John Donne is obviously a poet who knows how to write about love. What I wanted to concentrate on in this week’s rumination is how Donne uses the ideas of waking and sleeping in many of his poems. The common cliché that lovers often say to each other gravitates around something like, “you are the first person I think of when I wake up, and the last person I think about before I sleep.” With the few Donne poems we were assigned, the most striking occurrence was the mentioning of morning and night in relation to love.
The titles of three of Donne’s poems reference morning. These poems include, “The Good-Morrow,” “The Sun Rising,” and “Break of Day.” These three poems deal with the narrator ‘greeting’ morning in different ways. For instance in “The Good-Morrow,” the narrator speaks about not knowing what they did before they loved. They talked about a good morning waking their soul and adventuring through love. There is an interesting comparison made about discovering new worlds. I took this as the narrator promoting discovering a new world of love, just as a map would lead a sea-discoverer to a new land. It talks about that good morning is the start of these adventures, so morning is put in a good light in this poem.
In “The Sun Rising” the narrator doe not welcome the sun. The narrator feels that the “unruly sun” calls on the lovers in bed and “must to thy motions lover’s seasons run.” The speaker, who just happens to be a king, in the beginning of the poem felt as though he was more important and powerful than the sun. He did not welcome it at first. Later in the poem, the tone changes. He speaks of how if it weren’t for the light of morning sun he would not be able to see the wonderful woman lying next to him in bed. By the end of the poem, once again the morning light is an important factor in this narrator’s story of love.
Lastly, the main character in the poem “Break of Day” is actually the Light, that comes from the morning. Throughout the poem, it is Light that actually interferes with the lovers. It is written from the perspective of a woman, who is angry that the lovers must part people Light makes an appearance.
What is the fascination with morning, light, the sun, ect. when it come to Donne and love? Another cliché that I believe Donne would agree with is when a person says, “the sun rises and sets on a person.” Donne has to think that love is fresh and awakening, since he pairs it up with morning sun in his poems. We also see how he may pair love up with night and darkness and togetherness. Either way, it is clear that Donne enjoys using “Morning” as a major part of his poems.
It's interesting how you compared many of Donne's poems to the common cliche: “you are the first person I think of when I wake up, and the last person I think about before I sleep.” The cliche makes perfect sense with Donne's work. Love is about wanting to be with a person everyday for the rest of their life. Throughout Donne's poems he used morning and night to convey his messages about love.
ReplyDeleteI think that your points are very interesting. I have been reading Donne’s poems paying attention to the meticulous details, and had no idea that the ideas behind them are so cliché. After all that, he looks at love the same way everyone does, he just puts a very artistic twist on his words.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this is a very interesting correlation to have made in regard to Donne's poems. As the introduction to Donne explained, cliches of love poetry were reinvigorated and radically transformed by his unique wit and style of writing. I think this is perfectly illustrated by the many ways he used the idea of morning, light, waking etc. to describe not only love itself but, more poignantly, the EXPERIENCE of love. He reinvented the use of these ideas-- typically used in tired metaphors and cliches such as, "the sun rises and sets on you my love" or "your love is like my sun" etc.-- to be applicable to the various emotions and feelings one experiences with love. I believe that is why he was able to achieve such starkly different uses for the idea of morning and waking in "The Good-Morrow," compared to "The Sun Rising" and "Break of Day."
ReplyDeleteAs for what his fascination is with this specific topic of morning, light, sun etc., I think perhaps it could be the fact that it innately allows for a point of contrast with night, dark, sleep etc. which allows for a clearer explanation of the feeling or emotion he is portraying or trying to evoke. Kind of like the idea that you could never fully appreciate sincere happiness if you didn't have sadness to compare it to... so maybe he considers this is just a universally understood idea that allows him to better explain love? I don't know.. that doesn't really address all of his uses for it, but I wanted to give your question some feedback to consider.
All in all I enjoyed this post and digging a little deeper into the creative process of such an interesting poet as Donne. Great job!