During the Renaissance there was a change
of emphasis, which appeared to be man-centered rather than strictly G-d-centered.
Educated men became interested in scientific knowledge but they still placed
their ultimate salvation and trust in their knowledge of G-d. The
Renaissance attitude toward man’s desires, body, soul, knowledge and belief in
G-d is perhaps best reflected in John Donne’s poetry, which incorporated
scientific and individualist ideas into the verses.
Catholic dichotomy between spirit and flesh is one of the Catholic ideas that Donne abandons in his poetry.
Catholics adopted this idea from the platonic understanding of the
separation between the spirit, which is to be of the holy, divine nature, and
the material body, which is tended to be corruptible and finally tended to die,
unlike the immortal soul. Donne,
however, seams to generate his own understanding of the connection between
spirit and flesh, which is represented in his poem The Ecstasy: “Love's mysteries
in souls do grow, /But yet the body is his book” (71-72). The poet uses the term “mysteries”, which was
a theological term attached to Jesus’ resurrection. Donne’s love between a man and a woman is
represented as a spiritual and even divine substance. Moreover, the poet assumes lovers to be “saints”
and human love to be holy in his The Canonization: “Us canonized for
love” (36). For him there’s no contradiction
between a mortal, representing libido “fly” (19) and the image of the Holy
Spirit - “dove” (21). “The phoenix
riddle” (22) has a multiple meaning; a man and a woman cannot be separated,
because G-d creating Adam and Eve, made them “two being one” (23).
Donne also declares love
to be G-d’s creation in The Ecstasy:
“On man heaven's influence” (57). In “For soul into the soul may flow, /Though
it to body first repair” (58-57), love
is attached to the physical world and to the spirit; it is impossible to
separate them because they are meant to be one.
Donne, living during the Renaissance has followed the man-centric
tendency, while exploring the mechanism of his soul and body.
Thus, creating his own attitude
towards this mechanism, Donne abandons Cartesian dichotomy between mind and
body. The
notion that the mind is somehow distinct from the body goes back to Descartes’ agreement
with the Roman Catholic Church. He studied science and left the soul, the mind,
the emotions, and consciousness to the realm of the church. John
Donne proclaimed with anti-Cartesian poetic wisdom
that “the body makes the mind”. Gold,
David. “John Donne’s Poetry.” The Complete English Poems. Ed. A. K. Stone.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986. His poetry has embodied
knowledge and has emphasized in The Ecstasy that “by good love” (23), which is attached for him
to the flesh, “were grown all mind” (23).
In this poem he makes use of the concept of
atoms: “We then, who are this new soule, know, of what we are compos'd, and
made /For, the atomies of which we grow” (45-47). The poet values sciences and knowledge,
that’s why he includes a scientific term into his verse. His “soule” is immediately followed by
“know”; this combination derives from Donne’s individualist philosophy, where
the feelings, the soul, the body and the mind are of one substance. In addition to it he proclaims that body,
which is inseparable from soul, is a vehicle of one’s knowledge. Donne says that in order to understand the
notion of the divine substance, which is soul, one has to use his mind: “That he soul's language understood”
(22). This new learning and
understanding will help the development of “all mind” (24). Human being uses his brain, while thinking;
man cannot exist after physical separation of his “mind” – the brain, and the
body. So, there’s no logical reason for
doing so metaphysically.
It is possible to
interpret John Donne’s new conceptions as the complete rejection of all
religious dogmas of Christianity. His
emphasizing of sexual human love on one hand and relating it to G-d on the
other may easily be understood this way.
He dares to mention that “we grow” out of atomies, which disparage the
notion of the Holy Creation. This
opinion is an error in regard to the fact that Donne was a very religious person
as well as a great number of scientists and philosophers of the Age of
Discovery. Even the men who produced the scientific revolution,
including Copernicus, Galileo and Newton
were all deeply religious men who believed that their discoveries revealed more
deeply the glory of God. The poet does
not abandon G-d, but dedicates the majority of his poems to Him. His poetry is a manifesto of a learned and a
loving man about his gratitude to the Creator for being able to live, to think
and to love.
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