Joan Webber, Contary Music; The Prose Style of John Donne

Joan Webber, Contrary Music; the Prose Style of John Donne, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1963.

And then, the glorious qualities, which shall be imprinted on them, who are saved: first, salvation is a more extensive thing, and more communicable, then sullen cloistral, that have walled salvation in a monastery, or in an ermitage, take it to be; or then the over-valuers of their own purity, and righteousness, which have determined salvation in themselves, take it to be (VI, no. 7 11. 39-43). /

The order of arrangement is not unusual; but the length of the subordinate material and the brevity of the refrain create the effect of something stretched to its limit and then suddenly snapped back into place, the tension of disruption unexpectedly giving way to order. /

When Donne dislocates words, the dislocation, as in the grammatical shifts previously mentioned, often introduces a fresh musical pattern: /

No liquor comes so clearly, so absolutely from the vessel, not oyle, not milk, not wine, not honey (IX, No. 13, 11. 677-78). /

There are words in the text, that will reach to all the Story of S Paul’s Conversion, embrace all, involve and enwrap all (VI, No 10, 11. 23-24). …

In each of these examples, the thought, with the syntactic pattern completed, is still preoccupied with one aspect of that pattern, and moves back freely to it again. (36)

The first movements of Donne’s sentences are characteristically much more massive than their conclusions, even when the conclusion bears the weight of the thought. (38)

One particular sort of parenthetical emphasis that he sometimes employs is exclamation: “If his eye be upon me, and mine upon him, (O blessed relfexion!... (38)

Of Silver (of the virtue of thankfulness) there are whole Mines, books written by Philosophers, and a man may grow rich in that mettle, in that virtue, by digging in that Mine, in the Precepts of moral men; of this Gold (this virtue of Repentance) there is no Mine in the Earth; in the books of Philosophers, no doctrine of Repentance; this Gold is for the most part in the washes; this Repentance in matters of tribulation (II, No. 11, 11 4-10). (39)

The sentences of Milton and Hooker are based upon the main clause, or the climax, toward which all the subordinate members point. Donne often rests his periods momentarily upon a single word or phrase or clause not grammatically central. Thus, his emphases are more distributed, and the reader has a sense of wavering balances, of accents shifting from one center to another as the sentence progresses. Because it is not so grammatically stable as a Ciceronian period, it is able to foster this characteristic impression of constant movement and elusiveness. (41)

Sometimes this is the textbook kind of thing—using two words where one will do, or heaping up adjectives or nouns. But more often the runs represent the making of a thought, the associative progress of a mind’s movement, as one word reminds it of a better one, and the better one, again, of a best. (42)

It is important in analyzing these rhythms to recognize that one particular run never controls a sentence. We have seen the even when the whole period is dominated by the growth of one run out of another,  

That those Angels which see Christ Jesus now, sate down in glory at the right hand of his Father; all sweat wip’d from his Browes, and all teares from his Eyes; all his Stripes heal’d, all his Blood stanch’d, all his Wounds shut up, and all his Beauty returned there; when they look down hither, to see the same Christ in thee, may not see him scourged again, wounded, torn and mangled again, in thy blasphemings, nor crucified again in thy irreligious conversation (III, No 9, 11, 444-51) (46)

That brightnesse, that clearnesse, that peace, and tranquility, that calme and serenity, that acquiescence, and security of the Conscience” (IX No 11, 11 466-68). The alternating homoeoteleuton of this run (every other word, after the first pair, ends in “ity”) makes the run with its conclusion into something like a poetic stanza, (47)

