Donne; The Reformed Soul
by John Stubbs
Penguin, 2006.

Now that the cheaper paperbook edition has come out, there’s no excuse not to get this book and devour it like a great ice cream. Not only is the subject wonderful, the history fascinating, but Stubbs’ writing is a joy. Here’s a particularly memorable passage I’d like to share with you from pages 30–31:

“[Donne’s] writing was not ‘poetic’, in the schoolroom sense of that word as something airy and removed from actuality. In Donne’s early poems, matters of the heart became matter. They could be touched, felt, lost, broken. He thought so much about a girl that her face became imprinted in him. Her face was minted on his heart like a monarch’s profile on a penny: it brought value to a random, even base scrap of metal. He put it on a chain around his lover’s neck. She carried his heart away like a trinket, and he became her medal. He discovered the way lovers end up belonging together: they leave their stuff, and bits of themselves, with each other. They possess each other’s souls, but as everyday items, like keys, small change or cheap jewelry, things with functional or sentimental value: the things that go missing most easily, and stop life in its tracks until they are recovered.”

What a great commentary on Donne’s poems, and a fine insight into the bower-bird instinct in humans involved in the courting game. I’m marking more passages in this rich text as I go and hope to present a few more in future postings. Jess