Donne and Cavalier poets

I’m having huge ethical problems with alchemy. Alchemy as I understand it is the attempt to bring a material object to its telos or final physical form (aka gold usually) by spiritual processes or whatnot – basically that alchemy requires the purity of soul of the alchemist in order to bring about the purest form of the object. Yes? But fundamentally this seems to be attempting to mess with God’s creation by changing something that God has created and giving it a new or better form, almost as if trying to ‘fix’ what God didn’t make perfect in trying to make it perfect. But being not God, should humans ever have attempted that, and in the very attempt isn’t that somehow latently say that one was assuming that God had made a mistake? Or even further, wouldn’t it be the height of hubris to assume that one could be a successful alchemist, or that successful alchemy could be done by anyone other than Jesus, since humans are all sinful and thus lacking in the perfection required to bring objects to their telos? I know that they conceived of the world in distinct levels or hierarchies of creation from something like a stone all the way up the sphere of the angels, but where do we get off thinking we can actually move something up the spheres? Isn’t even the really legitimate, non-fetishizing attempt to perform alchemy in a sense idolatrous? Would it perhaps work better to look at all the different forms of metal that one finds on the earth and assume that they are all there in varying states of perfection as a sort of reminder that all souls exist in varying states of perfection?

Alchemy was being held up as a sort of recourse against the monetary/financial view of gold, viewing the financialization of gold as being fetishistic, whereas for alchemists gold is merely the outward material sign of a more spiritual form of perfection.



Donne – Songs and Sonnets/Holy Sonnets/Satire 3:

Donne is particularly concerned with love between souls rather than between bodies (sex) in his poetry. For him, love is expressed as a meeting of souls – this particular conceit finds itself in ‘the Good Morrow’ or ‘Air and Angels’ where Donne goes to extremes (especially in the latter) to make sure that the love he expresses is not physical, or at the very least doesn’t have its origins in physicality. Sex then seems (however rarely it really happens explicitly) to be merely an extension of this contact between souls. ‘The Flea’ is a great poem, as the poet exclaims how wonderful it is that both of their blood is now contained within this one insect, and that it has accomplished without consequence what for them may very well result in pregnancy. The genius of this poem is that his mistress then heartlessly crushes this creature he’s imbued with such significance. This he manages to turn into an excuse to have sex – if she hasn’t damaged them physically by killing something that has their blood and power in it, then surely she shouldn’t worry so much about her reputation being ruined by having sex with him. Love for Donne is largely an ecstatic force – something that brings him outside of his body, and his lover outside of his/hers (having flipped through the Enigmatic Narrator), and he seems to draw pictures of the lovers quite often, encased in each other’s arms or staring off into space and enjoying being together, rather than focusing on actions or words. Love is thus the communion of souls, rather than the joining of bodies (although that may happen as well), and is interesting in comparison to Rochester, who looks entirely to the physical and experiential aspects of relationships, but seems entirely unable to love, or at least to consummate a sexual relationship with one he has fallen in love with. For Donne, sex and love seem to go together naturally and much more comfortably. Donne also doesn’t seem to have hated his life as much as did Rochester… Donne also runs into problems when dealing with the increase or decrease of love. This seems to point to some sort of valuation of love that in a world of Platonic love he is uncomfortable with, though it reminds me quite a bit of one of the first dictums in the Art of Courtly Love which quite clearly states that love is always increasing or decreasing – love is always valued in a sense, and that value is subject to constant change based on the actions and emotions of the lovers – Capellanus then continues by explaining the various emotional games of jealousy, etc., that one can play in order to help increase the other’s love. Capellanus was, however, not even remotely interested in Platonic love, focusing much more strongly on erotic love between adulterous couples.

The other major strain in Donne’s poetry is religious. He experiences a crisis of faith (and/or not a crisis per se, but a problem with religion in politics). The Holy Sonnets are largely a response to his position of faith, as it Satire no. 3, which is an attempt to persuade people to decide upon matters of faith in rational ways, as opposed to just basing their faith on the faith of their fathers. Donne at times doesn’t seem entirely comfortable with his jump to Anglicanism – there is speculation that he converted due to political pressures - as a Catholic, he would be unable to advance in politics or in the court scene, and he seems to desire very much to be active in the court scene (one reason I saw for this is that this desire to be a part of the court comes from the major success and influence at the time of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier which was very much in vogue at the time). One major worry seems to be (especially in Sonnet 5) whether or not it is too late to ask forgiveness for his rather flirtatious past. He also seems often to picture God as the Old Testament God – he mentions floods and plagues and the like, and it may be because of that picture that he worries so much about the possibility of salvation. He occasionally pictures his relationship with God as that of lovers – nicely medieval of him – and at times demands that God court him/that he court God or that God come and force him away, imprison him, or enthrall him as the only possible means by which he might be saved. Borrowing from Hawkes, for Donne, alchemy is something for God to practice on human souls, as their time on earth is time for God to help bring those souls to their perfection – presumably this would happen through the grace that Donne seems perpetually unsure of.

