Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

Katherine Rundell - Super-Infinate: The Transformations of John Donne
This is an excellent modern biography aimed at the general reader which hardly puts a foot wrong. Perhaps the only thing that I find amiss is the sub-title: "The Transformations of John Donne" because it could be easily argued that there were no transformations he kept on being the same John Donne. He did however seem a man of many parts from the outside. He was of course a poet (largely unpublished) a trained lawyer, a passionate lover (we think) a clerk, an adventurer on the high seas, a family man, a courtier, ambassador and a preacher. None of these things are exclusive and Donne seemed to move effortlessly from one to the other.

Katherine Rundell's biography is show more linear following the pattern of Donne's life and what she does so well is to fill in the context of the life and times of a young educated man in the late 16th century who is not rich and whose religion can easily put him at risk. She tells of his younger brother who was also studying law at Lincolns inn and how he was arrested for harbouring a catholic priest and sent to Newgate prison where he died of the plague. The horror of life on deaths row is briefly but succinctly described. We learn that Donne was busy writing poetry, sometimes scraps of paper which he gave to an inner circle of friends. He only published a couple of poems during his lifetime, his first collection was published sometime after his death, when his manuscripts were chased down. He went away to sea when The Earl of Essex was recruiting sailors and gentlemen to man ships sent to loot Spanish Galleons. The expedition went rogue and sacked Cadiz. Back from adventuring he was employed by Sir Thomas Egerton Lord keeper of the great seal as some kind of clerk. Rundell describes the maze of offices in York House on the banks of the Thames and the entertainments that were on offer in the city of London, which Donne as a man about town could enjoy. The Earl of Essex's fall from favour his confinement to York House and his desperate attempt at a coup against Elizabeth is all background to Donne's work for Egerton and the subject of letters to his friends.

Rundell interweaves the historical events with chapters on Donne's early love poetry, his romance with Anne More and subsequent poems, also his short essays that were never published; labelled as paradoxes and problems. She then informs her readers about marriage contracts among wealthy people and how Donne's secret marriage to Anne Moore whom he met at York house resulted in him ending up in a debtors prison. Donne's impetuosity his belief that he could talk or write himself out of a problem were tested to the full. What is clear is that Donne's charm and strong personality kept him in tune with loyal friends and supporters; his poems and prose were copied and read with excitement. This is what Blundell has to say about one of his poems "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" where the lovers are imagines as two feet of a pair of mathematical compasses joined eternally at the base:

"It is so extravagantly witty, and so riotously plays only by its own rules. It needed to be clever, because he demands that sex be intelligent: it’s the poem of a man who has the temerity and invention to see the human condition in a piece of metal. It loves the body, because Donne, unlike so many of the highbrow poets who went before him, never pretended not to have a body – ‘grows erect as it comes home’ is a pun so obvious it might as well be a little sketch of a penis. Yeats wrote, ‘Donne could be as metaphysical as he pleased, and yet never seemed inhuman or hysterical as Shelley often does, because he could be as physical as he pleased."

Donne converted to the protestant religion becoming an Anglican. In 1621 he became Dean of St Pauls and his sermons were preached to large and enthusiastic crowds. All the passion and intensity he put into his earlier poetry was evident in his sermons and reading Blundell's biography seems to point to a natural progression of Donne, from poetic scribbler to master preacher.

The joy of this biography is that Blundell manages to tell her story of Donne's life whilst still finding time to comment on his writing. It is both enthusiastic and sympathetic, but does not fall into the trap of being a panegyric. Donne had his faults both as a person and in his writing and Blundell does not skirt around these. H.J.C. Grierson who edited the collected poems of Donne in 1912 wrote an introduction which laid the bare bones of Donne's biography and he said of him:

"Donne's life like his poetry is a troubled and tormented one. His passionate youth, his ambitious middle age, his errors of taste his uncertain treading in his path to the altar, his acquiescences and adulation of patrons, these things are undeniable as is his loyal friendships, his good feeling and good sense, his steady devotion to the more ascetic ideals of the profession he at last embraced. But the nobler qualities were the dominant ones."

