Love and Sex in Donne
"Before I sigh my last gaspe, let me breath,
Great love, some Legacies;" ("The Will").
Donne left us some of the great love poetry of the Renaissance era. Through his best poems, one can trace a path through the various human conditions in the relationship between the sexes - from euphoria to heartache, lust to reverential subordination to his lover. Donne's poetry covers a wider scope of love situations than we find in almost any other writer - more than Petrarch, Dante, or any of the Classical poets. One finds the claustrophobic, frustrated passion of "The Apparition", "Love's Deity" and "Twickenham Garden" next to the contented strains of "The Sunne Rising", "The Canonization" and "The Undertaking". One also finds the touching, mournful tones of "The Expiration" and the death-awaiting "A Fever" next to the carefree liberty of "The Indifferent" and "Confined Love".
Sex, however, can be seen as quite distinct from love in Donne. Not until he meets Anne More do his feelings stray outside those of a seventeenth-century playboy, pleased to dally (at least theoretically) with the hearts of the young women he meets. John Dryden says that Donne's love poems were "calculated to perplex the minds of the fair sex with the nice speculations of philosophy". Perhaps his desires stretched to perplexing them enough that they might fall into bed with him, but his ideal was for one of the high powered women to whom he sent his poems to become his patron (and thus provide him with a salary). He was not committed to a particular philosophical system, but happy to adapt those of his period (including controversial and even heretical ones - see Carey) in order to tempt his lovers - on paper - into discarding their inhibitions.
Donne's work is often, if not always, separated between the first satires and elegies (mainly from the 1590s, it is believed), the Songs and Sonnets love poems and the (presumably) later religious poetry. It is extremely pertinent that this break comes almost exactly at the point that he met Anne More. Whilst one does not wish to put to great a weight on biographical details when we know so little about the dates of the poems, it seems that Donne's feelings for Anne transcended all the emotions he felt for the girls of his youth (indeed, he sacrificed his career for her). In the love sonnets, one gets the impression of the author as a Romeo-figure, in love with the art of being in love, changeable and ready to renege on the heady promises he makes at the slightest whim. His poetic voice suggests that he is ardent in his refusal to be tied down:
"I can love her, and her, and you, and you,
I can love any, so she be not true." ("The Indifferent").
In his earlier poetry, his sexual satisfaction is notably frank in its expression:
"So, to one neutrall thing both sexes fit,
Wee dye, and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love." ("The Canonization").
It is only after the repudiation of his youth's superficiality, and his true embracing of all things religious, that Donne seems to give up his passion for passion.
The line, however, is not so clean cut. Many critics have seen the stability of his love for Anne as the base upon which his love for God was founded, and superseded. "Holy Sonnet XVII" has been seen as crucial in the transformation of Donne from the frivolous love and society poet into Donne the profound spiritual commentator. If one reads the poem closely, one can see that - as in Eliot's Four Quartets where one can see some of Eliot's earlier guises lying beneath the surface - traces of the younger Donne can be found in his Holy Sonnets. In "Holy Sonnet XVII", Donne writes:
"Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her last debt
To nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,
And her soul early into heaven ravished,
Wholly on heavenly things my mind is sett."
Whilst this has rightly seen as an abnegation of worldly things in the aftermath of his true love's death, the reason for Donne's mind being set "on heavenly things" is perhaps not what one would expect. In dissecting these lines, one notices that it is only now that his love has "payd her last debt" that he moves away from earthly things. Therefore, his mind follows his love to heaven, rather than abandoning his love of her in exchange for a love of God. Donne's spirituality is thus given a very firm root in his worldly love. There is an intermingling of philosophies that goes beyond the transition from lustful, terrestrial thoughts to those on a higher plane. Like Eliot's, Donne's poetry seems to have become more lucid towards the end of his life (or as he began to discuss faith in more than women), he hides less behind the complex philosophical conceits one is used to and is frank about his spiritual concerns, as in "Hymn to God, My God, In My Sicknesse":
"... As I come
I tune the Instrument here at the dore,
And what I must do then, thinke here before."
If "Holy Sonnet XVII" reveals traces of Donne's past in his later work, we can also find
traces of his future in his love poetry. In "The Relique" and "A Nocturnall Upon St. Lucie's Day",
Donne credits his lover with quasi-religious powers:
"All women shall adore us, and some men;
And since at such time, miracles are sought,
I would have that age by this paper taught
What miracles wee harmlesse lovers wrought." ("The Relique").
In "The Dream", Donne even asserts that his lady possesses divine attributes. These poems are notable in that they are the closest to what one would term Platonic love in Donne's poetry. It seems that only when Donne's mind moves towards the spiritual can he conceive of a love that does not rely entirely upon the passionate and sensual. Not until he meets Anne More does he catch any more than a fleeting glimpse of this love. If we accept that the love he expresses in "The Relique", "The Dream", and "A Nocturnall Upon St. Lucie's Day" is of a higher and more refined nature than in, say, "The Flea", then it is clear that his realisation of this love in the shape of Anne More gives him the spiritual impetus to turn his thoughts to more philosophical matters. Either that, or, more likely he was capable of both a shocking and a touching character in his poetry: a power to charm alongside a power to deceive and entangle with words and conceits. It is wisest to avoid placing Donne's poetry in categories according to chronology (since we know little of this) and more pertinent to consider the similar impetus that drives the romantic and the spiritual in Donne and that allows the same techniques to reach for such different peaks.
The more active, ardent nature of Donne's earlier work can be seen through a consideration of the number of verbs used in two poems picked at random. In the first two stanzas of "The Canonization", there are twenty-eight active verbs. In the first two stanzas of "A Hymne To Christ", one of Donne's last poems, there are fifteen active verbs. Thus Donne's turning away from the world constitutes a similar turning away from action and actuality to things more cerebral and eternal. There is a similar proliferation of nouns in the earlier poetry that is not present to the same extent in the later religious poetry:
"The venom of all stepdames, gamesters' gall,
What tyrants, and their subjects, interwish,
What plants, mines, beasts, fowl, fish
Can contribute..." ("The Curse").
This layering of nouns creates the impression of an acceleration in the speed of the rhythm of the poem - an effect which Donne requires less in the spiritual poetry.
The speed of the love poems depends upon their various atmospheres. "The Curse" and "The Canonisation" are brisk and clipped, with layers of nouns and verbs exhibiting the Metaphysical Poets' love of lists. In contrast the more sombre, spiritual pieces such as "A Nocturnall Upon St. Lucie's Day" and "The Relique" move with a lugubrious pace that suits their more profound subject matter.
Thus, in Donne's work we can trace a conceptual if not chronological continuity from the love poems to the religious poems: from the lustful, jocular pieces, such as "The Flea", to the spiritual Holy Sonnets. It is also possible to see in the human love sonnets traces of the profundity of the love of the intangible in the holy sonnets. In both cases, the lover conceives of the loved one in a different form to establish and disentangle his own affection. When Donne writes of a love that transcends the corporeal and reaches a level of spirituality in his amorousness, he is able to throw off the cloak of intellectual inscrutability that his metaphysical conceits give him and address his love with the same frankness with which he addresses God in the holy poems.