How does Donne used paradox to illustrate difficult metaphysical concepts?

 

Introduction: John Donne is the classic representative of metaphysical poetry. His instinct compelled him to bring the whole of experience into his verse and to choose the most direct and natural form of expression by his learned and fantastic mind. By his fantastic mind he used paradox to illustrate difficult metaphysical concepts.

Description:

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Just as one often finds in Christian scripture, Donne here sums up a key part of the relationship between individuals and God by using a paradox. The conflict raging within himself consists in the weakness of his reason in cleaving to his love of God rather than indulging his sinful desires. The Christian tradition expresses this problem as the need to die with respect to oneself and then to be reborn with respect to a new spiritual life. Donne similarly argues that the freedom of a Christian comes with binding oneself to God's commandments rather than one's own conflicting desires. Likewise, Christian purity comes from being invaded by God with force and plundering the body by removing its selfish desires.

Resolving this paradox is important for Donne's Christian metaphysics because it identifies a key problem of man: we live in a world so given over to evil that goodness and holiness are considered deviant by many. Donne uses paradoxical statements to get readers to think for themselves about how it could be true that there is radical value in being led by divine rationality rather than one's ungrounded motivations.

Nowhere is Donne's love of paradox more apparent than in the closing couplet of Holy Sonnet 14:

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Here he sums up the conflict raging within himself as well as the only means of resolving this conflict he can determine. The sonnet describes a man given over completely to God's enemy, Satan. The man is portrayed successively as a damaged pot, a captured town, and a bride engaged to her lover's enemy. The speaker cannot free himself from Satan's influence, and so must rely on God to do the work. Although he sees himself as trapped by Satan, he prefers thralldom to God, for only this will make hiim (morally, spiritually) free, just as the paradox works in Christianity. Similarly, Donne plays upon the image of the chaste bride to say he will only be pure and virginal (again, spiritually) if God ravishes (perhaps metaphorically rapes) him.

Paradox is important to Donne because in it he sees the resolution of the problem of man: we live in a world wholly given over to evil, so much so that goodness and holiness are considered deviant from the norm. Donne uses paradoxical statements to get his reader's minds to jump from their usual tracks to consider the lies we believe to be true, while offering us truths we would tend to dismiss as false.

 

Conclusion: In Conclusion, we can say that John Donne’s illustration of Metaphysical concepts using paradox turns the path of metaphysical poetry in a great way.