Blundells biography is informative and super accessible. Written for a contemporary audience with enough context and background to bridge the gap between a scholarly piece of critique and a popular biography - 5 stars. show less

Well, what a wonderful book – an absolute delight from start to finish.

I had been familiar with a few of Donne’s works (probably the same few that everyone knows) from having studied a few of them untold decades ago as a new undergraduate, but had been lamentably hazy about his life, and the sheer scale and range of his oeuvre. Indeed, having not thought about him since those lost student days, I was no longer clear on his chronology, and had forgotten the extent to which his life overlapped that of Shakespeare (Donne was born eight years later, in 1572). Katherine Rundell touches briefly on the question of whether they might ever have met.

Donne’s life was hard and eventful, and seldom far from sorrow or vexation. Raised as a show more Roman Catholic, much of his early life was passed under the shadow of persecution, and indeed his younger brother henry was arrested for harbouring a priest and was consigned to the tower of London, where he subsequently died of plague. His own dedication to the faith he was born into seems to have been less adamant, and during his twenties he moved into at least apparent acceptance of the dogma of the Church of England, in which he eventually secured a living, publishing two anti-Catholic polemics in 1610 and 1611, before becoming a Royal Chaplain in 1615.

He also spent much of his life in relative penury, despite having received a decent inheritance on the death of his mother – it seems that he worked his way through this fairly swiftly, spending much of it on womanising, books and travel (presumably just wasting the rest!). He spent some years as a member of parliament, representing the constituency of Brackley, during which time he was under the protection and influence of Sir Francis Wooley (his wife’s cousin), furthering whose interests was his primary objective in Westminster. Having sought patronage as a court poet under King James, he eventually secured the living of three parishes (none especially close to another, being situated in Kent, Huntingdonshire and Bedfordshire) which he held simultaneously until his death.

Yet it is as a writer, and primarily a poet, that he is remembered, and rightly so. The breadth of his interests and the flexibility of his style are extraordinary, and were probably unprecedented in his own time. Best known now for his sensual verse, he also explored philosophical quandaries that were dividing learned opinion at the time, offering and incisiveness of thought that was illuminating and compelling.

Indeed, ‘illuminating and compelling’ applies equally fittingly to this book. Ms Rundell has a clarity of expression, and a facility for conveying complex issues in a readily accessible way. I can readily understand why this book won the esteemed Baillie Gifford Award for non-fiction works. I will certainly be looking for her other books as a matter of urgency. show less

Amazingly, this biography of John Donne becomes a real page-turner after reading the first chapter or so. And not just because of my own nearly lifelong love of his poetry. Rundell's narrative is superb as is her scholarship. This is one of those rare books where as a reader you start to think, "Why doesn't the author mention such-and-such, then on the next page she does!" While there are gaps in Donne's extant biography, the details here let us see him as a whole person, and not always a nice one. There's a story about his daughter's diamond ring that will stick with you. Highly, highly recommended.

There are more comprehensive biographies of Donne out there, but none that are as enthusiastic. Rundell openly proclaims herself an evangelist for Donne, by which she means not just a fan of his work, but a believer that his work, and the whole-hearted determination to embrace the complexity of life, is what we need now. In a world where so many people willingly inhabit the cosy comfort of a binary view of the world, or embrace outright denial of reality, Donne's willingness to see the manifold beauty and ugliness all around us, and often to yoke those together into something new, comes across as strikingly brave and ambitious. Of course, the difficulty of that endeavour--and the difficult poetry that it produced--offers a clear reason show more why Donne's lessons will go largely unheeded. After all, we now live in a world where people are quite happy to think they can make art by typing a few suggestive phrases into an AI generator. One unexpected side effect of this book is that it functions, however, as something of an antidote to present despair. For those who are convinced our world is uniquely going to hell in a handbasket, Rundell portrays the Elizabethan/Jacobean world in all is violence, its casual cruelty, it sickness, its loss, its chaos, with an unflinching eye. What is perhaps most remarkable about Rundell's work, however, is that she manages to be both an unabashed fan, while simultaneously being open, clear, and critical about Donne's many failings. Rundell couples a reverance for her subject with an often irreverent tone that will no doubt offend some. But her grasp of the minutae of the Early Modern period--occasionally deployed in anecdotes that are tangential, but forgivably so because they are just so damn interesting--is impressive. For me, at least, the book achieved its purpose: it has made me want to reread Donne. Or maybe, to really read him for the first time.

