felt in the melody of this poem, which is very far from ideal. Thus, abandoning traditional iambic pentameter, the English author uses trochee in the first line of his sonnet, and in the following lines, he utilises many spondees, creating violence-related images. On the whole, almost all lines of the sonnet (except for 3 and 11) are full of metrical irregularities, but they are not accidental. In our opinion, with the help of these irregularities, J. Donne conveys the exalted state, the excitement of his persona. This is also confirmed by the fact that the last two lines of the poem, where the protagonist finally achieves his inner peace, are written in absolutely regular iambic pentameter. However, the following poems of the sequence testify that the Lord remains indifferent to the protagonist's pleas, and his hopes for salvation, expressed in the sonnet XIV, do not come true.

In sonnet XVII, the protagonist's bitterness from the loss of a beloved is fully compensated by finding the way to God. Now, looking up, J. Donne's persona does not feel rejected; on the contrary, his spiritual thirst is quenched:

Since she whom I lov'd hath payd her last debt To Nature, and to hers, and my good is dead, And her Soule early into heaven ravished, Wholly on heavenly things my mind is sett. Here the admyring her my mind did whett To seeke thee God; so streames do shew their head;

But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed [Donne, 2011, p. 435].

However, J. Donne's sonnet would not be a sonnet if it did not contain a paradox. On the one hand, his protagonist understands that instead of profane, earthly love, he was given something much more valuable - Divine love, but on the other hand, he still cannot accept the death of his lover. This is indicated, in particular, by the third line of the poem, which tells us that the heroine's soul was literally “ravished” to heaven too early; that is, this event is depicted as an act of violence here. The fact that J. Donne's persona did not fully accept the death of his beloved is also indicated by the writer's three-time usage of the conjunction “but”, the semantics of which is essentially denial - in the ninth and thirteenth lines (where the voltaes take place), and also in the seventh line.

Then, the first volta radically shifts the focus. If the octave was based on the images of the protagonist's experience (it should be noted that the thematic unity of the octave is emphasized on the formal level by the harmonious endings of all the lines, as well as through alliteration of the sounds “d" and “t" ("debt"- "dead"- "ravished"- "sett"- "whet"- "head"- "fed"- "yet"), from the ninth line it is focused on the highly secularized and anthropomorphized image of God. It is almost shocking, but the Lord in this text not simply acquires the ability to feel and act like an ordinary human being but is depicted as a jealous lover:

But why should I begg more Love, when as thou Dost wooe my soule for hers; offring all thine: And dost not only feare least I allow My Love to Saints and Angels things divine, But in thy tender jealosy dost doubt Least the World, Fleshe, yea Devill putt thee out... [Donne, 211, p. 435].

The author implicitly indicates God's jealousy to be the reason for the heroine's death, as she is some Lord's rival in this love triangle. God took the protagoniast's beloved to heaven because He had wanted all of his love for Himself.

However, the final couplet, of course, removes these dramatic contradictions. The Lord's jealousy is called “tender" in it, that is, it is understood as pleasant for J. Donne's persona. At the end of the sonnet, he reasonably concludes that his wife, unfortunately, was just a part of this sinful earthly world, and his love for her was a temptation that drove him away from God. Therefore, her death should be considered an opportunity to get closer to the Lord.

Incidentally, it should be noted that in the sonnet V (“I am a little world made cunningly”), J. Donne already seems to have outlined such a specific direction of his protagonist's and God's relations while asking the Lord to replace the flames of earthly passions with God's sacred healing fire:

But oh it must be burnt! alas the fire Of lust and envie have burnt it heretofore, And made it fouler; Let their flames retire, And burne me o Lord, with a fiery zeale Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heale [Donne, 2011, p. 429].

It is noteworthy that in this poem, J. Donne uses the term “passion" ("fiery zeale") in relation to God because his persona's relationship with the Lord will be depicted as something resembling passionate love in the last (XIX), a concluding text of the “Holy Sonnets” (“Oh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one").

The leitmotif of this poem is the protagonist's constant swaying between the poles of various emotions. In order to display such a controversial state, the English writer used the favourite artistic means of Petrarchists - antithesis and oxymoron. In F. Petrarch's poems, the motif of disharmony of his persona's inner world was developed in many ways (see, for example, XVII, CLXIV, CLXXIII, CLXXVIII), since, as it has been already mentioned, love in Petrar- chism is a quite contradictory feeling, capable of giving both painful torments and bright joy, able to throw the lover into the abyss of despair and hopelessness and then to raise him to the heights of happiness, to injure and to heal, to kill and to resurrect. Two sonnets of the “Canzoniere” - CXXXII and CXXXIV, which are also known as “icy-fire sonnets” - are the most famous in this context, since it is in them that the Italian poet most fully and insightfully formulated his original vision of love as an oxymoronic combination of fire and ice, heat and cold. In addition to the aforementioned sonnets (CXXXII, CXXXIV), motifs of “freezing fire” or “flaming ice” in different variations can also be found in such F. Petrarch's poems as CL, CLII, CCII and some others.

