John Donne's The Progresse of the Soule: a Re-evaluation

JOHN DONNE'S THE PROGRESSE OF THE SOULE: A RE-EVALUATION John A. Thomas John Donne's satiric The Progresse of the Soule is generally tagged as a highly original though unsuccessful poem of doubtful taste. What is original in the poem is what its critics apparently think made it "unsuccessful." Don Cameron Allen isolates its originality as recondite allusions to erudite materials that came to form the mock heroic episodes in a Spenserian-like allegorized epic. He then comments, "There is in literature, so far as I know, no pattern for such a poem, which is perhaps a way of saying that it could not succeed."1 The poem is not successful as an epic, obviously, because it breaks off after fifty-two stanzas. Nonetheless the poem is a skillful one, well suited to young Donne's paradoxical mind which delighted in the witty argument of opposing ideas raised by the chaotic and illogical incidents of a fallen world. It is unfortunate, moreover, that an old but unjustified stigma of "poor taste" has attached itself like an epithet to the poem since this generalization has tended to direct modem studies into the poem's curiosities rather than into a necessary re-evaluation of its artistry. If the poem is representative of the vigorously casuistic Donne of the turn of the century, the manner of presentation is accordingly unconventional, in order that the episodes of the poem breathe life into the frozen emblems popular at the time. Presenting a libertine , naturalistic view of creation and the continuing chain of life, Donne raises heretical questions in his dialectic on the emblematic pictures. Such condensed language produces a harshness somewhat like that of his satirical verse of the 1590's. It is the purpose of this study to show that Donne's narrative is carefully wrought to give macrocosmic perspective to the poem as well as to show that each episode achieves its own balance or a balance with other episodes through structure and through witty similia interlaced with aphoristic pronouncements . The poem, then, may best be described as considerations of heretical and orthodox opinions on creation derived from emblematic pictures, quickened by Donne's strong-lined poetry. Significantly, the ambiguity of the last words of the poem reveals the creative impulse behind the narrative: "TKer's nothing simply good, nor ill alone,/ Of every quality comparison,/ The onely measure is, and judge, opinion."2 If the frame of reference is agnostic , Donne is heretically suggesting that opinion furnishes men their only ^The Double Journey of John Donne," in A Tribute to George Coffin Taylor, ed. Arnold Williams (Chapel HiU, 1952), p. 90. 2Even though Donne's words are like Shakespeare's, "There's nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so," Donne's words end a poem that is remarkable for its ambivalence, increasing the number of possible meanings of a statement about the relativity of meaning. The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne, ed. Charles M. Coffin (New York, 1952), 11.518-20. Subsequent references to The Progresse of the Soule come from this text and, when convenient, appear in the body of the paper. 112 The Progresse of the Soule: A Re-evaluation113 light; if the frame of reference is theistic, Donne is being satirical, but orthodox , recognizing his own weakness to judge or distinguish good from evil. Or possibly, he is philosophizing about the theme of the evil soul; in which case, he means that the sinning soul, in its reckless quest for supremacy, is impartial and will either insinuate its evil desires into all creatures or destroy them from without, whether it be willed or not. We need not select from these meanings , for in remaining indecisive, he implies that the best answer is no answer but only awareness of the question. Donne achieves a sense of order in the stracturing of the poem by having the errant soul of the apple follow approximately an ascending chain of life suggested by the creation scene in the Book of Genesis: hence the soul moves up the life-ladder—plant, fowl, fish, whale, creeping things (mouse), beast, man.3 Regardless of this hierarchy, Donne dramatizes...