“Few people would turn to Donne’s poetry or prose, with its twisting logic and deliberate difficulty, for solace--but you might turn to him to be reminded that for all its horror, the human animal is worth your attention, your awe, your love” (261). show less

Donne is not a writer with whom I am super familiar. He popped up in college English courses here and there; mostly I know what is in the Norton Anthology and The New Oxford Book of English Verse (the one edited by Helen Gardner, not Q or Ricks). I have a very slender chapbook of Donne that my wife gave me when we first met in Oxford 23 years ago; that lives on my desk and I occasionally read it. The rector at our church mentioned this biography in a homily and it got good reviews, so I decided to try it.

Rundell gives a lively account of Donne's life, with discussions of his various works interwoven. She always looks at his writings in the context of his life at the time. Rundell focuses on how Donne transformed himself over the show more course of his life, as a rake, a lawyer, minor hanger on at the royal court, diplomat, priest and finally Dean of St Paul's. Often not very admirable (few great writers are), clearly hard to live with, but always interesting. There is also a fair amount about life in Elizabethan/Jacobean England.

Among the interesting bits I picked up: Donne invented a lot of words; he accounts for the first recorded use of around 340 words in the OED.

Rundell writes in a somewhat breathless literary/academic style. Definitely not a book written for tenure (that is a compliment, if you are innocent of the academy). She has sometimes splendid and sometimes startling turns of phrase:

"owning one's own language is not an optional extra"

"Language, his poetry tells us, is a set, not of rules, but of possibilities"

"a pun so obvious it might as well be a little sketch of a penis"

"The titles of the books add up to an assassin's hit list"

"in the most famous portrait, she has a look of scepticism powerful enough to burn rubber"

"a book so dry and relentless that it has a dust-storm quality to it"

"the way the human heart darts about like a rat"

"a beard that looks like he cut it with a rusty ice skate"

Clearly Donne has found his biographer and Rundell her subject. show less

This book wins on all counts. As a biography, it tells you everything you'd want to know about John Donne. But beyond that, Rundell injects the account with a lively spirit and a sensibility that curiously seems almost to emanate from Elizabethan times and Donne himself. This is an animated book, full of fascinating little digressions and anecdotes, as well as serious thoughts about his poetry. Rundell is clearly a teacher who loves teaching (actually, she's a Fellow at All Souls, Oxford), a delver who loves delving, a spelunker who loves spelunking. She's clearly full of joy in what she's doing and her book in consequence a joy to read.

There are so very many gaps in knowledge about the facts of John Donne's life and work. Katherine Rundell has done a fine job in meshing what is known with what can reasonably be surmised and with an evaluation of the man. Born a Catholic, with all the dangers and limitations that presented, Donne early exhibited his dexterity with words and his sparkling intelligence. Initially successful in the law, an early and unwise marriage pitched him into prison, then penury. What with his wife producing twelve children, five of whom died in infancy, and being remote from the power-house that was London, his career stalled, though his creativity never did. Only when his wife died as a result of childbirth (to a still-born child) did his career show more finally take off as Dean of St. Paul's, and preacher extraordinaire. Rundell deftly deals with all this material, all the while offering a critique of Donne's often dazzling and dextrous use of words. Frequently misogynistic, it's his love poetry that we often remember him for. She argues that these frequently erotic poems were written not for his wife, but for the enjoyment of his male friends. He wrote treatises and sermons too, and it would have increased my enjoyment of this book more if Rundell had quoted more extensively from his writing, rather than have me scurrying off to find the relevant texts. Nevertheless, Rundell conveys her enthusiasm for Donne well, with her own verbal dexterity, her excitement, and her scholarship. show less