Wisdom is the lost property of every Muslim, and for this reason it is a pleasure to share a gem of wisdom found in the treasury of English literature. John Donne was a metaphysical poet, and as such, he speaks to our times which needs his metaphysics as physic (medicine) for the sickness of materialism even more than in his age. Even though he lived between 1572 and 1631, at the flowering of the renaissance, a highly religious age, he could see the spiritual abyss towards which the new scientific rationalism was leading towards (he called it the “new philosophy”).
I will break it down a few lines at a time.
And new philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out,
The sun is lost, and th’ earth, and no man’s wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.
The new scepticism of the age has led to the extinguishing of the sun – a symbolism for the light of heaven or divine guidance. And once heaven’s light is extinguished, can humans get it back?
And freely men confess that this world’s spent,
When in the planets and the firmament
They seek so many new; they see that this
Is crumbled out again to his atomies.
‘Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,
He wrote this in the age of discovery and exploration which has in our times broken the barrier and gone into the firmament – the sky with rockets, and not just telescopes. We moderns see this as the beginning of progress, but according to traditional thought, it is instead a decline from a past harmony. Scientific knowledge is atomistic and partial. It can see the many, but not the one. Science can define and label the separate components of creation, but it cannot see that they are signs pointing to the Creator.
All just supply, and all relation;
Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,
For every man alone thinks he hath got
To be a phoenix, and that then can be
None of that kind, of which he is, but he.
This seems to be referring to the break down in traditional social relations, the dominance of economics and trade making our relations contracts mediated by the market, and the rise of a democracy and individualism where every man things his opinion is the right one and respect for hierarchy is lost – leading to a flattening and a confusion and a loss of dimension.
This is the world’s condition now, and now
She that should all parts to reunion bow,
She that had all magnetic force alone,
To draw, and fasten sund’red parts in one;
This refers to the metaphysical idea that there is an underlying unity behind creation. As for she, she seems to be a symbol for wisdom, for love, or spirit, divine things, as well as a homage to a particular woman.
She whom wise nature had invented then
When she observ’d that every sort of men
Did in their voyage in this world’s sea stray,
And needed a new compass for their way;
The development of navigational instruments facilitated the age of discovery – but Donne is reminding us that when we travel, we can go astray, and we need guidance.
She that was best and first original
Of all fair copies, and the general
Steward to fate; she whose rich eyes and breast
Gilt the West Indies, and perfum’d the East;
Whose having breath’d in this world, did bestow
Spice on those Isles, and bade them still smell so,
And that rich India which doth gold inter,
Is but as single money, coin’d from her;
This is a reminder that the beauties and wealth of the world come from someone far greater.
She to whom this world must it self refer,
As suburbs or the microcosm of her,
According to metaphysics, the creation is a macrocosm (great universe) and man the microcosm (small universe), but this verse reminds that even the macrocosm is small compared to the divine.
She, she is dead; she’s dead: when thou know’st this,
Thou know’st how lame a cripple this world is
Surely a lament at the loss of the spirit of love and belief from the world, when what is left is belief only in the dead body of matter itself.
(Anatomy of the World by John Donne)