Herrick – ‘A Farewell To Sack’ is probably my favorite poem of the bunch. He turns the sherry he’s talking about into something approximating a combination of God and the Muses, which has power to make him creative and to complete him – it is his ‘soul to body’ ‘man to woman’ etc. – this all seems rankly idolatrous and really entertaining. The farewell itself is interesting in that it seems to understand all the flaws in his conception of the sherry, and is thus bidding it goodbye because he knows himself unable to deal with it in a moderate, natural fashion. The “Welcome to Sack” figures sack as a lover he’s dismissed in order to make the love between them grow (another trope used, however far removed, in the Art of Courtly Love). The idolatry of the former poem is renewed here, and celebrated as illustrious, and the union of himself and his beloved sack is treated in rather the same way the combining of blood is treated in Donne’s ‘the Flea’ – very much as a combination of the souls and blood of lovers.

Then we have the ‘carpe diem’ poems, which either point to a brief and fleeting moment of youth and beauty, or in the case of “Corinna’s Gone a-Maying” seem to have much more to do with enjoying a fun time in the brief moment that leisure time is found – there is also a sensuousness to his description of nature that further implies the seduction that seems to be at the heart of every good ‘carpe diem’ poem. ‘The Bad Season’ on the other hand points to the time after the heyday of fun, the misery that accompanies it. He doesn’t even really look back on the memories with enjoyment, but posits instead what he would do were the opportunity available to him to enjoy his life, and otherwise sits in moroseness. One would hope he enjoyed his time as much as he sent out to in the carpe poems… the general sense of sadness and repose in seclusion seems to be the hallmark of post-Charles-execution poems of cavalier tradition during the interregnum.

Lovelace – ‘the Grasshopper’ Combines a bit of the ‘carpe diem’ spirit of enjoyment the grasshopper has in summer with its ability to make happy all things around it and the idea that people should enjoy life when the opportunity presents itself like the grasshopper does, with the idea that happy moments and days don’t last – as in, grasshoppers die in winter – so when winter happens one should lay one’s store in with one’s friend – the poem at this point turns to a celebration of Platonic friendship, figured as the way in which people in adverse times can survive them. Through the bonds of such friendship, the participants need nothing outside of it, and thus can surmount everything – he counts this friendship as more important than the reality of the events outside the home and hearth, and that happiness comes from the feelings the friends can create in and with each other, rather than from the external world.

Denham – ‘Cooper’s Hill’ Denham seems to believe in divine right of rule, and thus imbues kingship with unalienable right to power by the one God has chosen (sloppy way to write that). He uses words to create new meanings, so that something like Cooper’s Hill can be a floating signifier that he can pin down with whatever meaning he wants – if successful, the Hill can be transformed into Parnassus, a transfiguration that would imply the poet’s almost god-like power over signification. WWMT? (what would Milton think?) He does a nice reading of St. Paul’s (recently restored) v. Chertsey Abbey (decaying due to Henry VIII) , which he would have say that Charles is a religious stronghold, rather than the hypocrite that Henry turned out to be shortly after being awarded the ‘defender of the faith’ title. That St. Paul’s is associated with Anglicanism is also helpful in that it shows the king to be a Reformer rather than a relapsing Catholic. Windsor is also mentioned, as is the court at York, both of which correlate to the idea that it is the king (or the presence of the king) which creates a court and gives it meaning. Charles is described as the height of perfection in a king in uniting both military might and piety, which works back into the idea of Charles as king as divinely ordained, militarily great (he is figured as Mars) and pious (through the Order of the Garter), the oppositions which create a strong and ideal king. The end of the poem is a dire warning against the populace and Charles going for opposite extremes – in the violence he creates he seems to envision the whole of the horrors of the Civil War before they happen.

Rochester - Ad lib as necessary. Talk about the poem 'Signoir Dildo'...