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1、ENGL 125: Major English Poets Professor George FayenHoliest Love: The Spiritual Valediction in “A Hymne to Christ”by Alexandra SchwartzDespite its title, John Donnes “A Hymne to Christ, at the Authors last going into Germany” seems to have more in common with his earlier valedictions than with a rel
2、igious ode. The poem does not demonstrate the element of collective prayer that characterizes a hymn, nor does it possess the hymns generalized lyrics that would enable one congregation to recite it with as much conviction and sense of individual connectedness to God than any other. Rather, “A Hymne
3、 to Christ” consists of Donnes entirely personal reflection on his relationship to a central figure in his life at a time of imminent departure from his home, a premise that is familiar from poems such as “A Valediction of my name, in the window” or “A Valediction forbidding mourning.” If those earl
4、ier works could be read as secular prayers begging the remembrance of a lover at a time of leave-taking, this work inverts this structure to create instead a religious love poem addressed to God as Donne prepares for death. Given such an alteration of the love poems framework to depict a relationshi
5、p in which Donne no longer holds the most power, a central question emerges: what are the new responsibilities and demands between poet and subject, or lover and beloved, and how to depict them? As he explores his newfound role as the more dependent of two lovers, Donne revises the valedictions inhe
6、rent rhythms and tropes to express a different kind of relationship. In this new structure, love might not be best rewarded through mutual 2devotion, but rather through the individuals pledging of himself despite the potential impossibility of connection with what he most desires.In the first stanza
7、 of “A Hymne to Christ,” Donne strips away the artistry from his conceit, inverting the use of a familiar technique to express a new kind of humility before the subject of his poem. The conceits in “A Valediction forbidding mourning” and “A Valediction of my name, in the window” take the form of sub
8、tle analogies, worked into the framework of the poem as a way of convincing the invoked lover to remain faithful to the poet while he is away. Donne introduces the compass conceit in the first poem with no more notice than the simple, “they are two so/ As stiffe twin compasses are two” (VFM, ll. 25-
9、26). In the second, the conceit of the engraved window is not announced at all, but instead is present from the first line in the form of a concrete image from which the poets discussion can emerge. Such nuance is completely absent from the opening of “A Hymne to Christ,” which Donne begins by clear
10、ly outlining his intended symbols:“In what torne ship soever I embarke,That ship shall be my embleme of thy Arke;What sea soever swallow me, that floodShall be to mee an embleme of thy bloode” (ll. 1-4).In the valedictions, the conceit actsat least in partas an effective method of persuasion towards
11、 the poets purpose. If Donnes lover does not respond to his direct admonition, for example, not to mourn at his departure, expressing the idea with an image translates the concept into a concrete form that may be easier to accept. Here, any subtlety or indirectness is not necessary because the conce
12、its audience is not the poets subject, but rather the poet himself, as Donne indicates by noting that the poems symbols will be read only as “my embleme.” By putting himself in the position of receiving 3conceits as emblems of greater ideas, Donne effectively portrays himself as Christs reader, usin
13、g his own symbolic language to grasp the much greater concepts of his Gods life and works.In manipulating the motif of concealment that he introduces at the end of the stanza, Donne expresses hope at his potential to achieve closeness to God through the interpretation of the conceits that he himself
14、 constructs. The description of God, who “with clouds of anger do disguise/ Thy face” (ll. 5-6), is a more familiar kind of conceit, devoid of any explanation of the clear symbolism. Given Donnes new position as reader of his own symbols in order to understand God, the concrete image of clouds sugge
15、sts the attempt to conceive of the divine in a way that would make him more easily perceptible to his worshipper, just as the image of a name in a window might help Donnes lover to remember him when his body is not near. The success of this method is evident as Donne continues his conceit of conceal
16、ment with the declaration, “yet through that maske I know those eyes,/ Which, though they turne away sometimes,/ They never will despise” (ll. 6-8). By proclaiming his ability to see beneath the metaphorical mask that he has constructed as a way to understand God, Donne confirms his premise that is possible to draw closer to the divine through language. Having addressed the changed role of poet to subject, Donne shifts in the second stanza to an exploration of