It is notable that J. Donne also utilizes this well-known Petrarchan metaphor in his poem, which looks structurally similar to the sonnet CXXXIV of the “Canzoniere".

Let us compare:

F. Petrarch

I find no peace, and yet I make no war: and fear, and hope: and burn, and I am ice: and fly above the sky, and fall to earth, and clutch at nothing, and embrace the world. One imprisons me, who neither frees nor jails me, nor keeps me to herself nor slips the noose: and Love does not destroy me, and does not loose me, wishes me not to live, but does not remove my bar.

I see without eyes, and have no tongue, but cry: and long to perish, yet I beg for aid: and hold myself in hate, and love another.

I feed on sadness, laughing weep: death and life displease me equally: and I am in this state, lady, because of you [Petrarch, 2001, p. 221].

J. Donne

Oh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one: Inconstancy unnaturally hath begott A constant habit; that when I would not I change in vowes, and in devotione.

As humorous is my contritione

As my prophane Love, and as soone forgott: As ridlingly distemper'd, cold and hott, As praying, as mute; as infinite, as none.

I durst not view heaven yesterday; and to day In prayers, and flattering speaches I court God: To morrow I quake with true feare of his rod.

So my devout fitts come and go away Like a fantastique Ague: save that here Those are my best dayes, when I shake with feare [Donne, 2011, p. 436].

Both texts are built on a similar series of contrasting images depicting the complexity of F. Petrarch's persona's feelings for Laura, and J. Donne's persona's feelings for God. They both end with the reconciliation of antitheses in a synthesis of the sonnet key, where the former author thanks his Mistress for suffering, which helps him to become better. The latter declares the days when he suffered from torments and fear of the Lord to be the happiest in his life. It is interesting that this reconciliation seems to be planned from the very beginning of the text by the English poet, as he widely utilized the full or partial consonance of antonymous words as both external and internal rhyme: "begot"- "not", "cold"- "hot", "rigid"- "distempered", "infinite"- "none", "yesterday" - "to day", thereby tightly linking them together and cementing into a monolith of the sonnet genre form. An unusually regular (as for J. Donne's verses) iambic pentameter also served this purpose. It is clear that this similarity in the composition of the quoted texts is caused by the traditional structure of the sonnet itself, which, being a “rigid”, “solid” genre form, requires following the established rules not only in terms of form but also in terms of content. However, the English author's poem is characterized by a number of other aspects that relate it to the Petrarchan literary tradition.

The central problem for J. Donne's protagonist in this text is looking for balance and constancy in his relationship with the Lord. He prays and sincerely repents, but these moments are frequently replaced by silence and frustration, apparently for the reason that J. Donne's persona does not feel any response. In Christianity, especially its Catholic form, repentance is the best and sometimes the only way to achieve righteousness. The writer emphasizes this as he rhymes the words “devotione" and “contrition" in the fourth and fifth lines, exactly where the first quatrain turns into the second one. Being only sporadic, and therefore not serious (“humorous"), the protagonist's repentance, of course, cannot help him propitiate the Lord. The formulation of this thought ends the octave.

Petrarchan volta, in the ninth line, initiates the solution of the outlined problem. The accumulation of time markers in the sestet ("yesterday" - "to day" - "to tomorrow") indicates that J. Donne's persona tries to observe the issue from a temporal perspective. This point of view results in the understanding that the protagonist's relationship with God is different in each separate period of time, which, in turn, gives him a reason to hope that the current disappointment and despair are just temporary. This idea, once again, is reflected in the rhyme, since in this text “here" is rhymed with “fear"; that is, the emotions that dominate the protagonist are considered to be momentary. This brings back the hopeful mood to the end of the poem, as well as to the end of the whole sonnet sequence. In this sense, the last text of J. Donne's “Holy Sonnets" can be compared, in our view, to the last text of F. Petrarch's “Canzoniere".

