To write about death in the way he did – to send a suction pump down into the gap between what we know and what we fear – was to risk chaos. Donne knew it and did it anyway. [loc. 2893]
A splendidly effervescent critical biography that emphasises both the transformations of John Donne ('the persecuted, the rake, the lawyer, the bereaved, the lover, the jailbird, the desperate, the striver, the pious, John Donne the almost dead and reporting from the front line of the grave' [loc. 4318]) and the constant thread of invention that ran through his life. All the basic material is here -- born a Catholic, youthful adventures, being imprisoned by his father-in-law, a dozen children and half a dozen infant mortalities, his wife's death, his entry to the priesthood and his immensely popular sermons as Dean of St Pauls -- but in Rundell's engaging, enthusiastic account there's something of the wit and imagery of Donne's poetry, and its 'violent joy'.
This is an immensely readable biography (rather more so, in my opinion, than the standard works) and Rundell's passion and compassion for her subject rings clear on every page. Rundell does bring up the question of whether Donne was a misogynist (one chapter is entitled 'The Paradoxical Quibbler, Taking Aim at Women') and argues that some of the more excessive poems, such as 'The Flea', were written for his male fans rather than for female lovers. Of which, she posits, he may not actually have had very many. That doesn't make him less of a misogynist, of course: 'It would be absurd to try Donne anachronistically as a misogynist; but alongside the poems which glorify and sing the female body and heart, there are those that very potently don’t.' [loc. 1895].
This book persuaded me to revisit Donne's poetry, including Metempsychosis, which I found impenetrable as an undergraduate but now find fascinating.
Fulfils the ‘Memoir / Biography / Autobiography’ rubric of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge.
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