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A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
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Word Count: 1312
Page Count: 6 A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
Intro to Poetry
Oct 10 2000
Interpretation of
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
Although that it may seem that the meaning of A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning could be applied to any couple awaiting separation, according to Izaak Walton, a seventeenth-century biographer, John Donne wrote his poem for his wife, Anne Donne, right before his departure for France in 1611 (Damrosch 238). However, even though the poem is not written to an audience, many of us can learn from what Donne is trying to convey to his wife. In the poem, Donne pleads with his lady to accept his departure. He defines and celebrates a love that transcends the physical realm and expresses that their love can therefore survive and even grow through their separation.
In arguing against mourning and emotional confusion, Donne uses a series of bold and unexpected comparisons for the love between himself and his lady. Donne makes his first surprising analogy in the first stanza when he compares the approaching separation of the lovers to death. “he speaker compares his parting from his lover to the parting of the soul from a virtuous man at death. According to the speaker, “virtuous men pass mildly away” (line 1) because the virtue in their lives has assured them of glory and happiness in the afterlife; therefore, they die in peace without fear and emotion. By this he suggests that the separation of the lovers is parrallel to the separation caused by death.
In the second stanza Donne furthers his comparison for a peaceful separation. “So let us melt, and make no noise” (line 5). The word “melt” implies a change in the physical state of love. The physical bond that he and his wife have will dissolve quietly like the soul of a dying man from his body. “Noise” refers to the “tear floods” that he does not want his love to release. The speaker and his love should not display their private, intimate love as “tear-floods” (tears), nor “sigh-tempests move” (breaths of air), (line 6). The speaker thinks that it would be a “profanation” (line 7) to reveal the sacred love he shares with his lady. It would be similar to priests revealing the mysteries of their faith to “the laity” (line 8), that is, to ordinary people. If they would publicly display their grief upon their separation he feels it would therefore defile the sacred love of him and his wife to be no better than the love of ordinary people.
The third stanza introduces another category of surprising comparative images, referring to the motions or changes of the earth and spheres. Earthquakes are perceived by almost everyone as often as a sign of misfortune. It is understandable that many fear earthquakes because of the damage they may cause to property and land; wheras a “trepidation of the spheres” would be viewed by many ,because they don’t know what it is, to have no apparent meaning. However, in order to understand the true meaning of this third quatrain of the poem, it is necessary to consider the Ptolemaic Universe and the symbolism Donne used by the sphere. Donne was a very well-educated man who studied famous thinkers such as Aristotle and Ptolemy, and their views of the universe. During the Middle Ages and the Elizabethan Age, philosophers views of the circle and sphere were looked upon by many as perfect shapes. The main influence behind this thinking may have been due to Greek philosophers such as Aristotle, who believed that the heavens were not straight or finite, but rather circular and eternal and were therefore perfect or divine(reflecting the perfection of God). They also believed that everything sublunary (below the moon), things that are on this earth, were imperfect, subject to deacy and death. Donne also lived in a time where everyone excepted the Ptolemaic theory of the universe, which stated that the planet..
...s moved in an orbit around the earth in concentric cirlcles annd that the universe was attached to spheres of crystal that often moved or shook. So in the third quatrain when Donne compares the fears and harms of earthquakes to the “trepidation of the spheres” as being innocent, he is contrasting the the love of ordinary people which is not divine and subject to decay, to the love of him and his lady which is divine. So when disturbances happen between their love, if he leaves, it will be like the far-off trembling of in the heavens and will be “innocent” and have no major bearin on their relationship.(Damrosch 238-239)
Donne continues to refer to the Ptolemaic universe in the fourth and fifth stanzas. In the fourth stanza, ordinary earth-bound lovers are caught up in the physical presence of the other person, which like all material things in this “sublunary” sphere below the moon, is subject to change and decay (line 13). Their “soul is sense” and “cannot admit absense” (lines 14-15) because the only way to express their love is through their five senses. Their relationship is not mature and depends on the physical act of love, which cannot occur in the absense of each other. Donnne explains that the refined and mature love between he and his love doesn’t need the presence of the physical body because it is “Inter-assured of the mind” and “care lesse, eyse, lips and hands to misse “(line 19). He is saying that he and his wife are connected at the soul and are therefore never really going to be separated even though their phsycial precense will be apart from each other.
In the sixth stanza, Donne compares love to gold. Pure gold can be beaten into a layer of the thinnest gold leaf that stretches incredibly far without breaking. The speaker explains here that since the love between he and his wife is pure and precious like gold, it can also be expanded and stretched without a “breach” (line 23). Here, the speaker means that although he will be far away, the love between he and his lady will not break because it is so pure.
Donne’s most famous and unusual comparison starts in the seventh stanza and concludes his poem when he compares the love between he and his wife to “stiff twin compasses” (line 26). The twin compasses are described as two only in the sense that there are two legs joined permanently at the top. Here Donne is refering to the mathematical instrument used in geometry. One leg, “the fixed foot” (line 27), is planted firmly in the centre. The other “travels,” describing a perfect circle, returning to its point of origin. The “fixed foot” of the centre foot “leans and harkens” after the other that “far doth roam” (25-30). The speaker explains that the centre foot (the person who stays at home) makes sure the absent lover comes back to form a complete circle because of its firmness. In the last stanza, the speaker explains that the firmness of the love of his lady will make him come back to where he began. Furthermore, the circle above earthly faults, created by the journey of the compass was the symbol of perfection in Donne’s time because just like God and eternity, it has no beginning and no end. This use of the circle in Donne’s poem suggests the perfection of the love between he and his wife.
In A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, Donne describes a most perfect and unchangeable love between two people. Throughout the poem he skillfully compares the love of the speaker and his lady to things that seem completely different to the love between them.
Whether Donne wrote his poem for his wife or just touched a universal theme for of us to learn from, the huge apparent differences bring the mortal love between the speaker and his lady to a level of perfection and no journey can ever break that.
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