The run may be combined with a sentence device by which part or all of a period is made to pivot on a word or phrase not grammitcally prominent, which makes the word or phrase not gramattically prominent, which makes the word seem a freely and spontaneously chosen center for associative, though orderly development. Not and Never are the words most frequently so used, and the very fact that negatives re singled out for this repetition is important because they create a minor pull against whatever positive point he may be making: “they never, never went about to pull them out; never resisted a tentation, never lamented a transgression, never repented a recidivation” (II, No 1, 11 609-10). Contrast with a textbook example of its rhetorical equivalent, diazeugma, shows how differently Donne has used this figure, defined as one in which one noun serves many verbs: “The people of Rome destroyed Numance, overthrew Carthage, cast down Corinth and raced Fregels.” The repletions of “never” in the Donne illustration make that word more important than the pronoun, so that the sentence is shaped out of its emotional rather than its grammatical subject: “they were the sins of some that shall never thank thee, never know that thou borest their sins, never know that they had any such sins to bee born” (II, No 1, 11 799, 801). The building up of the series upon this grammatically off-center pivot gives it both a freedom from grammatical constraint, and an ability seemingly to rock the sentences to one side, until whatever follows shifts the emphasis again. (49)

Though thou have a West, a darke and a sad condition, that thou art but earth, a man of infirmities, and ill counsailed in thy self: yet thou hast herein a North, that scatters and dispels these clouds, that God propses to thee (IX, No 2, 11, 289-92)

But as Physicians are forced to do sometimes, to turn upon the present cure of some vehement symptom, and accident, and leave the consideration of the main disease for a time, so Christ leaves the doctrine of the kingdom for the present, and does not rectify them in that yet, but for this pestilent symptom, this malignant accident of precedency, and ambition of place, he corrects that first (III, No 6, 11 43-48)

And when you shall find that hand that had signed to one of you a Patent for Title, to another for Pension, to another for Pardon, to another for Dispensation, Dead: That hand that settled Possessions by his Seale, in the Keeper, and rectify Honours by the sword, in his Marshall, and distributed relief to the Poor, in his Almoner, and Health to the Diseased, by his immediate Touch, Dead: That Hand that balanced his own three Kingdomes carried the Keyes of all the Christian world, and locked up, and let out Armies in their due season, Dead; how poore, how faint, how pale, how momentary, how transitory, how empty, how frivolous, how Dead thigs, must you necessarily think Titles, and Possessions and Favour, and all, when you see that Hand, which was the hand of Destiny, of Christian Destiny, of the Almighty God, lie dead? /

The period can be summarized as follows: When you see that hand dead that did so many good things for you, how empty must you think worldly things, when you see that hand dead. The circle of this sentence… This pattern seems to coincide almost exactly with that “circuit” which we ordinarily think of a Ciceronian, but the signature of Donne is written large. (61)

Tu absconsio, Thou art my hiding place, says the Primitive Church, and so may the Reformed Church say too. For when the Roman Church made this Latibulum, this hiding place, this refuge from Persecution, Ermitage and Monasteries, to be the most conspicuous, the most glorious, the most eminent, the richest and most abundant places in the World; when they had drawn these, at first remote corners in the Wilderness, first into the skirts, and suburbs, then into the body and heart of every great City; when for revenue and possession, they will confesse, that some one Monastery of the Benedictines had ten thousand of our pounds of yearly rent; when they were come for their huge opulency to that height, that they were formidable to those States that harbored them, and for their numbers, (other Orders holding proportion with that one) to reckon out of one Order, fifty two Popes, two hundred Cardinals, seven thousand Archbishops and Bishops, and almost three hundred Emperors and Kings, and their children, and fifty thousand declared and approved Saints; when they were come to that over-valuation of their Religious Orders, as to say, That a Monke, a Fryer merited more in his very sleep, or meales, then any secular man (though a Church-man too) did in his best works, That to enter into any Order of Religion was a second Baptism, and wrought as much as the first; Their revenue, their number, their dignity being come to this, And then their viciousness, their sensuality, their bestiality, to as great a height and exaltation, as that; yet in the midst of all these, Tu absconsio mea, may the Reformed Church say, The Lord was their hiding place, that mourned for this, when they could not help, and at all times, and by all means that God afforded them, endeavored to advance a Reformation. And though God exposed them as a wood to be felled, to a slaughter of twenty, of forty, of sixty thousand in a day, yet Ille absonsio, He hath been our hiding place, He hath kept the root alive all the way; And though it hath been with a cloud, yet he hath covered us (IX, No 15, 11, 108-39)

