Living Magnets, Paracelsian Corpses, and the Psychology of Grace in Donne's Religious Verse

Bibliographic Data

ID23199836
AuthorsAngus Fletcher (0000-0002-4850-5230, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume72
Issue1
Pages1-22
Publication date2005-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueELH (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-8304 • E-ISSN: 1080-6547
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/elh.2005.0001
OpenAlexW2087376433
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited18

Living Magnets, Paracelsian Corpses, and the Psychology of Grace in Donne's Religious Verse Angus Fletcher In "An Anatomie of the World" (1612), John Donne dissects the fresh corpse of the world, stopping only when he concludes that the stench has grown unbearable.1 The putative occasion for this gruesome work was the one-year anniversary of Elizabeth Drury's death, but the poem's apocalyptic imagery has seemed too excessive to represent genuine grief for a girl Donne never knew, and the elegy has instead become famous as a meditation on the bleak worldview ushered in by atomism, Copernicism, and the rest of the "new philosophy."2 In a 1623 essay that opens with a direct quote from "An Anatomie," William Drummond remarks: The Element of Fire is quite put out, the Aire is but Water rarified, the Earth is found to move, and is no more the Center of the Universe, is turned into a Magnet. . . . Thus, Sciences by the diverse Motiones of this Globe of the Braine of Man, are become Opiniones, nay Errores, and leave the Imagination in a thousand Labyrinthes.3 Drummond's interpretation of "An Anatomie" has been widely accepted, and Donne's poem has become a favorite example of the traumatic effects of the new science.4 Nevertheless, there is an interesting incongruity between Drummond's essay and "An Anatomie": Donne does not view magnetism with the same gloom as Drummond. After describing the worldly decay that has followed Drury's passing, the poet cries: This is the worlds condition now, and now She that should all parts to reunion bow, She that had all Magnetique force alone, To draw, and fasten sundered parts in one; She whom wise nature had invented then When she observ'd that every sort of men Did in their voyage in this worlds Sea stray, And needed a new compasse for their way ("A," 219-26) [End Page 1] Even as he bemoans the loss of traditional views of nature, the poet idealizes the discovery of the compass, the very instrument that Francis Bacon hailed as the harbinger of experimental science.5 Moreover, by claiming Drury as a magnetic power that sustained the living earth, the poet aligns himself with a major work of the new philosophy: William Gilbert's De Magnete.6 Published in 1600, De Magnete offers a meticulous description of the compass, explaining its usefulness as a navigational tool by claiming that the world itself was a giant loadstone animated by a magnetic soul: the earth's magnetic force [magnetica vis] and the formate soul or animate form of the globes . . . exert an innate action, alive [vividum], definite, directive, harmonious, through the whole mass of matter.7 For Gilbert, the earth's "magnetic force" made it "alive," an idea reflected in Donne's claim that the world died after its "Magnetique force" had departed. Unlike Drummond, Donne is not upset at finding "the Earth . . . turned into a Magnet." Where other recent forays into natural philosophy had reduced the world to a lifeless body of atoms, De Magnete lent credence to the poet's conceit of a vital globe. On some level, it is unsurprising that Donne would adopt Gilbert's notion of a magnetic world-soul, for this aspect of De Magnete has often seemed wholly at odds with its experimental method. Although Gilbert's observations were hailed by Galileo as "enviable," his belief in the earth's animate nature was described by Francis Bacon in his Novum Organum as "incredible and vain," and most twentieth-century scholars similarly tended to view his metaphysical system as an embarrassing anachronism that should be overlooked when praising his empirical precision.8 The new philosophy, it would seem, is acceptable to Donne only when it turns out to be old. Recent study on De Magnete has demonstrated, however, that it is not so easy to separate Gilbert's research into medieval and modern components.9 John Henry has explained Gilbert's empirical approach as a product of his alchemical background, and in the first half of this essay, I will extend Henry's conclusions by suggesting that Gilbert arrived at his belief in a living world when...

Art · Art history · Elegy · Gloom · Literature · Poetry · Psychoanalysis · Financial Crisis of the 21st Century · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

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