Renaissance & Seventeenth - Century Studies

Joseph Anthony Mazzeo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000470659
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Philosophie médiévale et de la Renaissance

First published in 1964, Renaissance & Seventeenth - Century Studies contains essays which fall into two groups. The first four are concerned with problems of metaphor and style and treat two important eras in literary history when these problems underwent critical re-examination. St. Augustine marks the classical attempt to take account of "biblical poetics" while the two essays on the theory of the "metaphysical" style treat the attempt of seventeenth century critics to comprehend, at the theoretical level, the expansion of metaphysical possibilities that marked the "metaphysical" movement. The second group of essays are, in general, concerned with Machiavelli and Machiavellism and Andrew Marvell. However, they are again essentially concerned with the way in which crucial metaphors and idea-images serve as principles for organising experience both in Machiavelli's own writings and in that of work of Marvell which reflects his influence. The final essay "Cromwell as Davidic King", weaves together Machiavellian and Augustinian strands as they are manifested in the works of a poet of wit, the "various light" of whose mind responded harmoniously to the different currents of thought and taste these essays discuss. This book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of literature, literary history, political philosophy, and philosophy in general.

CHAPTER IV

Notes on John Donne’s Alchemical Imagery

NO student of the work of Donne can fail to be impressed by the extent to which alchemical and scientific images and references appear in it. However, few are aware of the skill and precision with which he adapted these ideas to his own use. Although previous studies of his alchemical imagery have not displayed an awareness of the complex implications of alchemical ideas, Donne was nevertheless acquainted with alchemy in its broader aspects, since many of his figures refer to the philosophical, occult, and mystical doctrines associated with alchemical practices and theories.

Although Donne could have learned alchemy from any of the numerous treatises and handbooks of his time, and no doubt did, Paracelsus is the only great alchemist frequently referred to in Donne’s works whose theories seem to have captivated his imagination. His treatment of alchemical images and ideas reveals a strong Paracelsian influence, although my citations from this author are not intended as ‘sources’ but rather as explanatory analogues.¹

Whatever the degree of direct Paracelsian influence D onne was no thorough disciple of the great Swiss physician and occasionally referred to Paracelsus in som ewhat derogatory terms.

On the whole, Donne most often speaks well of Paracelsus and openly praised him in the Biathanatos. There is also more praise than blame underneath the playful satire Ignatius, His Conclave, in which Paracelsus is tried in hell along with Copernicus and other distinguished company. It is interesting to observe that Donne placed Paracelsus and Copernicus on the same level. In his opinion they were both equally important and equally revolutionary, a judgment posterity has not confirmed. Although he never proclaimed his complete allegiance to either, his work gives ample evidence of serious consideration of their ideas.

Donne may have vacillated in his attitude toward Paracelsus, but his knowledge of Paracelsian medical alchemy and general alchemical theory was comprehensive. Indeed, some of his poetry is virtually incomprehensible without a knowledge of alchemical theory. Of no single poem is this more true than of A Nocturnall Upon S. Lucies Day, almost completely written in alchemical metaphor. I will give a further analysis of this poem later in the study.

Imagery Derived from General Hermetic Theory and Alchemical Processes

The ordering of Donne’s alchemical imagery for the purposes of analysis presents certain problems. Alchemy was a complex subject and had at least the two distinct aspects: the spiritual and the material. The same alchemical allusion, the elixir or the limbeck, may refer to material or spiritual alchemy alone or to both at the same time. The reader must be aware of this fact if a correct interpretation of the image is to be made. I have therefore analysed Donne’s alchemical imagery in two general sections. In the first, I emphasize that imagery which is derived from basic Hermetic theory and from the equipment and stages of the alchemical process. Such imagery is primarily, although not entirely, ‘material’ in reference. The imagery of the second part is primarily ‘spiritual’ in emphasis; however, as in the first part, there is a mixture of the ‘spiritual’ and ‘material’ themes. In this classification I have also been guided by what I believe was Donne’s own emphasis.¹

