John Donne

John Donne was an English metaphysical poet who lived from January, 1572 to March, 1631. As a poet, he was widely known for his use of parody, irony, and wit. As a priest, Donne was widely known for his meditations and sermons on love and death, and his inner conflict with both.

Donne merges religion with language in what is perhaps his most memorable poem, The Canonization. The Canonization largely reflects certain themes of Donne’s own life, and is characterized by religion, wit, eloquence, and most of all, paradox. A paradox is an idea that in its very nature is contradictory to itself, and therefore can never be proven correct or incorrect. A true paradox can only ever exist. We see throughout Donne’s life that he is serious about death because he preaches and writes about it with frequency and aplomb, but many of his poems take mocking tones with death. Donne’s relationship with death is a paradox, because he is both serious and flippant towards it.

The Canonization is told from the point of view of a lover, who is being criticized for loving, and has to defend his love. The narrator is the embodiment of Donne’s own ideas and reasoning. In The Canonization, Donne artfully utilizes parodies. A parody is a humorous reflection of another work, observation, or idea.  He uses these clever imitations as tools to help him express his main paradox, the idea that love is both the weapon that can hurt a human the most, and that it is the antidote to any of life’s poisons. Through logical parodies, Donne is able to create a paradox that escapes the realm of reason.

Donne exclaims in the first line of his second stanza “Alas ! alas ! who’s injured by my love? / What merchant’s ships have my sighs drown’d? / Who says my tears have overflow’d his ground?” At first, Donne seems to promote the innocence of love. In later stanzas, however, Donne answers these questions himself, contending that love is a weapon that can severely injure both emotionally and physically: “We’re tapers too, and at our own cost die.” Donne is conveying that the two lovers are like candles; like the gradual degradation that a flame brings to the wax of a candle, their love, their fire for each other, consumes their beings and eats them alive, until they finally melt away.

While Donne acknowledges that love can cause people great harm, he still writes in its defense. At the beginning of the poem, he recounts a list of things that love has made him oblivious to: his ailments, his old age, and his troubled finances. Donne knows that the readers of The Canonization will criticize him for putting so much faith in love, but he still does it. He is content with the fact that he and his love are together, and “are made such by love.” Even though the narrator leads a troubled life, love can remedy all of his problems. Throughout his poem, Donne openly acknowledges the great conflict and paradox of love. He compares the two lovers to phoenixes, who “die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love.” Donne contests that love is enough for him, both in life and death. Arguing that his love is legendary, Donne says that a little goes a long way “as a well-wrought urn becomes / The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,” and that everyone craves love. “Countries, towns, courts: beg from above / A pattern of your love.” Ultimately, Donne uses his repartee to charm the reader, and make them more easily understand his relationship to love.