Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God John Donne, critical analysis and summary, three images

 

Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God

John Donne

Poem:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp'd town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

 

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Introduction

™ Batter my Heart is one of the 19 sonnets Donne wrote after taking orders in the Anglican church, it is also known as Divine Meditations

™ It was published in the first edition of Songs and Sonnets (1633)

™ Religious poem

™ Petrarchan verse

™ Rhyme scheme :ABBAABBA (octave), CDCCDC (sestet)

™ Meter: Iambic Pentameter

Analysis

q The poet pictures an afflicted lover of God who is hurt because he is deviated from the holy path to the sinful path

q He urges God to ravish his body and make him chaste

q The poet prays to God in his three fold capacity as the father, the son and the holy spirit, to batter his heart and reshape it

q God has knocked at him, blown his breath through his bellows and lighted the fire of his love and mercy to purify and reshape him

q But all these methods has ended without attaining the end. Therefore God should overthrow the poet and bend his force to bend, break, blow and make him new and free from sin.

q The poem is a plea for God to enter and take over poet’s life

Three images

™ The poem develops through three images

      i.         A potter or craftsman repairing  a damaged vessel

    ii.         Military terms: he is like a town captured and being ruled by God’s enemy. The poet now an usurped town that owes its allegiance or due to someone else. He is frustrated that his reason, God’s viceroy in the town of his soul is captive to other forces and is failing to persuade him to leave his sins behind

  iii.         The third image is sexual, the poet compares himself to a woman who is compelled to marry against her will . The tone moves from political to personal. He loves God but “is bethroth’d unto enemy”. He seeks God’s help to achieve the divorce from his sinful marriage and break free

Donne says he cannot be wooed into salvation but must be taken by force

Donne has put the World and the sensuous life completely behind him and was probing with anxiety for the right relationship with eternal.

The later sonnets display Donne’s continuing love of wit and paradoxes but also is deepening concern about his relationship to God

He tempered the sardonic indifference of some of his earlier poetry with the submissiveness of faith

His vigorous intellect, willy imagery and love of paradox characterize his poetry.

Themes

™ Religion

™ Love : the poet’s wish for salvation is the fact that he loves God more than the usual spiritual level. He is interested in two sided love, where he loves and is loved back

™ Sex is a metaphor, the speaker uses for the way in which God might demonstrate love for the speaker

™ His relationship like working is through encounter of a sexual nature

™ Violence: the poet wishes God to punish him (ravish his body) in order to mend  his sinful soul

™ Warfare: He calls upon God to storm the walls and retake the invaded fortress. God should not deter from causing damage to the speaker, in order to bring him to the path of salvation

 

 

Of Revenge by Bacon, quotations, summary and line by line explanation

Of Revenge

Revenge

The revenge that a man takes for a wrong done to him by somebody represents an arbitrary kind of justice.Wrong should be obtained through legal means, but revenge means setting the law at nought. By taking revenge, a man can' settle a score with his enemy. But if he refrains from taking revenge, he shows a moral superiority over his enemy. To forgive an enémy is a sign of an exalted heart.

It was Solomon who said that, by ignoring a wrong that has been

done to him, a man shows how noble he is.

 

Which incidents to forgive and which to avenge?

That which belongs to the past is gone forever and is beyond recall. An injury that was done to a man in the past should be forgotten because those, who concern themselves with affairs of the past, are unwise and merely waste their energy.

 

A man does a wrong in order to make a financial gain or for the pleasure of it or in order to win a higher position or for some other similar reason. There is, therefore, no point in feeling annoyed with a man just because he is selfish." Merely because he is l1ke the thorn or briar which can only prick and scratch but serve no useful purpose.

 

And if a man does a wrong because of his malicious nature, it is best to ignore him. A man can be forgiven for taking revenge for a wrong against which law provides no remedy. But, in such a case, a man should be careful that his revengeful action is such as does not bring any legal

consequences with it because otherwise he will still be at a disadvantage as compared with his enemy.

 

 

Critical Notes

It is generous on the part of a man to reveal his identity to his victim when he takes revenge, because the pleasure lies not so much in the retaliatory action but in making the enemy repent of his misdeed. But there are some cunning and cowardly person who do not reveal their identity when they take revenge.

 

Cosimo de Medici, a Duke of Florence in the sixteenth century was of the opinion that the wrong or injury done by a friend should never be pardoned. It is commendable to forgive an enemy for doing us a wrong, but it is unwise to forgive a treacherous or faithless friend. However, Job was morally superior in declaring that, if we receive favours from our friends, we should also tolerate injuries or wrongs from them. A man who aims at revenge keeps himself in a state of torment because he is unable to forget the wrongs that he has suffered.

 

History tells us that public revenges have, by and large, proved fortunate. Those who took revenge for the assassination of Julius Caesar, for the murder of Pertinax, and for the killing of Henry 1 of France, reaped a rich harvest. Revengeful persons often live miserable lives.

