The Body, The Soul, and Romantic Love In John Donne's Songs and Sonnets

By Rasha El-Haggan, English Major at University of Maryland Baltimore County (Copyrighted 1998)

"Donne's Songs and Sonnets are among the three or four finest collections of love-lyrics in the English Language" (RedPath, xv). Donne is quite brilliant in the way he incorporates the physical and mental aspect of love and integrates it with his poetry. I will examine 5 of Donne’s Songs and Sonnets in relation to his obsessive interest in the ways in which the soul and the body are involved in romantic love.

The first poem I will examine is A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. Izaak Walton in his book Life of Donne mentions that this poem was a gift from John Donne to his wife before he left to France. The "Valediction" celebrates natural reserve, restraint, and the courteous with-holding of emotion (Sanders, 83). It describes a noble love between a man and a woman to the degree where they need not show any emotion. This aspect relates to the "soul" side of romantic love. He starts out the poem describing how virtuous men await death with calmness instead of desperation:

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:

They are so calm when accepting death to the point where those around the body know not when this virtuous man died (Louthan, 48). The next stanza draws an analogy between these virtuous men and the love between a man and a woman. "So let us melt and make no noise." So let us be like these virtuous men when we separate from one another and make no noise. Let not the temptation of tear floods and sigh tempests move us emotionally like those of the laity for it would profane the sanctity of our love. The word "melt" indicates a melting and fusing of souls. Bodies can’t fuse together only "Our two souls therefore, which are one" can fuse together. One can see the noble love between man and wife is so high as to belittle ordinary human love. Not just that, but it also elevates their love to the degree where the body becomes secondary, meaning that physical separation means nothing to them because their love holds their souls together always.

Another indication of the elevation of the soul over the body is in the 4^th and 5^th stanzas. The 4^th stanza describes the type of lovers characterized as "sublunary lovers." Since the moon is variant throughout the month, these ‘sublunary lovers" are "inconstant or even lunatic" (Louthan, 49). Since the physical aspect in their relationship is strong, "Absence" of the physical love’s elements such as the "eyes, lips and hands" are main components of their love. Therefore, their separation is filled with "noise," "tear floods," and "sigh-tempests." On the other hand, the love that Donne has for his wife is "so much refined" that these same physical (bodily) elements which matter so much to the dull lovers do not hold as much an importance to the noble love between Donne and his wife.

In the sixth stanza, Donne draws on a distinction between a man and a woman’s love and the expansion of gold. It is a fact that an ounce of gold when beaten to the thickness of a gold leaf would cover 250 square feet. The same is true with their refined love that extends to their souls. Both souls, made one by love, can expand infinitely like a thin gold foil.

Until the 7^th stanza, Donne iterates and reiterates the fact that the souls of the two lovers are one. In the 7^th stanza, however, he states "they are two." Their souls are still two because their bodies are two. He likens their duality to the legs of a compass. This image of a compass is quite interesting and complicated. I believe a paraphrase of the last three stanzas would be beneficial in describing the relation between body, soul, and romantic love:

And if we are two, we are two as the legs of a compass. You are the fixed leg which stays in the middle at all times, unmoving. Yet when I move away from you to roam the rest of the world, while you sit at home, pondering your thoughts and solitutde, leaning towards me as I leave and growing erect as I come home, you are my just circle. Your firmness of mind that our love is strong enough to outweigh physical boundaries brings me back home where I left in the beginning.

Line 35 "Thy firmness makes my circle just" needs more explanation. It is common knowledge that the center of the circle is equidistant from any point on that circle’s circumference In fact, when drawing a circle using a geometric compass, the firm and stable leg must be put in the middle. The other leg is put at a distance away from the firm leg and a circle is drawn from the starting point. If the firm leg moves, the moving leg never reaches the starting point. This is analogous to the last stanza. If the woman, the firm leg, is not situated in place at all times, the man will never come back to where he begun. This draws the distinction again with the soul and body. The body might move from one place to the other, but his soul is forever linked (as the two compass legs are linked) to his beloved. Doniphan Louthan, author of The Poetry of John Donne, puts it best when he explains the purpose of this poem in relation to the soul and body, "The basic theme of this valediction is that the parting is merely illusory: The death-of-absence never occurs, and weeping would be superfluous here."

The apparent connection between body, soul, and romantic love can also be seen in John Donne’s Air and Angels. The poem starts out with Donne admitting that he loved his woman two or three times before through his dreams, yet she was only a voice and a shapeless flame. This is an indication of the relation between the soul and romantic love. It is her soul that he knew and it is her soul that he fell in love with even before he met her physically. When he finally did meet her, he realized that he’s known her all his life. In his dreams, he’d go to this woman "Still when, to where thou wert, I came" but he’d always find her a nothing, a "glorious nothing I did see." The word "nothing" can refer to the aspect of Angels and air. Air, physically is a nothing. Angels in all their glory are glorious. Donne draws a distinction between his beloved and Angels. Angels so influence us and "affect" us that we end up worshipping them just as Donne worships his beloved. It can also mean that angles take on our human characteristics "in a voice…in a shapeless flame" to the extent that we can worship them, if not recognize them immediately. This is analogous to Donne not recognizing the physical self of his beloved, but knowing her soul so well.