The rise and falloff this period are hinged with an absolute participle construction (“Their revenue, their number, their dignity being come to this”) which mediates between the two parts. Croll suggests that baroque stylists used the absolute participle to help them escape from suspended clauses that could not easily be resolved. (63)

But where the construction is more grammatically unified and where the style does not change, the absolute participle, or a device capable of producing a similar effect, is often used. Thus, after a page-long series of “if” clauses on the use of natural reason, a parenthesis recapitulates and acts as brake and hinge; I quote only the relevant part of the period: /

…if after all this, thou canst turne this little light inward, and cast thereby discerne where thy diseases, and thy wounds, and thy corruptions are, and cast apply those teares, and blood and balme to them, (all this is, That if thou attend the light of natural reason, and church that, and exalt that, so that that bring thee to a love of the Scriptures, and that love to a beleefe of the truth thereof, and that historical faith to a faith of application, of appropriation, that as all those thigs were certainly done, so they were certainly done for thee) thou shalt never envy the lustre and glory of the great lights of worldy men (III, No 17, 11 489-97) (64)

The sentence with a slow upward movement and rapid answering descent is one major pattern in Donne’s prose. I have called it circular because it begins and ends on the same note, but a circle does not really describe its effect, which can better be diagrammed as that of a diagonal line moving from lower left to upper right, met by a vertical line that carries the eye downward again to lower right, where a shorter diagonal takes it into the next sentence. There is asymmetry within the greater symmetry of the next sentence. (64)

And can these persons meet? In such a distance, and in such a disparagement can these persons meet? The Son of God and the son of man? When I consider Christ to be Germen Jehovae the bud and blossom, the fruit and off-spring of Jehovah, Jehovah himself, and my self before he took me in had, to be, not a Potters vessel of earth, but that earth of which the Potter might make a vessel if he would, and break that eart of which the Potter might make a vessel if he would, and break it if he would whenhe had made it: When I consider Christ to have been from before all beginnings, and to be still the Image of the Father, the same stamp upon the same metal, and my self a piece of rusty copper, in which those line of the Image of God which were imprinted in me my Create and defaced and won, and washed and burnt, and ground away, by my many, and many, and many sins: When I consider Christ in his Circle, in glory with his Father, before he came into this world, establishing a glorious Church when he was in this world, and glorifying that Church with that glory which himself had before, when he went out of this world; and then consider my self in my circle, I came into this world washed in mine own tears, and either out of compunction for my self or compassion for others, I passe through this world as through a valley of tears, where tears settle and swell, and when I passe out of this world I leave their eyes whose hands close mine, full of tears too, can these persons, this Image of God, this God himself, this glorious God, ad this vessel of earth, this earth itself, this inglorious worm of the earth, meet without disparagement (III, No. 11, 11, 333-57)

Let no man therefore think to present his comlexio to God for an excuse, and say, My Choler with which my constitution abounded, and which I could not remedy, inclined me to wrath, and so to blood; My Melancholy inclined me to sadness, and so to Desperation, as though thy sins were medicinal sins, sins to vent humors. Let no man say, I am continent enough all the year, but the spring works upon me, and inflames my concupiscencies, as though thy sis were seasonable and anniversary sins. Make not thy Calling the occasion of thy sin, as though thy sins were a Mystery, and an Occupation; nor thy place, thy station, thy office the occasion of thy sin, as though thy sin were an Heir-loom, or furniture, or fixed tot eh freehold of that place: for this one proposition, God is no accepter of persons, is so often repeated, that all circumstances of Dispositions, and Callings, and time, and place might be involved in it (III, No 13, ll 434-47)

