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*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 (play)|''Wit'']] (1995), and the [[Wit (film)|movie of the same name]].
*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 (play)|''Wit'']] (1995), and the [[Wit (film)|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 (composer)|John Adams]]'s opera ''[[Doctor Atomic]]''.{{Citation needed|date=April 2010}}
* 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 (composer)|John Adams]]'s opera ''[[Doctor Atomic]]''.{{Citation needed|date=April 2010}}

* The first nuclear weapon test, [[Trinity (nuclear test)#Name|Trinity]] was named by [[J. Robert Oppenheimer]] after some extracts of the Holy Sonnets.
===The Trinity site===
It is thought that physicist and [[Manhattan Project]] director [[J. Robert Oppenheimer]] named the site of the first nuclear weapon test site, the [[Trinity (nuclear test)#Name|Trinity site]] after some extracts of the Holy Sonnets. At the time of the preparations for the test, Oppenheimer was reportedly reading ''Holy Sonnets.'' In 1962, General Leslie Groves wrote to Oppenheimer about the origin of the name, asking if he had chosen it because it was a name common to rivers and peaks in the West and would not attract attention.<ref name="RhodesAtomicBomb86">[[Richard Rhodes]], ''[[The Making of the Atomic Bomb]]'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), pp. 571–572.</ref> Oppenheimer replied:

{{quote|I did suggest it, but not on that ground... Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation: "As West and East / In all flatt Maps—and I am one—are one, / So death doth touch the Resurrection." That still does not make a [[Trinity]], but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, "Batter my heart, three person'd God;—."<ref name="RhodesAtomicBomb86" /><ref>Oppenheimer references quotations from two of Donne's poems, the first from Donne's [http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/sickness.htm "Hymne to God My God, in My Sicknesse"], and the second [http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/sonnet14.php "Sonnet XIV"] from ''Holy Sonnets''—both of which can be found in Donne, John, and Chambers E. K. (editor). ''Poems of John Donne]''. Volume I. (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896), 165, 211–212.</ref>}}

Historian Gregg Herken believes that Oppenheimer named the site in reference to Donne poems as a tribute to his deceased mistress, psychiatrist and physician [[Jean Tatlock]] (1914–1944), the daughter of an English literature professor and philologist, who introduced Oppenheimer to the works of Donne.<ref name="HerkenBombBrotherhood">Herken, Gregg. ''Brotherhood of the Bomb''. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2003). ISBN 978-0-8050-6589-3</ref>{{rp|pp.29,129}} Tatlock committed suicide the 18 months before the test after the conclusion of her affair with Oppenheimer.<ref name="HerkenBombBrotherhood" />{{rp|p.119}}<ref>Bird, Kai, and Martin J. Sherwin. ''American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer''. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 249-254. ISBN 978-0-375-41202-8</ref>


==Notes==
==Notes==

Revision as of 12:26, 28 July 2013

John Donne (1572-1631)

The Holy Sonnets—also known as the Divine Meditations or Divine Sonnets—are a series of twenty poems by the English poet John Donne (1572-1631). The sonnets were first published in 1633—two years after Donne's death. The poems are sonnets and are predominantly in the style and form prescribed by Renaissance Italian poet Petrarch (or Francesco Petrarca) (1304-1374) in which the sonnet consisted of two quatrains (four-line stanzas) and a sestet (a six-line stanza). However, several rhythmic and structural patterns as well as the inclusion of couplets are elements influenced by the sonnet form developed by 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. Many 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 profound reluctance and significant self-doubt about becoming a priest.[1] 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.[1] In Holy Sonnets, Donne addresses religious themes of mortality, divine judgment, divine love, and humble penance while reflecting deeply personal anxieties.[2]

Composition and publication

Writing

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.[3]: p.358  "Since she whom I loved, hath paid her last debt," though, is an elegy to Donne's wife, Anne, who died in 1617,[4]: p.63  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.[4]: p.51 

Publication history

The Holy Sonnets were not published during Donne's lifetime and were first published with other poems two years after his death in 1633.

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.[5] 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.[4]: p.51 

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,[3]: pp.386-387  probably from manuscripts overseen by Donne himself.[4]: p.51  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.

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 omitted
As due by many titles I resign 02 02 01
O might those sighs and tears return again 03 03 omitted
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 omitted
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 omitted
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 omitted 11 omitted
Why are we by all creatures waited on? omitted 12 omitted
What if this present were the world's last night? omitted 13 omitted
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you omitted 14 10
Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt omitted 17 omitted
Show me, dear Christ, thy spouse so bright and clear omitted 18 omitted
O, to vex me, contraries meet in one omitted 19 omitted
Spit in soned God; for you omitted omitted 07

Analysis and interpretation

Themes

A few months before his death, Donne commissioned this portrait of himself as he expected to appear when he rose from the grave at the Apocalypse.[6] He hung the portrait on his wall as a reminder of the transience of life.