 

This essay is an excellent example of Bacon's tendency to dilute high ideals with expediency and a utilitarian approach to life. When Bacon says that a man, who pardons his enemies, reveals a noble heart, be certainly aims at a high ideal. But he dilutes this high ideal by justifying a revenge that is taken for a wrong for which there is no legal remedy. He shows his worldly wisdom when he cautions a man wishing to take revenge by saying that the revenge should be such as there is no law to punish. In the same way, Bacon does not feel angry with a man who loves himself better than others. Nor does Bacon feel annoyed with a man who does a wrong merely out of ill nature. He compares such a man to a thorn or briar. The comparison of a spiteful man with a thorn or briar suggests that no efforts need be made to mend or improve such men. This means that a wrong must be accepted from a person who is by nature wicked.

 

Bacon is slightly off the mark when he says that a person taking revenge finds pleasure not in doing the hurt so much as in making the enemy repent. Bacon is, however, right when he says that a man who meditates revenge keeps his own wounds green. He is also right when he says that revengeful persons live miserable lives.

Bacon's attitude towards those who do wilful injury to their friends can also be defended. There is nothing very original to striking about the ideas expressed in this essay. However, it contains sound advice for the average reader. This essay is more or less a lesson in morality. It is a didactic essay and is an intelligent study of human nature.

 

Style

As for style, this essay is a model of compactness. Bacon's terse and pithy manner of writing finds a perfect illustration here.

Many of the sentences have that aphoristic quality for which Bacon

is famous. Here are examples of sentences which are packed with

matter

(i) "For as for the first wrong, it does but offend the law:

but the revenge of that wrong putteth the law out of

office."

(ti) Therefore they do but trife with themselves, that labour

in past matters."

(ii) "But base and crafty cowards are like the arrow that flieth

in the dark."

(iv) "This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge, keeps

his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do

well.'

 

Bacon makes a liberal use of quotations in his essays. This

essay, which is very brief, contains three quotations, one from Solo

mon, another from Cosimo de Medici, and the third from Job. Thus two of these are biblical quotations and another is historical. There are plenty of allusioons in the essays of Bacon. There are historical allusions here to Caesar, Pertinax and Henery IlI of France besides Cosimo de Medici.

Bacon's essays are full of illustrations, similes, and metaphors. Men of ill-nature are here compared to the thorn and the briar which prick and scratch, because they do no other". Cowardly persons who take revenge in a secret manner are compared to the arrow that flieth in the dark. Revengeful persons are compared to witches who, being mischievous, meet a sad fate.

An extreme condensation of style often leads to obscurity. But, though written in an extremely condensed style, this essay is completely free from obscurity. Bacon's meaning in every sentence of this essay is perfectly clear. Indeed, Bacon's style is here transparently

Daddy by Sylvia Plath detailed summary and analysis, theme of Electra complex and Feminism

 

Daddy
BY SYLVIA PLATH

Sylvia Plath (1932-63)

¨ Pseudonym : Victoria Lucas

¨ American poet

¨ Pioneer of confessional poetry

¨ Won Pulitzer prize for

 “the Collected Poems”

Works

¨ Poems :

¨ The Colossus and other poems

¨ Ariel

¨ Crossing the water

¨ Winter trees

¨ COLLECTED PROSE AND NOVEL

¨ The Bell Jar

¨ Letters home: correspondence 1950-1963

¨ Johny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: short stories, prose and Diary excerpts

¨ Children’s Book

¨ The Bed Book

¨ The It doesn’t matter suit

¨ Mrs Cherry Kitchen

Style

¨ Sylvia Plath was one of the most dynamic and admired poets of the twentieth century.

¨ She committed suicide at the age of thirty

¨ Her verse is an attempt to catalogue despair, violent emotion and obsession with death

¨ Her densely autobiographical poems explore her own mental anguish, her troubled marriage with Ted Hughes, her unresolved conflicts with her parents  and her own vision of herself

Last works

¨ During her last three years Plath abandoned the restraints and conventions that had bound much of her early work.

¨ She wrote with great speed producing poems of stark self revelation and confession.

¨  the anxiety and confusion and doubt that haunted her were transmitted into verse of great power and pathos borne on flashes of incisive wit.

Daddy- Introduction

¨ Confessional poem

¨ Written on Oct. 12, 1982, four months before her death and on month after her separation from Ted Hughes.

¨ Published posthumously in Ariel during 1965

¨ The poem employs controversial metaphors of the holocaust to explain Plath’s complex relationship with her father, Otto Plath, who died shortly after her 8^th birthday

¨ Cryptic and widely anthologized poem in American Literature. 

In Plath’s own words

¨ “Here is a poem spoken by a girl with an Electra Complex”. Her father died while she thought he was God. Her case is complicated by the fact that her father was also a Nazi and her mother very possibly Jewish. In the daughter, the two streams marry and paralyze each other. She has to act out the awful little allegory once over before she is free of it”

Poetic technique

¨ Juxtaposition is used when two contrasting objects or ideas are placed in conversation with one another in order to emphasize that contrast.

¨ Innocence vs. youthful emotions and pain

¨ Metaphors and similes appear throughout

Themes

¨ Oppressive nature of father/daughter relatioship

¨ Freedom from oppression

¨ Life and Death

Poem

You do not do, you do not do   

Any more, black shoe

In which I have lived like a foot   

For thirty years, poor and white,   

Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

 

Daddy, I have had to kill you.   