The world is a Sea in many respects and assimilations. It is a Sea, as it is subject to stormes, and tempests; Every man (and every man is a world) feels that. And then, it is never the shallower for the calmness, the Sea is as deep, there is as much water in the Sea, in a calm, as in a storm; we may be drowned in a calm and flattering fortune, in prosperity, as irrevocably, as in a wrought Sea, in adversity; So the world is a Sea. It is a Sea, as it is bottomless to any line, which we can sound it with, and endless to any discovery that we can make of it. The purposes of the world, the ways of the world, exceed our consideration; But yet we are sure the Sea hath a bottom , and sure that it hath limits, that it cannot overpass; The power of the greatest in the world, the life of the happiest in the world, cannot exceet those bounds, which God hath placed for them; So the world is a Sea. It is a Sea, as it hath ebbs and floods, and no man knows the true reason of those floods and those ebbs. All men have changes and vicissitudes in their bodies, (they fall sick) And I their estates, (they grow poor) And in their minds, (they become sad) at which changes (sickness, poverty, sadness) themselves wonder, and the cause is wrapped up in the purpose and judgement of God only, and hid even from them that have them; and so the world is a Sea. It is a Sea, as the Sea affords water enough for all the world to drink, but such water as will not quench the thirst. The world affords conveniences enough to satisfy Nature, but these increase our thirst with drinking, and our desire grows and enlarges itself with our abundance, and though we sail in a full Sea, yet we lack water; So the world is a Sea. It is a Sea, if we consider the Inhabitants. In the Sea, the greater fish devour the lesse; and so doe the men of this world too. And as fish, when they mud themselves, have no hands to make themselves cleane, but the current of the waters must work that; So have the men of this world no means to cleanse themselves from those sins which they have contracted in the world, of themselves, till a new flood, waters of repentence, drawn up, and sanctified by the Holy Ghost, work that blessed effect in them. / All these ways the world is a Sea (II, No 14, ll 690-723)

It is not held firmly to a logical structure, but seeks, in various ways, release from the requirements of grammar in order to seem to reach closer to the actual movement of though and imagination. (70)

Shall I imagine a difficulty in my body, because I have lost an Arme in the East, and a leg in the West? Because I have left some blood in the North, and some bones in the South? Do but remember, with what ease you have sate in the chair, casting an account, and made a shilling on one hand, a pound on the other, or five shillings below, ten above, because all these lay easily within your reach. Consider how much lesse, all this earth is to him, that sits in heaven, and sapns all this world, and reunites in an instant armes and legs, blood, and bones, in what corners so ever they be scattered (III, no 3, ll, 668-77)

…before any of these causes of Winds were created, or produced, and that there should be an effect before a cause, is somewhat irregular (IX, No 3, ll 145-59)

His famous apostrophe to the atheist… / Poor intricated soule! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthicall soule! Thou couldest not say, that thou beleevest not in God, if there were no God; Thou couldest not believe in God, if there were no God; If there were no God, thou couldest not speake, thou couldest not thinke, not a word, not a thought, no not against God; Thou couldest not blaspheme the Name of God, thou couldest not sweare, if there were no God: For, all thy faculties, how ever depraved, and peverted by thee, are from him; and except thou canst seriously believe, that thou art nothing, thou canst not believe that there is no God (VIII, no 14, ll 740-48)

If I should aske thee at a Tragedy, where thou shouldest see him that had drawne blood, lie weltring, and surrounded in his own blood, Is there a God now? If thou coudst answer me, No, These are but Inventions, and Representations of men, and I believe a God never the more for this; If I should ask thee at a Sermon, where thou shouldest hear the Judgements of God formerly denounced, and executed, re-denounced, and applied to present occasions, Is there a God now? If thou couldst answer me, No, These are but Inventions of State, to souple and regulate Congregations, and keep people in order, and I believe a God never the more for this; Bee as confident as thou canst, in company; for company is the Atheist Sanctuary; I respite thee not till the day of Judgement, when I may see thee upon thy knees, upon thy face, begging of the hills, that they would fall down and cover thee from the fierce wrath of God, to ask thee then, Is there a God now? I respite thee not till the day of thine own death, when thou shalt have evidence enough, that there is a God, though no other evidence, but to finde a Devill and evidence enough, that there is a Heaven, though no other evidence, but to feel Hell; To ask thee then, Is there a God now? I respite thee but a few houres, but six houres, but till midnight. Wake thenk and then darke, and alone, heare God aske thee then, remember that I asked thee now, Is there a God? and if thou darest, say No (VIII, No 14, ll 748-70)