If we interpret this text in the context of the Petrarchan tradition, we should also pay attention to the fact that in this sonnet, the protagonist's love is compared to a disease - "ague". Strictly speaking, the concept of “love-disease”, like the concept of “love-war”, was not invented by F. Petrarch. Its source should be primarily found in the love elegies of Ovid, who, in turn, relied on the traditions of the ancient Greek love lyrics, but European Petrarchists actively developed it. In F. Petrarch's texts, the idea of “love-disease” took an even more acute modification - a fatal illness leading the protagonist to the inevitable death (see, for example, LXXVI, LXXIX, CXXXII, CCII, etc.). It is significant that the antithesis of heat and cold in J. Donne's sonnet can be connected with this “love-disease” metaphor, since the protagonist alternately falls into a fever, then into a chill (“As riddlingly distemper'd, cold and hot"), which may well be interpreted as a symptom of an illness, as well as his trembling, described in the eleventh line (“I quake'') and the last two lines (“I //shake with feare"). The enjambement used by the author in the couplet further increases the attention to this image.

Another aspect which brings this sonnet closer to the Petrarchan tradition is the fact that speaking about his relations with the Lord, the protagonist utilizes a verb that has an absolutely undeniable origin from the love language of Petrarchism - “to court", that is, literally “to flatter”, “to lure”, “to tempt”. In this way, J. Donne seems to indicate that his persona's relations with God are, to some degree, similar to the relations between the characters in the Petrarchan hypertext. The fact that this English lexeme is cognate to the French word “Courtois", translated as “courtly”, also testifies in favour of this interpretation. In view of this, we can suppose that J. Donne describes his persona's feelings for God as something close to “courtly love" - high lovebowing, love-service that was immortalized by F. Petrarch and his followers.

Conclusions

Considering all that has been written, the following conclusions can be made. In our humble opinion, just like F. Petrarch's “Canzoniere", J. Donne's lyrical sequence “Holy Sonnets" can be read linearly as a dramatic story of the relationship between its main characters, but in the English author's texts, it is not the usual Petrarchan hero and heroine, but the protagonist and the Lord. Three sonnets - XIV, XVII and XIX - are especially important and conceptual for understanding the evolution of their relations.

In the first of them, feeling his own weakness and impossibility to overcome the devil, J. Donne's persona begs the Lord to win back his heart from the enemy, using a wide palette of military metaphors typical to the Petrarchan lyrics. However, the Lord, who in sonnets I-XIII is depicted in a Petrarchan manner as distant and completely deaf to the protagonist's pleas, remains indifferent.

In sonnet XVII, which looks similar to the lyrical texts of the “Canzoniere” dedicated to Laura's death, a notable change in the relationship between the characters occurs. As in the Italian humanist's poems, the life path of J. Donne's persona finally turns to heaven after the death of his beloved, and he begins to feel that the loss of earthly love is compensated by the gaining of the Divine one. But his further relations with God, once again, seem to be built according to the Petrarchan model, most fully described in the last text of the sequence.

The sonnet XIX demonstrates all the complexity of the relationship between a human being and the Lord. J. Donne's persona is constantly dominated by conflicting feelings and emotions, which generally correlates with Petrarchan's understanding of the ambivalence of love, best shown by F. Petrarch in the sonnets CXXXII and CXXXIV. The poetic vocabulary used by J. Donne in this poem (“In prayers, and flattering speeches I court God", "So my devout fitts come and go away // Like a fantastique Ague" [Donne, 2011, p. 436], etc.) indicates the specific character of his persona's relations with God, which due to this verbalization have signs of courtly love, courtly service.

We can sum up that the protagonist's relations with the Lord in the “Holy Sonnets” might be interpreted as generally built on the same principles that are immanent for the concept of love in the poetry of Petrarchism. On this point, we tend to agree with the following statement of H. Wilcox: “The sonnets struggle to contain the contraries of desire and despair, passion and preoccupation, trials and triumphs: loving God, Donne's devotional writing suggests, can be as troubled and varied an experience as that depicted in his secular love poetry" [Wilcox, 2006, p. 150]. The persona of the English poet, as well as the traditional hero of Petrarchan texts, also suffers from unrequited feelings, longs for reciprocity with all his heart, and, in addition, speaks in the specific metaphorical language. Even if the linguistic practice utilized by the author cannot be considered exclusively Petrarchan, since a similar rhetorical code, in which the experience of spiritual communication with the Lord was described with the help of erotic images, was widely used by the Christian mystics, the sonnet poetic structure is canonical for Petrarchan lyrical discourse and require following the established rules not only in terms of form, but also in terms of content. However, of course, this is only one possible way in which these highly complex texts can be understood.

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