Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Death's Duel [Paperback]

John Donne (Author), Andrew Motion (Author), Izaak Walton (Author)

Book Description

Series: Vintage Spiritual Classics | Publication Date: December 7, 1999

John Donne (1572-1631) is best known as the greatest English metaphysical poet. But there was another dimension to Donne's life and writing that, if less well known, is no less profound and beautiful.

Born into an aristocratic Catholic family, Donne joined the Church of England at the age of twenty-one out of fear of persecution. At the age of forty-three, he gave up his preoccupations with secular prestige and devoted himself utterly to religion. It was eight years later when, battered with fever, the deaths of his beloved wife, several of his children, and many dear lifelong friends, he composed Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. There is both trauma and great drama in this extended meditation on the meaning of mortality, the possibility of salvation, and the true nature of the passage of eternal life. With a new introduction by poet and biographer Andrew Motion, one of the most revered books of Christian devotion speaks to us again of the higher aspirations of man and the always-present possibility of a relationship with God.

This long out of print edition also contains Donne's last sermon, "Death's Duel" as well as the short colorful biography of him written by his contemporary Izaak Walton.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Death's Duel, one of the handsome series of Vintage Spiritual Classics, contains a rich collection of extraordinary writings, any one of which would be worth the price of the whole book. Andrew Motion's clear, accessible, entertaining, and erudite introduction explains the situation of both Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions--written in 1624, when Donne was feeble with a fever that doctors believed might kill him--and Death's Duel--Donne's final sermon at St. Paul's Cathedral, preached only a month before his death at age 59. Also included is Izaak Walton's The Life of Dr. John Donne, a spry and penetrating biography of the poet, written in 1640. And then there is the meat: both Devotions and Death's Duel show Donne at his very best--theatrical, humble, faithful, and doubting all at once. This is a book of severe and joyful mortality. Here is a foretaste from Devotions: "Death is in an old man's door, he appears and tells him so, and death is at a young man's back, and says nothing.... There is scarce anything that hath not killed somebody; a hair, a feather hath done it; nay, that which is our best antidote against it hath done it; the best cordial hath been deadly poison." --Michael Joseph Gross

From Kirkus Reviews

Meditations and a sermon by one of Englands most celebrated writers. Most readers know that John Donne was a 17th-century English metaphysical poet. But fewer recall that in his early forties, he began to focus all his energies on Christian matters. By his early fifties, he had written a collection of meditations on sickness and dying, inspired in part by the death of his wife. Donne organized his reflections into chapters detailing the onset of sickness, the arrival of physicians who try to cure the patient (They Use Cordials, to Keep the Venom and Malignity of the Disease from the Heart; They Apply Pigeons, to Draw the Vapors from the Head), and the warning that the patient may relapse. The Devotions are a narrative of sickness, but also a metaphor for the spiritual life: You may take spiritually ill, and there is always a fearful danger of relapsing. Donne wrestles with theodicy, wondering why God should allow sickness in the first place, and struggles with the question of whether sickness is a blessing or a curseit is a sign of the sin that has plagued humanity since the Fall, but it also hastens death, a necessary precursor to salvation. Most arresting are the prayers with which each meditation concludes, where, echoing Jesus on the Cross, Donne implores God not to forsake him. Also included in this volume is Deaths Duel, a sermon that Donne, plagued with what was probably gastric cancer, wrote shortly before his own death, and Isaak Walton's 1640 biographical sketch of Donne. The introduction by Andrew Motion, Britains current poet laureate and a biographer of Philip Larkin, is skimpy on Walton, but ample and useful on Donne. Donne devotees will be delighted, and those who know little about the English poet may be inspired to learn more by this new edition of a spiritual classic. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 234 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (December 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375705481
• ISBN-13: 978-0375705489
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #625,372 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars That action concerns me, May 30, 2002

By 

Jae Brodsky - See all my reviews

This review is from: Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Death's Duel (Paperback)

I must admit that I bought this book solely for the most famous of Donne's Meditations - Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, morieris, AKA "no man is an island". I was unaware of the circumstances which surrounded Donne's writing of the Meditations. He had taken ill with a strong and high fever, and believed that he was dying. The meditations trace his spiritual journey through his illness, starting with the beginning (The first alteration, the first grudging, or the sickness), through attempts to treat him (The physician is sent for), to treatments (They apply pigeons, to draw the vapors from the head - yuck!), until he comes to terms spiritually with his fate (From the bells of the church adjoining, I am daily remembered of my burial in the funerals of others).