Now in respect of the time after this judgment (which is Eternity) the time between this and it cannot be a minute; and therefore think thy self at that Tribunall, that judgement now: Where thou shalt not only hear all thy sinfull works, and words, and thoughts repeated, which thou thy self hadst utterly forgot, but thou shalt hear thy good works, thine alms, thy coming to Church, thy hearing of Sermons given in evidence against thee, because they had hypocrisy mingled in them; yea thou shalt fid even thy repentence to comdemn thee, because thou madest that but a door to  relapse. There thou shalt see, to thine inexpressible terror, some others cast down into hell, for thy sins; for those sins which they would not have done, but upon thy provocation. There thou shalt see some that occasioned thy sins, and accompanied thee in them, and sinned them in a greater measure then thou didst, taken up into heaven, because in the way, they remembered the end, and thou shalt sink under a lesse waight, because thou never lookedst towards him that would have eased thee of it. Quis non cogitans haec in desperationis rotetur byssum? Who can once thinke of this and not be tumbled into desperation? But who can think of it twice, maturely, and by the Holy Ghost, and not finde comfort in it, when the same light that shews mee the judgement, shews me the Judge too? (VII, No 8, ll 737-57)

Remember then, and remember now; In Die, in the day; … for in the night, in our last night, those thoughts that fall upon us, they are rather dreams, then true rememberings; we do rather dream that we repent, then repent indeed, upon our death-bed. To him that travails by night a bush seems a tree, and a tree seems a man, and a man a spirit; nothing hath the true shape to him; to him that repents by night, on this death-bed, neither his own sins, nor the mercies of God have their true proportion. Fool, says Christ, this night they will fetch away thy soul (II, No 11, ll 153-64)

Thou hast a gate into Heaven in thy selfe; If thou beest not sensible of other mens poverties and distresses, yet Miserere animae tuae, have mercy on thine own soul; thou hast a poor guest, an Inmate, a sojourner, within these mudwals, this corrupt body of thine; be merciful and compassionate to that soule; cloth that soule, which thou hast starv’d; purged that soul, which thou hast infected; warm, and thaw that Soul, which thou hast frozen with indevotion; coole, and quench that Soul, which thou has inflamed with licentiousness; Miserere animae tuae, begin with thine own Soule, be charitable to thy self first, and thou wilt remember, that God hath made of one blood, all mankind, and thou wilt find out of thy self, in every other poor man, and thou wilt find Christ Jesus himself in them all (II, No 10, 11 83-96)

To finde a languishing wretch in a sorded corner, not only in a penurious fortune, but in an oppressed conscience, His eyes under a diverse suffocation, smothered with smoke, and smothered with teares, His eares estranged from all salutations, and visits, and all sounds, but his own sighs, and the stormes and thunders and earthquake of his own despaire, To enable this man to open his eyes, and see that Christ Jesus stands before him, and says, Behold and see, if ever there were any sorrow, like my sorrow, and my sorrow is overcome, why is not thine? (VIII, No 10, ll 340-60)

First it must be a Crosse, Tollat crucem; for every man hath afflications, but every man hath not crosses. Only those afflictions are crosses, whereby the world is crucified to us, and we to the world… And when I am come to that conformity with my Savior, as to fulfill his sufferings in my flesh, that conformity with my Savior, as to fulfill his sufferings in my flesh, (as I am, when I glorify him in a Christian constancy and cheerfulness in my afflictions) then I am crucified with him, carried up to his Crosse: and as Elisha in raising the Shunamits dead child, put his mouth upon the childs mouth, his eyes, and his hands, upon the hands, and eyes of the child; so when my crosses have carried mee up to my Savior Cross, I put my hands into his hands, and hang upon his nails, I put mine eyes upon his, and wash off all my former unchast looks, and receive a sovereign tincture, and a lively verdue, and a new life inot my dead tears, from his tears. I put my mouth upon his mouth, and it is I that say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And it is I that recover again, and say, Into thy hands, o Lord, I commend my spirit. Thus my afflictions are truly a crosse, when those afflictions doe truly crucify me, and souple me, and mellow me, and knead me, and roll me out, to a conformity with Christ. It must be this Crosse, and then it must be my cross that I must take up, Tollat suam. (11. 469-91)