The theories of the four elements, the four humours, and of primary matter were part of the generally accepted cosmological and physiological theories derived from antiquity and along with other philosophical concepts were used by the alchemists as the basis of their art. A mastery of its philosophical basis was essential for a mastery of the Hermetic art.²

References to these theories abound in Renaissance literature and they seem to have been the common property of many educated men of the period. Donne merely illustrates a common practice and stated a ‘scientific’ truth of his age when in the fifth of the Holy Sonnets he says:

I am a little world made cunningly

Of Elements, and an Angellike spright¹

This statement was not simply a poetic metaphor; man literally was a ‘little world,’ the microcosm made up of four elements and possessing an immortal soul.

Donne seems to refer to the Paracelsian attack on the four elements and four humours in the following passage from the first Anniversary:

Have not all soules thought

For many ages, that our body is wrought

Of Ayre, and Fire, and other Elements ?

And now they thinke of new ingredients

And one Soule thinkes one, and another way,

Another thinkes, and ’tis an even lay.²

It is interesting to observe that in the Anniversary poems Donne was as disturbed over the Paracelsian substitution of the triaprima , sulphur, mercury and salt, for the old theories as he was about the truly revolutionary astronomical discoveries of his time.

The theory of the interconvertibility of the elements is used in a passage in which air is described as being drawn from water.

Else, being alike pure, wee should neither see;

As, water being into ayre rarify’d,

Neither appears, till in one cloud they bee,

So, for our sakes you do low names abide;¹

The interconvertibility of the elements was linked to a theory of a primary matter from which the elements were derived, and in which all things were latent.

Of all created things the condition whereof is transitory and frail, there is only one single principle. Included herein were latent all created things which the aether embraces in its scope. This is as much as to say that all created things proceeded from one matter, not each one separately from its own peculiar matter.²

The creation of the world, referred to as the ‘separation,’ was brought about by bringing into action all the potentialities latent in the primary matter.

But in the beginning of the Great Mystery of the separation of all things were went forth first the separation of the elements so that before all else those elements broke into action, and each in its own essence. Fire became heaven and the chest of the firmament.³

This identical view of the creation of the world appears in Donne’s epistle to the Countesse of Huntingdon. Here the elements are depicted as separating from the ‘raw disordered heape,’ each one finding its place by a kind of gravity, with fire rising up to become the heavens.

Until this raw disordered heape did breake,

And severall desires led parts away,

Water declined with earth, the ayre did stay

Fire rose, and each from other but unty’d

Themselves imprisoned were and purify’d¹

Another widely accepted philosophical theory, common to alchemy, which is to be found in the work of Donne is the microcosm-macrocosm idea. This notion was a universally drawn consequence of the principle of universal analogy, and entered into much of the speculation of the Hermetic philosophers. Paracelsus explained the whole of creation with this analogy.

The first Separation of which we speak should begin from man, since he is the Microcosm, the lesser, and for his sake the Macrocosm, the greater world, was founded, that he might be its Separator.²

Donne frequently used this ubiquitous analogy and in the ‘Devotions’ he illustrates the cosmos from his own body. In his verse, we encounter the microcosm idea in an epistle to the Countess of Bedford:

What ere the world hath bad, or precious,

Man’s body can produce, hence hath it beene

That stones, wormes, frogges, and snakes in man are seen:

But who ere saw, though nature can worke soe,

That pearle, or gold, or corne in man did grow.³

The microcosm-macrocosm analogy, so important in the general theory of Renaissance natural philosophy, was for Paracelsus the foundation of medicine.

The subject of the Microcosm is bound up with Medicine and ruled by it, following it none otherwise than a bridled horse follows him who leads it, or a mad dog bound up with chains.⁴ The microcosm, man, contained everything which existed in the macrocosm. At times the macrocosm meant the planet earth;...