John Donne: Man of Flesh and Spirit (review)

It has never been easy to get John Donne into focus. His readers experience difficulty in holding together the received images of the young Jack Donne—Catholic recusant and sensual metaphysical poet—and the older Dr. Donne, Protestant minister and preacher of devout sermons. For many, the difficulty is evaded by prizing the author of the Satires and Elegies and, of course, the Songs and Sonnets, while leaving the Sermons and other prose writings unread. For others, the difficulty is overcome by seeking the preacher in the erotic lyricist. Read properly, it is said, the early lyrics reveal a tormented religious life that is only somewhat calmed in the later sermons; and so the lover becomes father to the priest.

Arguments about the dating of Donne's writings complicate the received pictures we have of the younger and the older man. Were the Songs and Sonnets composed before Donne's secret marriage to Ann More in 1601? Or were some (or all) of them penned while he was a married man, so that we must read Donne now fantasizing about adultery and now praising conjugal love? Can we draw a clear line in history between the composition of the licentious Songs and Sonnets and the Holy Sonnets? If not, does this affect our judgment of the religious seriousness of the Holy Sonnets?

Similarly, questions about Donne's sense of himself as clergyman unsettle easy distinctions between the hardened images of the poet and divine. Did his conforming to the Church of England in the 1590s amount to no more than swearing that he did not recognize the papal deposition of Elizabeth I and James I while nonetheless hoping for a restoration of the Catholic faith? Or was it apostasy and opportunism? When he took Holy Orders in 1615 was he sincerely answering a divine call? Or was he merely acting, once more, as a careerist without a career? (The University of Cambridge thought so when required by James I to grant him the degree of Doctor of Divinity). And we can further worry the distinction by inquiring into the complexion of Donne's religious beliefs. When he conformed to the Church of England did he change his views to any great extent? And when he was Dean of St Paul's in what way or ways was he a Protestant, and to what extent did he keep faith with the "old religion"?

In his engaging new book, David L. Edwards attempts to take a steady, even view of Donne. He engages all the questions I have raised in a calm manner and defends his subject from unfair criticism without bypassing the man's limitations and faults. In Edwards's eyes, Donne remains a complex individual sometimes pulled, as we are all, in contrary directions. He was a man of his time, and in some respects a more enlightened one than is suggested by the "Tut tut" school of criticism that has been so much in vogue in recent years. Yet to call Donne "Man of Flesh and Spirit," as Edwards does in his subtitle, is not to pick out anything special to the poet. It is the individual negotiations of "flesh" and "spirit" in verse and prose that make Donne a vital figure. Edwards succeeds in making us recognize the competing forces at work on and in Donne, and certainly places him in as favorable a light as is possible. His book is not one, however, that will help us follow specific literary negotiations in any detail. A reader of this book will hear Ben Jonson's complaint against Donne's neglect of meter, but will not learn anything about how to treat lines in individual poems. The reader will learn that Donne defended the Eucharist as a sacrifice (see The Sermons of John Donne, 7: 429), but...