Holy Sonnets: Difference between revisions

John Donne

The Holy Sonnets—also known as the Divine Meditations or Divine Sonnets—are a series of nineteen poems by the English poet John Donne (1572-1631). Each of the poems are sonnets in the style and form prescribed by Renaissance Italian poet Petrarch (or Francesco Petrarca) (1304-1374) and English poet and playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616).

Donne's work, both in love poetry and religious poetry, places him as a central figure in among the Metaphysical poets. The nineteen poems that constitute the collection were never published during Donne's lifetime although they did circulate in manuscript. Most of the poems are believed to have been written in 1609 and 1610, during a period of great personal distress and strife for Donne who suffered a combination of physical, emotional, and financial hardships during this time. This was also a time of personal religious turmoil as Donne was in the process of conversion from Roman Catholicism to Anglicanism, and would take holy orders in 1615 despite reluctance to become a priest. Sonnet XVII ("Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt") is thought to have been written in 1617 following the death of his wife Anne Moore. In Holy Sonnets, Donne addresses religious themes of mortality, divine judgment, divine love, and humble penance while reflecting deeply personal anxieties.

Manuscript and publication history

The dating of the poems' composition has been tied to the dating of Donne's conversion to Anglicanism. His first biographer, Izaak Walton, claimed the poems dated from the time of Donne's ministry (he became a priest in 1615); modern scholarship agrees that the poems date from 1609–1610, the same period during which he wrote an anti-Catholic polemic, Pseudo-Martyr. "Since she whom I loved, hath paid her last debt," though, is an elegy to Donne's wife, Anne, who died in 1617, and two other poems, "Show me, dear Christ, thy spouse so bright and clear" and "Oh, to vex me, contraries meet as one" are first found in 1620.

The Variorum Edition of John Donne's work proposes three sequences for the total of nineteen sonnets. The first, the "original sequence", contains twelve sonnets; the second, the "Westmoreland sequence", contains nineteen; and the third, the "revised sequence", contains the twelve sonnets of the original sequence in a different order. The relationship between these sequences is explained by Cummings, in his Seventeenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology: two sequences of twelve poems, having eight poems in common, with the addition of three later poems, make up the nineteen.

Many of the poems circulated in manuscript: "Oh my black soul", for instance, survives in no fewer than fifteen manuscript copies, including a miscellany compiled for William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The twelve sonnets of the original sequence were published two years after Donne's death, in the 1633 collection Songs and Sonnets, probably from manuscripts overseen by Donne himself. From an earlier manuscript comes the 1635 collection called Divine Meditations, containing the revised sequence. The total of nineteen sonnets is found in the 1620 Westmoreland manuscript (now in the New York Public Library), prepared by Rowland Woodward, a friend of Donne; this manuscript contains the sixteen different sonnets of the Holy Sonnets (1633) and the Divine Meditations (1635), plus the three later poems.

List of first lines

Original sequence

1. Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay
2. As due by many titles I resign
3. O might those sighs and tears return again
4. Father, part of his double interest
5. O, my black soul, now thou art summoned
6. This is my play's last scene, here heavens appoint
7. I am a little world made cunningly
8. At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
9. If poisonous minerals, and if that tree
10. If faithful souls be alike glorified
11. Death be not proud, though some have called thee
12. Wilt thou love God, as he thee! then digest

Westmoreland sequence

1. Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay
2. As due by many titles I resign
3. O might those sighs and tears return again
4. O my black soul! now thou art summoned
5. I am a little world made cunningly
6. This is my play's last scene, here heavens appoint
7. At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
8. If faithful souls be alike glorified
9. If poisonous minerals, and if that tree
10. Death be not proud, though some have called thee
11. Spit in my face you Jews, and pierce my side
12. Why are we by all creatures waited on?
13. What if this present were the world's last night?
14. Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
15. Wilt thou love God, as he thee! then digest
16. Father, part of his double interest
17. Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt
18. Show me, dear Christ, thy spouse so bright and clear
19. O, to vex me, contraries meet in one

Revised sequence

1. As due by many titles I resign
2. O my black soul! now thou art summoned
3. This is my play's last scene, here heavens appoint
4. At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
5. If poisonous minerals, and if that tree
6. Death be not proud, though some have called thee
7. Spit in soned God; for you
8. Wilt thou love God, as he thee! then digest
9. Father, part of his double interest
10. Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you

Spelling and punctuation as found in Cummings, Seventeenth-Century Poetry.

Comparison of numbering

Eight of the sonnets appear in all three versions.

First line	Original	Westmoreland	Revised
Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay	01	01
As due by many titles I resign	02	02	01
O might those sighs and tears return again	03	03
Father, part of his double interest	04	16	09
O, my black soul, now thou art summoned	05	04	02
This is my play's last scene, here heavens appoint	06	06	03
I am a little world made cunningly	07	05
At the round earth's imagined corners, blow	08	07	04
If poisonous minerals, and if that tree	09	09	05
If faithful souls be alike glorified	10	08
Death be not proud, though some have called thee	11	10	06
Wilt thou love God, as he thee! then digest	12	15	08
Spit in my face you Jews, and pierce my side		11
Why are we by all creatures waited on?		12
What if this present were the world's last night?		13
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you		14	10
Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt		17
Show me, dear Christ, thy spouse so bright and clear		18
O, to vex me, contraries meet in one		19
Spit in soned God; for you			07

Quotations and adaptations

• Nine of the sonnets were set to music for tenor and piano by Benjamin Britten in August 1945.
• The lines "Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so" (HS 10) are often quoted—as, for example, in Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize–winning play, Wit (1995), and the movie of the same name.
• The first line of HS 14, beginning "Batter my heart three-personed God", are cited by such artists as Hendrik Hofmeyr and in such productions as John Adams's opera Doctor Atomic.
• The first nuclear weapon test, Trinity was named by J. Robert Oppenheimer after some extracts of the Holy Sonnets.

References

• Cummings, Brian (2007). The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace. Oxford UP. ISBN 978-0-19-922633-7.
• Cummings, Robert M. (2000). Seventeenth-century poetry: an annotated anthology. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-21066-5.
• Evans, Peter (1996). The music of Benjamin Britten (2 ed.). Oxford UP. ISBN 978-0-19-816590-3.
• Ruf, Frederick J. (1997). Entangled voices: genre and the religious construction of the self. Oxford UP. ISBN 978-0-19-510263-5.
• Stringer, Gary A. (2005). The variorum edition of the poetry of John Donne. Vol. 1, part 1. Indiana UP. ISBN 978-0-253-34701-5.
• White, Eric Walter (1970). Benjamin Britten: his life and operas. U of California P. ISBN 978-0-520-01679-8.

External links

• Holy Sonnets audio at LibriVox.org