According to scholar A. J. Smith, the Holy Sonnets "make a universal drama of religious life, in which every moment may confront us with the final annulment of time."[1] Donne's poetry is heavily informed by his Anglican faith and are often evidence of his own internal struggles as he considered pursuing the priesthood.[1] The poems explore the wages of sin and death, the doctrine of redemption, opening "the sinner to God, imploring God's forceful intervention by the sinner's willing acknowledgment of the need for a drastic onslaught upon his present hardened state" and that "self-recognition is a necessary means to grace."[1] The personal nature of the poems "reflect their author’s struggles to come to terms with his own history of sinfulness, his inconstant and unreliable faith, his anxiety about his salvation."[7]: p.108  He is obsessed with his own mortality but acknowledges it as a path to God's grace.[8] Donne is concerned about the future state of his soul, fearing not the quick sting of death but the need to achieve salvation before damnation and a desire to get one's spiritual affairs in order. The poems are "suffused with the language of bodily decay" expressing a fear of death that recognizes recognizing the impermanence of life by descriptions of his physical condition and inevitability of "mortal flesh" compared with an eternal afterlife.[7]: p.106-107 

It is said that Donne's sonnets were heavily influenced by his connections to the Jesuits through his uncle Jasper Haywood, and from the works of the founder of the Jesuit Order, Ignatius Loyola.[7]: p.109 [9] Donne chose the sonnet because the form can be divided into three parts (two quatrains, one sestina) similar to the form of meditation or spiritual exercise described by Loyola in which (1) the penitent conjures up the scene of meditation before him (2) the penitent analyzes, seeking to glean and then embrace whatever truths it may contain; and (3) after analysis, the penitent is ready to address God in a form of petition or resign himself to divine will that the meditation reveals.[7]: p.109 [9][10]

Legacy

The Trinity site

It is thought that physicist and Manhattan Project director J. Robert Oppenheimer named the site of the first nuclear weapon test site, the Trinity site after some extracts of the Holy Sonnets. At the time of the preparations for the test, Oppenheimer was reportedly reading Holy Sonnets. In 1962, General Leslie Groves wrote to Oppenheimer about the origin of the name, asking if he had chosen it because it was a name common to rivers and peaks in the West and would not attract attention.[12] Oppenheimer replied:

I did suggest it, but not on that ground... Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation: "As West and East / In all flatt Maps—and I am one—are one, / So death doth touch the Resurrection." That still does not make a Trinity, but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, "Batter my heart, three person'd God;—."[12][13]

Historian Gregg Herken believes that Oppenheimer named the site in reference to Donne poems as a tribute to his deceased mistress, psychiatrist and physician Jean Tatlock (1914–1944), the daughter of an English literature professor and philologist, who introduced Oppenheimer to the works of Donne.[14]: pp.29, 129  Tatlock committed suicide the 18 months before the test after the conclusion of her affair with Oppenheimer.[14]: p.119 [15]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e Smith, A. J. Biography: John Donne 1572-1631 at Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org). Retrieved 2 July 2013.
  2. ^ Ruf, Frederick J. Entangled Voices: Genre and the Religious Construction of the Self. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 41. ISBN 978-0-19-510263-5.
  3. ^ a b Cummings, Brian. The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). ISBN 978-0-19-922633-7
  4. ^ a b c d Cummings, Robert M. Seventeenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology. (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000). ISBN 978-0-631-21066-5
  5. ^ Stringer, Gary A. The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne. Volume 1, Part 1. (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2005), x. ISBN 978-0-253-34701-5
  6. ^ Lapham, Lewis. The End of the World. (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 1997), 98.
  7. ^ a b c d Targoff, Ramie. John Donne, Body and Soul. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). ISBN 978-0-226-78963-7
  8. ^ Ettari, Gary. "Rebirth and Renewal in John Donne’s The Holy Sonnets,” in Bloom, Harold, and Hobby, Blake (editors). Bloom's Literary Themes: Rebirth and Renewal (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009), 125. ISBN 978-0-7910-9805-9
  9. ^ a b Martz, Louis L. The Poetry of Meditation: A Study in English Religious Literature of the 17th Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), 107-112, 221-235; and "John Donne in Meditation: The Anniversaries," English Literary History 14(4) (December 1947), 248-62.
  10. ^ Capps, Donald. "A Spiritual Person," in Cole, Allan Hugh, Jr. (editor). A Spiritual Life: Perspectives from Poets, Prophets, and Preachers (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 96. ISBN 978-0-664-23492-8
  11. ^ Evans, Peter. The Music of Benjamin Britten. (2nd Ed. - Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 349-353. ISBN 978-0-19-816590-3; White, Eric Walter. Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 45. ISBN 978-0-520-01679-8
  12. ^ a b Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), pp. 571–572.
  13. ^ Oppenheimer references quotations from two of Donne's poems, the first from Donne's "Hymne to God My God, in My Sicknesse", and the second "Sonnet XIV" from Holy Sonnets—both of which can be found in Donne, John, and Chambers E. K. (editor). Poems of John Donne]. Volume I. (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896), 165, 211–212.
  14. ^ a b Herken, Gregg. Brotherhood of the Bomb. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2003). ISBN 978-0-8050-6589-3
  15. ^ Bird, Kai, and Martin J. Sherwin. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 249-254. ISBN 978-0-375-41202-8
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