In ‘A Valediction Forbidding Mourning’ and ‘The Canonization’, Donne combines intellect and emotion to elevate his relationship above those of others, presenting his love as holy and incomprehensible to lesser lovers’. Similarly, Donne combines intellect and emotion to present what can be characterised as the human condition: the existence of humans as rational beings capable of consciousness alongside being instinctual animals. Donne’s combination of intellect and emotion elevates both themes, portraying a multi-faceted perspective on ideal relationships and mankind.
In The Canonization, desperate emotions of love are justified and elevated by Donne’s intellect and reasoning; Donne ‘canonizes’ their mortal, ‘profane’ love, using his religious knowledge, gained by his apostacy, to elevate profane emotions as being a spiritual ‘hermitage’. Donne’s assertion, and the poem’s overarching conceit, that ‘Call us what you will, we’are made such by love’ reinforces the idea of love being the seemingly divine force that animates them, their bodies and existences made by ‘love’ rather than an omnigod figure; their existences being dependent on the emotion of ‘love’ therefore elevates them above others, the separative use of ‘us’ isolating the couple from the rest of mankind further exacerbated by the ambiguity of their status, as humans or saints or gods, which Donne then suggests is irrelevant, ‘call us what you will’, in comparison to the fact that they were made into such figures by love. For Donne, his dismissive tone against the perceptions of others highlights his relationship’s elevation above the ‘litigious men’. As such, Donne and his lover become a saint-like figure that must be ‘invoke[d]’, with their relationship’s legacy in either ‘tombs and hearse’ or ‘verse’ acting as a relic, thus combining images of the profane relationship, which embodies the powerful emotion of love, and the sacred and holy, which can be seen as a religious form of intellect, the dogma: ‘And thus invoke us: you whom reverend love’. Furthermore, in ‘The Canonization’, the mortal, ‘profane’ image of the body, or human sex, is elevated to divine standing, such as becoming images of the ‘soul’, or sexes becoming divine androgyny: ‘by us, we two being one, are it. / So to one neutral thing both sexes fit’, similarly alongside images of the ‘fly’, the image of the moth – which had been typically portrayed as a hermaphrodite, and capable of resurrection, an image of duality of sex and of life that Donne’s relationship mirrors. The image of duality of souls, and the idea of the religious concept of a couple ‘becoming one flesh’ is similarly represented in ‘A Valediction Forbidding Mourning’, with Donne asserting that ‘Our two souls therefore, are one’, suggesting that their souls are merging rather than simply their flesh, continued by the metaphor of the compasses, one item made of two parts: ‘thy soul, the fixed foot’ and the other foot.
Whilst not professing their love to be as religiously sacred through the combination of intellect and emotion, Donne employs a similar comparison between his sacred love, and the profane love that is loved by others, in ‘A Valediction Forbidding Mourning’, forming a similar overarching metaphysical conceit. Whilst the purpose of the poem is centred differently, Donne using intellect and emotion to justify his parting on an expedition in 1611, rather than simply to assert his love’s validity and sanctity over critics, Donne uses sacred language to argue that his love should stand parting, as their love is not dependent on the profane, the ‘eyes, lips and hands’, only exacerbated by physicality: such as the sexual connotations of the ‘stiff twin compasses’ and the lover that ‘thy firmness makes my circle just, / And makes me end where I begun.’ In the metaphor, Donne employs a combination of sexual emotion and religious wit, with the term ‘end’ holding multiple connotations, such as sexual finish but also the religious end, or the idea of resurrection: the concept of ‘ending’ life with a ‘beginning’ in Heaven or Hell. Therefore, whilst physicality and heady emotions are a part of Donne’s relationship, he argues that they are not necessary because of their implicit sanctity – Donne using words such as ‘profanation’ and ‘laity’ to conjure a similar idea to ‘The Canonization’ where his relationship is elevated religiously above the masses, as something to be idolised and held as a symbol and a relic.
As well as using intellect and emotion to promote the idea of his relationship being sacred, despite their profane and mortal bodies, Donne uses a combination of intellect and emotion to demonstrate the versatility of mankind, and the implicit dual figure of man as a rational being capable of complex consciousness, and as an instinctual animal: the human condition. In ‘The Canonization’, Donne questions the criticisms of his love by comparing his emotions to typical Romantic dramatic images: ‘What merchant’s ships have my sighs drowned? / Who says my tears have overflowed his ground?’. The nautical images of ‘drowned’ and ‘overflowed’ seem to reminisce on Romantic concepts, and tragic figures such as Romeo and Juliet, which contrasts to the rational and man-made images of nautical imperialism and intellect, such as the merchant’s ships, and the ‘plaguy bill’. Donne’s comparison suggests that he is a being of balanced duality and that his emotions and instincts do not overwhelm to Romantic extent, but rather exacerbate his experience of life: they do not ‘overflow’ or ‘drown’/ ‘injure’ himself or others. Donne thus presents his relationship as a form of harmonious balance between emotion and intellect. In ‘A Valediction Forbidding Mourning’, the same holds true, where Donne compares a similar Romantic image to his emotions and distances himself from such: ‘So let us melt, and make no noise, / No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,’. The images of water seem to correlate with the typical portrayal of being drowned in an emotion, and the common perception of emotions ‘flowing’ out of bodies.
In conclusion, Donne combines intellect and emotion for his metaphysical conceit, for the purpose of elevating his love, both to dispel criticism, and in order to justify his parting. Donne makes use of religious and secular language in order to create the harmonious balance between sacred and profane, and uses images of solidarity to form the picture of the couple as a saintly relic. However, not only does Donne religiously elevate the couple’s love, but he also elevates a balance in human behaviour and character, between emotion and intellect, love and reason – the balance between the ‘left brain’ and ‘right brain’.
Commentaires