The sun is setting to thee, and that for ever; thy houses and furnitures, thy gardens and orchards, thy titles and offices, thy wife and children are departing from thee, and that for ever; a cloud of faintness is come over thine eyes, and a cloud of sorrow over all this; when his hand that loves thee best hangs tremblingly over thee to close thine eyes, Ecce Salvator tuus venit, behold then a new light, thy Saviours hand shall open thine eyes of men thou lie upon that bed, as a Statue on a Tomb, yet in the eyes of God, thou standest as a Colossus, one foot in one, another in another land; one foot in the grave, but the other in heaven; one hand in the womb of the earth, and the other in Abrahams bosome (II, No 12, ll 618-29)

But wheni lie under the hands of that enemy, that hath reserved himself to the last, to my last bed, then when I shall be able to stir no limb in any other measure then a Feaver or a Palsie shall shake them, when everlasting darkness shall have an inchoation in the present dimness of mine eyes, and the everlasting gnashing in the present chattering of my teeth, and the everlasting worm in the present gnawing of the Agonies of my body, and anguishes of my mind, when the last enemy shall watch my remediless body, and my disconsolate soul there, there, where not the Physician, in his way, perchance not the Priest in his, shall be able to give any assistance, and when he hath sported himself with my misery upon the stage, my deathbed, shall shift the Scene, and throw me from that bed, into the grave, and there triumph over me, God knows, how many generations, till the Redeemer, my Redeemer, the Redeemer of all me, body as well as soule, come again (IV, No 1, ll 394-408)

…All those things that I have done for Gods glory, shall follow me… / This shall be my praise to Heaven, my recommendation thither; and then, my praise in Heaven, shall be my preferment in Heaven. That those blessed Angels, that rejoiced at my Conversion before, shall praise my perseverance in that profession, and admit me to a part in their Hymns and Hosannae, and Hallelujahs; which Hallelujah is a word produced from the very word of this Text, Halal; My Hallelujah shall be my Halal, my praising of Go shall be my praise… And when he hath sealed me with his Euge and accepted my service, who shall stamp a Vae quod non, upon me? Who shall or that place? When he shall have styled me Bone & fidelis, Good and faithfull servant, who shall upbraid me with a late undertaking this Calling, or a slack pursuing, or a lazy intermitting the fuction thereof? When he shall have entred me into my Masters joy, what fortune, what sin can cast any Cloud of sadness upon me? This is that makes Heaven, Heaven, That this retribution, which is future now, shall be present then, and when it is then present, it shall be future againe, and present and future for ever, ever enjoyed, and expected ever (VII, No 9, 11 648-99)

…This is that that poures even inot my gladness, and glory even into my mine honor, and peace even into my security; that exalts and improves every good thing, every blessing that was in me before, and makes even my creation glorious, and my redemption precious; and puts a farther value upon things inestimable before, that I shall fulfill that sufferings of Christ in my flesh, and that I shall be offered up for his Church, though nor for the purchasing of it, yet for the fencing of it (VIII, No 7, ll 415-29)

If thou look up into the air, remember that thy life is but a wind, If thou see a cloud in the aire, ask St James his question, what is your life? And give St James his answer, It is a vapour that appeareth and vanisheth away. If thou behold a Tree, then Job gives thee a comparison of thy self; a Tree is an emblem of thy selfe; nay a Tree is the original, thou art but the copy, thou art not so good as it: for, There is hope of a tree… Look upon the water, and we are as that , and as that split upon the ground: Looke to the earth, and we are not like that, but we are earth it self (III, No 8, 11. 560-66, ll 569-71)

And that as thou hatest sinne it self, thy hate to sin may be expressed in the abolishing of all instruments of sin, the allurements of the world, and the world it self (199)