Romantic Contradiction in the Poetry of John Donne Essay -- Poetry Poe

Romantic Contradiction in the Poetry of John Donne John Donne's poem "Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed" is closely related to "The Sun Rising" in its treatment of love, lust, and togetherness. Both discuss and argue different stances on the same topics, but are united by their language and development. The structure of "Elegy 19" and use of poetic techniques relate it directly and indirectly to "The Sun Rising". In "Elegy 19", there are forty-eight lines of adoration of the mistress of the title; this poem is full of reverence, veneration, and respect for the female form. In passages such as Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals As when from flowery meads th' hill's shadow steals or perhaps Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee. As souls unbodied unclothed must be, To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use Are like Atalanta's balls, cast in men's views Donne clearly has a high and lofty image of the human female form. Yet this deification is undermined by the lusty, bawdy qualities of the poem. For example, when Donne reaches the conclusion of the poem he does not summarize his mistress' physical beauty, but instead promises sexual adventure. This is seen in the final three lines, Here is no penance, much less innocence. To teach thee, I am naked first; why then What need'st thou have more covering than a man? which clearly negates (or at least portrays negatively) the earlier, more romantic aspects of the poem. Other words have double meanings, which furthers the bawdy aspects of the poem, making seemingly innocuous passages into ribald declarations. Examples of double usage of words include "labor", which means both ‘get to work s... ...mplies sexual activity. Indeed, despite its romantic qualities, invoking the bed the lovers share as the center of the sun's orbits has a clear sensual tinge; it is as if the sexual activity of the lovers is the center of the world, for what else is a bed the symbol of, if not consummation of love? So in these two Donne poems, "Elegy 19" and "The Sun Rising", various poetic structures are used to create a split atmosphere of both romantic love and sexual love, which coexist within the fabric of the poetry. Donne skillfully uses such forms as direct address, indirect address, both stanzaic forms conventional and unconventional, and adept language manipulation to convey two messages simultaneously, and in doing so he paints an accurate portrait of the reality of love: that there is always a mix of romantic and sexual sentiments in the relationships between lovers.