After replying to Chanita's message by e-mail, I thought perhaps others might also be wondering about the background to this exercise.

First of all, my interest in Donne began to bud as a teenager and flowered in a mature-age doctorate on his work (Monash, Australia, 1989), followed by a six-year career in tertiary education, including the creation and implementation of a semester unit on Donne's work. However, with the rapid decline in literary studies in Australia, I now find myself unemployed, and amusing myself with exercises such as this. I have become a practising poet in my "retirement", with quite a few publications. I am now 58.

First I want to say that these sonnets, while attempting to capture something of the mood or spirit of the original passage, are not intended as emulations of Donne's poetic style - the style of a genius, by definition, is unrepeatable, and trying to get too close to it could easily tip a poem into inadvertent parody. These sonnets are written in a smoother, more regular IP style than most of Donne's poetry.

To some degree I feel I share something of Pope's desire to re-present Donne's work in a different style. Pope's "translations" of two of Donne's satires (II & IV) is close to the way I see these sonnets - a recasting of the same ideas, images and arguments, expressed in a smoother, more regular rhythm. Not that I have any problem with Donne's wonderful baroque prose, but I have often wondered if its complexity daunts many readers, familiar only with "for whom the bell tolls", who might be encouraged to explore such sermon passages farther if there were some form of "translation" of the passage available. I should say here that I never intend that these sonnets should ever appear apart from the relevant prose passage; since the poem is made from the same ideas, images and rhetorical movement, they would be mere plagiarisms if separated.

The first challenge in writing one of these sonnets is to find a suitable passage. It needs to have something of the internal structure to the argument and imagery suitable for a sonnet, with (ideally) three distinct movements and a concluding idea or statement. Donne, being a natural poet, seems to think in this way, almost as if some of these passages were indeed embryonic sonnets, now incorporated into sermons. The next part of the challenge is to include all the major elements in the original passage, while maintaining the petrarchan rhyme scheme (the same used by Donne in the HS) and the iambic pentameter.

Anyway, it is a hobby of mine (in the absence any more serious or lucrative employment) to do these "transfusions", which is how I view them. However, given some of the positive response I have had recently from friends and colleagues, I am considering the possibility that a book of these pairings might work. If so, it might be a good way to help keep Donne's prose in circulation. The arrival of Donne's complete sermons on line (as announced in a thread on this board) is a bonus in this regard. I have now finished 27 of these "transfusions".

With the board's indulgence, I will post one more example below.



Wee are all conceived in close Prison; in our Mothers wombes, we are close Prisoners all; when we are borne, we are borne but to the liberty of the house; Prisoners still, though within larger walls; and then all our life is but a going out to the place of Execution, to death. Now was there ever any man seen to sleep in the Cart, between New-gate, and Tyborne? between the Prison, and the place of Execution, does any man sleep? And we sleep all the way; from the womb to the grave we are never throughly awake; but passe on with such dreames, and imaginations as these, I may live as well, as another, and why should I dye, rather than another? but awake, and tell me, says this Text, Quis homo? who is that other that thou talkst of? What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death?.


[From a sermon preached by John Donne to the Lords upon Easter-day, at the communion, the king being then dangerously sick at New-Market - 28 March ,1619 - Sermons, II.9]


Prisoners

Conceived, we are, in prison, in the womb;
and from our mother's body to the walls
of houses, and more passage ways and halls;
a prisoner still, and sentenced still to doom.
Has any man, led from his prison-room,
been seen to sleep while drawn to Tyburne's stalls?
And yet we sleep until the judgement calls,
dreaming as we are carried to the tomb:
"Why should I die", we dream, "and not the next
who stands so far in line ahead of me;
and why should I not live as well as he"?
But be awake, and tell me, says this text:
who is he, say - did such a man draw breath;
what man alive shall live and not see death?

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Any one who would like to make a private response can do so at my e-mail address:

lit4life@ozemail.com.au