You died before I had time——

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,   

Ghastly statue with one gray toe   

Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic   

Where it pours bean green over blue   

In the waters off beautiful Nauset.   

I used to pray to recover you.

Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town   

Scraped flat by the roller

Of wars, wars, wars.

But the name of the town is common.   

My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.   

So I never could tell where you   

Put your foot, your root,

I never could talk to you.

The tongue stuck in my jaw.

 

It stuck in a barb wire snare.   

Ich, ich, ich, ich,

I could hardly speak.

I thought every German was you.   

And the language obscene

An engine, an engine

Chuffing me off like a Jew.

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.   

I began to talk like a Jew.

I think I may well be a Jew.

 

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna   

Are not very pure or true.

With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck   

And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack

I may be a bit of a Jew.

Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——

I have always been scared of you,

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.   

And your neat mustache

And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Not God but a swastika

So black no sky could squeak through.   

Every woman adores a Fascist,   

The boot in the face, the brute   

Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,   

In the picture I have of you,

A cleft in your chin instead of your foot   

But no less a devil for that, no not   

Any less the black man who

 

Bit my pretty red heart in two.

I was ten when they buried you.   

At twenty I tried to die

And get back, back, back to you.

I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,   

And they stuck me together with glue.   

And then I knew what to do.

I made a model of you,

A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.   

And I said I do, I do.

So daddy, I’m finally through.

The black telephone’s off at the root,   

The voices just can’t worm through.

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——

The vampire who said he was you   

And drank my blood for a year,

Seven years, if you want to know.

Daddy, you can lie back now.
There’s a stake in your fat black heart   

And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.   

They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

Stanza wise summary

1.    The black shoe is a metaphor for the father, she has been trapped for 30 years and the narrator is about to escape

2.    But she can free herself by killing her daddy who does resemble the poet’s father, Otto Plath, who died when Sylvia Plath was 8 years old. His toe had turned black from gangrene. He eventually  had to have his leg amputed due to complications of diabetes. The bizarre surreal image is build up. His toe is as big as a seal, the grotesque image of her father has fallen like a statue.

3.    The statue’s head is in the Atlantic o the coast of Nauset beach, Cape Cod where the family used to holiday.

4.     They moved on to Poland during the second World war. There is a mix of fact and fiction. Poland has been razed in many wars adding strength to the idea that Germany (her father) had demolished many lives.

5.    . The narrator addresses the father as you. Direct address brings the reader closer to the action. Plath is hinting at a lack of communication, of instability and paralysis

6.     The use of wire snare increases the tension. The German ich I is repeated four times as if her self worth is wounded. The father is seen as all powerful icon

7.    The narrator comments that she is on a death train which is taking her to the concentration camps and one of Nazi death factories where millions of Jews were brutally gassed and cremated.

8.    8. Moving to Austria, Plath’s mother’s country, the narrator reinforces her identity. She is a bit of a Jew because she carries a tarot pack of cards and has gypsy blood in her.

9.    One of the aims of Nazi was to breed out unwanted genetic strains to produce thee perfect German. The Luftwaffe is German air force and Panzel is the name of German tank corps

10.  Father is referred to as swastika, the symbol off Nazi. It refers to the air raids over England during the war when Luftwaffe bombed many cities and turned the skies black.

11. The reader is taken to a kind of classroom where daddy stands. He has a cleft chin

12.  Her father tore her apart, reached inside her and left her torn and divided self. When her daddy died he felt a rage against God. She tried to commit suicide when she was 20

13.  The narrator is pulled out of the sack and they stick her back together with glue. The doctors cured her after her failed suicide attempt but never was same again. The girl creates a model which resembles Plath’s father.

14.  Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes are married. She addresses Daddy again, there will be no more communication with the past

15. The speaker has achieved her double killing both father and husband have been displaced. The latter is described as a vampire who has been drinking her blood for years.

16. The father’s demise has them dancing and stamping on him in a jovial way. The girl describes her daddy as a bastard. The exorcism is over and the conflict is resolved.

Electra Complex

¨ Electra Complex is a female version of Freud’s Oedipus complex. Jung posited that a daughter perceives her mother as a rival for the psychosexual energy of her father and wants to posses her father. This unresolved desire sometimes manifests as negative fixation on the father or father figure. 

Daddy’s girl

¨ The speaker is Daddy’s girl and uses childlike endearing term Daddy seven times to describe the man whose memory tortures her.

¨ During the course of the poem the speaker’s goal shifts from reuniting with her father to killing his memory and terminate his domination.

Facts

¨ 16 stanzas of 5 lines each, total 80 lines

¨ Meter : Tetrameter

¨ 37 lines are end stopped and enjambment is used frequently

¨ Metaphor, Simile are present as half rhymes, alliteration and assonance are used

¨ Baby talk: Daddy, achoo, gobbledegov, gets stammery (ich ich ich ich)

¨ Juxtaposes innocence and pain