All Our Scattered Leaves
Feb. 28th, 2010 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annundrielBecause I am in a mood.
This is one of my absolute hands-down favorite passages ever. I think it's beautiful.
This is one of my absolute hands-down favorite passages ever. I think it's beautiful.
The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and engrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.
- John Donne, Devotion 17, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-01 05:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-01 05:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-01 05:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-01 05:33 am (UTC)I took a ten-week course on Donne and it was fantastic.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-01 05:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-01 05:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-01 05:41 am (UTC)Though it did take me a month or two to go back to the Holy Sonnets and just enjoy them without wanting to bang my head against the wall after spending ten weeks picking them apart for my research paper. Oi.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-01 05:42 am (UTC)I just want to make flaily hands at it and discuss it forever.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-01 05:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-01 05:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-01 05:50 am (UTC)Which led to all sorts of interesting discussions over student anxiety over arguing against published arguments.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-01 06:25 am (UTC)John Donne is basically one of my favorite people ever. He's a metaphysical poet who lived from 1572 to 1631. In his later life, he also took Anglican orders. After being born to a big Roman Catholic family. So some of his poetry deals with spirituality and devotion. Some of my favorite poems are in his sequence of Holy Sonnets. One that has a special place in my heart because it was my introduction to Donne in a recognizable way is Sonnet 6 (or 11, depending on the publication) and can be found here (http://www.bartleby.com/105/72.html). Another poem I enjoy that isn't religious or spiritual is his Sappho to Philaenis (http://annundriel.livejournal.com/275494.html). He's got some really beautiful poems about love and poems about loss. Like A Valediction Forbidding Mourning (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/mourning.php). Oh, and then there's A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/nocturnal.htm).
And then there are the poems where he gets cheeky, and those are great, too. I never fail to read something of his without finding something in it I didn't see before.
Of course, you may be familiar with him and not be aware of it. A little after the bit I quoted in my entry, he writes: No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions was written when Donne was very ill (a fever, though I can't remember what exactly). So, as my professor pointed out at the time, you can imagine Donne lying in bed listening to the bell tolling in the church and wondering if his own death was upon him, but finding that all are connected and so when one man dies, so too does he and so that bell tolls for us all because we are all of us headed that way.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-01 10:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-02 12:12 am (UTC)Ooh, I think that's a great way to put it. Though in class we used to talk about how accessible his sermons were. I think a comparison was made to Jon Stewart. They're both able to present ideas in such a way that a larger group of people can understand them or get the general idea.
I love the guy and could talk about him forever.