Vulnerability in the Works of John Donne :: Biography Biographies Essays

Free Essay on John Donne - A Journey finished Vulnerability John Donne uses poetry to explore his own identity, express his feelings, and most of all, he uses it to deal with the personal experiences occurring in his life. Donnes poetry is a confrontation or struggle to find a place in this world, or rather, a role to play in a society from which he often finds himself spare or withdrawn. This essay will discuss Donnes states of mind, his views on love, women, religion, his relationship with God and finally how the use of poetic form plays a part in his geographic expedition for an identity and salvation. The speaker in Donnes poetry is a theatrical character, constantly in different situations, and using different roles to suit the action. He can government issue on the role of the womanizer, as in The Indifferent, or the faithful caramel from Lovers Infiniteness, tho the speaker in each of these rimes is always John Donne himself. Each poem contains a strong sense of Donnes own self-inte succour. According to Professor J. Crofts, Donne Throughout his life... was a man self-haunted, unable to escape from his own drama, unable to find any(prenominal) window that would not give him back the image of himself. Even the mistress of his most passionate love-verses, who must (one supposes) have been a real person, remains for him a mere abstraction of sex a thing given. He does not see her --does not apparently want to see her for it is not of her that he writes, but of his relation to her not of love, but of himself loving. In Elegy XIX To His Mistress Going to Bed, we are confronted with one of Donnes personalities. The poem begins abruptly Come, Madam, come All rest my powers defy/ Until I labour, I in l abour lie. The reader is immediately thrust into the middle of a private scene in which Donne attempts to convince his lover to undress and come to bed. There is only one speaker in this poem, Donne, we do not hear the voice or a des cription of the feelings of another(prenominal) person, but she is always present. If Samuel Johnson was correct when he made the statement that the metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavour.