Biography: How one of England's greatest poets survived a sectarian epoch.
To the main point: this is a superb biography of John Donne, a work of research that illuminates not only the poetry but the sermons and devotional writings, too. It is a biography that had already won the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award while the book was still in progress. The outlines of Donne's life are well known and here succinctly put: "For almost 60 years, Donne had survived by altering. He had transformed himself from a closeted Catholic, as boy and youth, to a government secretary; from social outcast, after he married, to a pillar of the community, as a priest; from avant-garde poet, in his writing, to popular preacher." In other words, John Donne was able to blow with every wind, to reform himself when re-formation was required. All of this is wonderfully fleshed out in the book and, what is most important, fleshed out with reference to the poems and sermons in a way that adds interest and insight to the work of one of England's greatest poets.
Elizabeth's accession to the throne in 1558 marked the end of Roman Catholicism as the established religion and Donne was born into danger. In his ancestry he could boast of his great-great-grandfather, Sir Thomas More, chancellor and martyr, and of the Heywoods on his mother's side, of whom Jasper, Donne's uncle, became a Jesuit priest and was hunted throughout, and eventually out of, England. When Donne was an adolescent he was witness to much violence and cruelty towards Catholic priests. When his younger brother, Henry, was found harbouring one such priest, the priest was hanged, drawn and quartered and Henry died as a result of the foul circumstances he endured in Newgate Prison.
Thus Donne was yoked between his longing to remain a gentleman and the impossibility of advancement should he remain a Catholic. His dilemma and its resolution have led many to see Donne as a renegade, though it is one of the great successes of this book that such a view is quietly put to rest. The re-formations he put himself through are shown here to be of a piece, part of his honest, though clever, being.
Donne saw the Reformed Church as bringing Christ into a new age of reality and, as he was always a lover (as Hopkins was to be) of England, it seemed natural for him to shift towards Protestantism. It is to be remembered that he wrote his "Holy Sonnets" and great religious poems, such as Good Friday 1613, several years before he was ordained.
ANOTHER SUCCESS IS in the book's insight into Donne's love life, from that of would-be, if not actual, rake to his marriage to Ann More, a marriage against the will of her father and of Donne's employer at the time, with the result that he was jailed, lost his job and lived many years in penury. It is at this stage in his career that Donne begins to shine as an honest lover of the truth, as a poet, a father and a believer. It is this marriage, too, that finally brings out the conscience of the poet, who spends the rest of his life and writings in preaching to himself in true service to his God.
TS Eliot wrote of Donne: "With sincerity in the practical sense, poetry has little to do; the poet is responsible to a much more difficult consciousness and honesty. And it is because he has this honesty, because he is so often expressing his genuine whole of tangled feelings, that Donne is, like the early Italians, like Heine, like Baudelaire, a poet of the world's literature."
John Stubbs goes into the history of the time in great and relevant detail, outlining its influences on Donne's life. After Ann More's death, Donne buried himself in devotional writing; his many illnesses and the sufferings of the people, as well as a residual love of the images and devotions of his Roman Catholic childhood, greatly enriched his work. He was always "intolerant of intolerance" in an age when Catholicism was seen as the great enemy and when Puritanism was already exhibiting extremes of hatred and conformism. He saw all mankind as unified in their being ("No man is an island . . .") and working towards the same, ultimate, kingdom in the service of a God of love.
There are many delightful vignettes, such as Donne's friendship with one Magdalen Herbert. He spent several months escaping the plague that was ravaging London and had long talks with her son, George Herbert.
OUT OF AN explosive period in history, out of a difficult living, out of a youth driven by eroticism and a maturity driven by commitment to the priesthood, comes a rich and troubled poetry. Stubbs makes the intrigues of chancery and the corruptions of the court fascinating, and shows Donne wheedling his way through them with some distaste.
This ability to wheedle through the machinations of three reigns helped him, too, in his finding suitable positions as a priest. Apart from illuminating the poetry and the sermons, the book is full of gently perceptive comments; there is an acceptable, because defining, division of the work into the periods that correspond with the shifts in Donne's living. The language is clear and the arguments quietly compelling, the whole written with occasionally idiosyncratic, even slangy, phrases, avoiding the dryly academic and making this a book for the wider public, those interested in poetry and in history.
John F Deane is a poet. His collection of essays, In Dogged Loyalty (Columba 2006), contains two essays on the poetry of John Donne. His most recent collection of poems is The Instruments of Art (Carcanet 2005)
Donne: The Reformed Soul By John Stubbs Penguin Viking, 564pp. £25