John Donne's Angst

     In the "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Prufrock can find no escape from his anxiety, self-doubt, and shallow society he lives in.  We can imagine him winding his way endlessly through a modern purgatory searching for a love to fulfill his life and save him from himself.  It is interesting and significant that during the years Eliot wrote this poem and the later "The Waste Land" (1922), Eliot's own life was darkened by a loveless marriage, a sense that life was hollow, and the Western world was undergoing inexorable cultural and spiritual decay.  That changed when he converted to Anglicanism and his poems reflected his longing for personal serenity.  From that time onward, Eliot's most unifying element in his work was his Christianity.  

     Like Eliot, another poet who moved from poems of secular concerns to ones of religious themes was John Donne (1572-1631).  And although his poetry was appreciated during his life and for a short time after his death, it fell into relative obscurity until Eliot championed him as an innovative artist and wrote an essay (The Metaphysical Poets, 1921) that secured his proper place among major English poets.  Today, Donne's poetry continues to resonate among some readers, but wider opportunities to encounter his poems in schools and universities have been supplanted by the English classes in which identity and gender politics dominate the curriculum.  

     Though no person's work can be divided into two precise portions, Donne's poetry does seem to branch into distinct fields: first, secular poems that celebrate physical and spiritual love; second, religious poems that lay open his anxiety and ambivalence concerning God's mercy.   

      One of his most powerful religious poems is his Sonnet IX, "If poisonous minerals."  (Some spelling and punctuation for this poem have been modernized.)  

                    If poisonous minerals, and if that tree

                    Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,

                    If lecherous goats, if serpents envious

                    Cannot be damn'd, alas, why should I be?

                    Why should intent or reason, born in me,

                    Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?

                    And mercy being easy, and glorious

                    To God, in his stern wrath why threatens he?

                    But who am I, that dare dispute with thee,

                    O God? Oh, of thine only worthy blood

                    And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,

                    And drown in it my sins' black memory;

                    That thou remember them, some claim as debt;

                    I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.

     In this poem, Donne begins by formulating a litany of logical points.  But within this logic there is a persistent and irresistible counter argument he keeps raising himself.  He asserts, "Why should he be accountable for his (sinful) nature when it was God himself who planted "that tree,/Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us"?  His point is plausible, so far, so good.  He follows with a comparison.  Why if other earthly creatures "Cannot be damn'd" should he be?  After all, are not goats lecherous, and serpents envious?  Shouldn't justice that is "Divine" be parceled out equally?  But is there something "equal" between him and other earthly creatures?   There is an essential distinction, and he admits it:  he possesses "reason," a faculty which endows him with means to discern and control moral implications of his actions; something animals simply don't have.  So why does he cite them as evidence to exonerate his personal culpability?  Are these psychological projections?  Whatever they may be, Donne's own words actually undermine his assertions almost as soon as he makes them.  He devises a more theological and tactful question and asks why would God threaten him, if Christianity's most important theological principle is Divine Mercy?  Isn't mercy "easy" for God to offer to all sinners?  Doesn't mercy amplify the glory of God?  

     By the eighth line of the poem, Donne's questions and seemingly logical argument wilt the moment they slam against the unyielding force of God's "stern wrath." He seems as lost as Prufrock, doom to inescapable suffering.  But as he moves through the sestet, his Christian conscience concedes his "dispute" is futile and entreats God to absolve him of his sins instead.  He asks that Christ's blood mix with his tears, so those sins are forgotten:  "Oh! of thine only worthy blood,/And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,/And drown in it my sins black memory." If God will not expunge those sins, then he asks that they be forgiven: "That thou remember them, some claim as debt."  If the poem were to end here, it would appear that Donne has repented his sins, given up his initial argument and submitted himself to the will of God.  But does he surrender completely?  The final line seems to gravitate back toward dispute as he suggests or rather argues again that God should forget his sins: "I think it mercy, if thou would forget."  Is Donne disputing again, attempting to persuade, to influence God's judgment?  This "second" request slides like a wedge between the eternal judge and the supposed penitent.  Is the tone of this line presumptive or repentant?  Why does he conflate God forgetting his sins with mercy when fear of damnation hovers over him?  What has become of the grace that infuses faith or does Donne believe that he only needs mercy to rescue his soul?