flesh and soul
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Seventeenth-century writers like John Donne are famous for mingling images of the sacred when discussing secular or sexual themes. Donne uses specialized imagery to describe aspects of spiritual life. This tendency results in what some might call textual "tension" between the two opposing elements: flesh and soul. The meaning of each of his poems comes about through the way the two contrasting elements are resolved by the end of the poem. In this paper, I plan to show how the poems Divine Mediation, or Holy Sonnet, 10 and Divine Mediation 14 by Donne, 1) resolves, or fails to resolve, this textual "tension" and 2) what each poem suggests about the connection between material and spiritual desires or needs.
In Divine Mediation 10, lines 1982-76, Donne states that "Death should not feel proud, for through some have called it, "mighty and dreadful," it is not those whom Death thinks it kills do not truly die", nor, he then states, "can'st thou kill me" (lines 1-4). Donne then goes on to say that, "From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be, much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow"(line 5-6). He then reasons that "Death itself must be even more so indeed, it is the best men who go sooner to Death, to rest their bones and enjoy the delivery of their souls" (line 7-8). Death, Donne claims, is a slave to "fate, chance, kings, and desperate men," and is forced to dwell with war, poison, and sickness (). Donne the says that "poppies and magic charms can make men sleep (line 9) as well as, or better than, Death's stroke, so why should Death swell with pride?..