Similarly, lines 9 through 14 refer to the speaker being forced to concentrate his love upon a human form, just as his soul was required to take a body: "But since my soul…takes limbs of flesh." She, his beloved, also must take on a body. These lines can be better rephrased as "But I thought that since my soul has taken on a body, and would be incapable of action without it, my love, which is my soul’s child, out not to be more precious that it’s parent, but should also assume a body: and so I told my love to enquire what sort of a person and who you were, and then I permitted it to take on your body, and stay permanently in your face." All these "body" images draw connecting lines with romantic love. He cannot attain real and full love without the body. Here he refers to the woman as the angel wanting to give her a physical being. By the end of the poem, however, the angel becomes the poet’s love for the woman instead of the woman herself.

The third poem that I will examine is A Lecture Upon The Shadow. This poem is somewhat similar in its message to A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. The whole poem is similar to a snapshot of Pure Love which Donne attempts to make it last forever. He compares this pure love to when the sun is at noon, with no shadows. There is no mention of physical love in this poem. Pure love is mainly for the soul. Although there is no mention of the word "soul" throughout the entire poem, in my opinion, pure love can be attained only by the love and combination of the two souls as explained in A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. Donne symbolizes love to a sun. Love, like the sun, is either growing or constant, but, unlike the sunh, it has no gradual decline: after noon, comes immediate, total, and devastating eclipse. I do not think, however, that this eclipse is necessarily something negative. I believe that it is a mere warning as to what happens when love moves off of its straight path.

I would like to point out the image of the "disguises" and "shadows" drawn up by Donne. I believe that these two images, which occur many times throughout the poem are connected to the soul of love. In the beginning of a relationship, the couple are on their best behavoir, therefore their shadows are behind them, hiding the ugly parts of their souls (even though their souls are not actually all ugly). The shadows after the noon which are in front of the lovers represent the disguises that occur after the climax of love, meaning all the lying, cheating, hiding…etc.

The fourth poem to analyze is The Anniversary. In this poem, Donne describes a year long love between a man and a woman, equally mutual and untouched by time:

All other things to their destruction draw,

Only our love hath no decay;

This, no tomorrow hat, nor yesterday.

Only death can destroy this incredible love. But even then, even if they are buried together, death could not separate them. "If one might, death were no divorce." Death might destroy their bodies ("two graves must hide thine and my corse"), but their souls, permanently filled with their love, will, in heaven, continue to love with the same or even greater intensity than now. "Must leave at last in death, these eyes, and ears,/Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears;/But souls where nothing dwells but love…then shall prove this…When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove." Like A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, Donne gives the body a small (though important) role. What he considers to be the most important part of romantic love, however, is the soul. He, as shown in this poem, strongly believes that no matter what happens to them, even if they die, they will still be together and "then [they] shall be throughly blest", meaning their souls will be blessed in heaven for their love will outlive death. This distinct implication, that souls who are made one by love outlive death, is prominent in many of Donne’s Songs and Sonnets, specifically the ones mentioned in this essay.

The last poem which describes Donne’s obsessive interest in romantic love is The Ecstasy. There are many interpretations of this poem with a wide variety of ideas (Redpath, 221). The one that I agree with the most is Professor Greirson’s interpretation in his book Donne’s Poetical Works. He believes that this poem is "a justification of that natural love which rests on the interdependence of soul and body in human love between the sexes" (Redpath, 221). The first three stanzas seem to have established that the two lovers were already "one another’s best." The next two stanzas talk about how the souls are trying to win one another in this battle. One can see this in Donne’s choice of words: "armies" and "victory". Similarly, Donne again puts more emphasis on the soul than he does on the body as shown in lines 29-32:

‘This Ecstasy doth unperplex,’

We said, ‘and tell us what we love;

We see by this it was not sex;

We see we saw not what did move

These lines mean that their ecstasy has shown them what they love in one another and that it was not sex which attracted them to each other. This ecstasy that they experience "enables the souls to have a true insight into the nature and cause of their love. It did not spring from physical passion, but from the need for each soul to complement its deficiencies. Lines 33-36 (" ‘But as all several souls contain, Mixture of things, they know not what love these mix’d souls doth mix again, and makes both one, each this and that.") reiterate this idea of complementing their deficiencies. Unlike other lovers who have separate souls, their ecstasy has combined their souls and "mix’d" them into one soul. As a combined soul, their lives and loves have become much stronger and richer.

Lines 49-52 bring about a new argument. The two souls are wondering why they have shunned their bodies "Our bodies, why do we forbear?" The want to return to their bodies because their bodies belong to them "They are ours." As souls they are related to their bodies just as the celestial is related to the "spheres" which they control. Furthermore, the two souls realize that they cannot live without their bodies, that they "owe them thanks" because their bodies are substances which give them additional benefit, just as gold or silver coins are made harder by an ‘allay.’ It is interesting to note that Donne feels in this poem that the lovers love is much stronger because they left their bodies and united spiritually (shown in the last lines.)

In conclusion, John Donne throughout his love poetry, but especially his Songs and Sonnets draws an important distinction between the body, the soul, and romantic love. He stresses that the soul is the most important part of romantic love, yet through his poetic puns and lines, we can deduce that the body is just as important.

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