These meditations make a fascinating contrast with the other work by Donne in this book: Death's Duel. This was the last sermon that Donne ever preached, one month before he died. Not only did he know that the end was near, but so did his audience, who called it "the doctor's funeral sermon". It is interesting to see how Donne's view of death had changed in the years between the two works. By the time Death's Duel was written, Donne's mother, wife, and six of his twelve children were already dead.

In spite of the fact that Donne wrote over three hundred years ago, I am still influenced by his writings. Although I am not Christian, I agree with many of Donne's thoughts on how people interact with each other, and how we effect the lives of others, though we might not realise it. "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind." Donne, though dead, is still involved in mankind, and this book aptly displays it.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Style Works With Substance, August 13, 2009

By 

Martin Asiner "Adjunct College Instructor" (Jersey City, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Death's Duel (Paperback)

When John Donne was writing his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, he was convinced that he was near death. For most of his early life, he led a life that he would later come to see as profligate and dissolute. After he was appointed as Dean of St. Paul's Parish, he slowly changed into a zealous believer in God, the Bible, and the afterlife. His parishioners and reading audience well knew of his early lifestyle and could see that his metamorphosis was genuine. When he grew ill in 1623, they could relate to the inner turmoil that they knew he felt as he lay in bed contemplating the excesses of his past life and the uncertain future of the next. But there was far more to the bare facts of his infirmity. His meditations, which were never intended for publication, have held readers spellbound for centuries due to the rhetorical flourishes of prose that ironically bring to mind the very libertine poems that he wrote as a call to celebrate the joys of a carnal-based love. His meditations, despite their seeming fragmentary nature, are resonant with dramatic immediacy, memorable phrasing, driving rhythms, compelling figurative language, and an unexpected level of emotional passion mixed with a more traditional amount of acceptance of the inevitable.

Just as Donne has the ability to enthrall the reader in his early light verse, so does he in his later serious prose. His initial meditation directly and immediately involves the reader with his doleful lamentation of personal illness. Donne uses a combination of metaphor and parallelism as he writes, "But in a minute, a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all." This "cannon" is a symbol of heavenly displeasure of Donne's self-professed sins. Donne also has a talent for choosing the apt phrase. His use of paradox as in "we beggared ourselves by hearkening after false riches," forces the reader to connect the unreality of earthly riches with the poverty that results when those riches are achieved. Further in Meditation I, his mention of "we die and cannot enjoy death," emphasizes the duality of death in that death is legitimately to be feared but to those who have led sinful lives, death cannot bring an end to worldly pain.

In Meditations IV and XII, Donne makes frequent and forceful use of micro and macro imagery, the result of which is to take humanity and "blow" it up into a gargantuan state that emphatically connects his belief of man as a creature of free will to having to accept responsibility for the acting out of that will. When he writes that "It is too little to call a man a little world," he suggests that man's bodies and thoughts, now impossibly enlarged, are titanic enough to house and radiate ideas that can traverse the universe all the while implying by ironic contrast the present immobility of his bedridden form.

Donne is also a master of personification, the ability to portray non-human entities as possessing human traits. As he attempts to emphasize his contention that all of humanity is linked in such a way that what one link feels or experiences has some measurable effect on the others, Donne pictures a kindly nature that is intimately involved in human affairs. He describes in Meditation XVII, a nature that can baptize a child, and at the same time can connect that baptism to him personally. He pictures that child as becoming connected to a body of Christian believers as analogous to that child's being "engrafted into that body whereof I am a member." In the same meditation, he writes what has since become one of the most widely quoted sentences in English. "Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." In these few words, Donne punctuates his thesis that all the separate parts of humanity are linked in ways that transcend the physical.

It is one of the ironies of Donne's conversion from the libertine "Jack" Donne of his early verse to the mature "John" Donne of the meditations that the very qualities of rhetoric that pleased the former are still used by the latter to set out a moral view of the universe that filled him with an overpowering sense of dread. That we today can feel this dread in each meditation is a marker of a man obsessed with past sins but unable to find a way to live with them.

4 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars what gives me the write to title this thing when a title...., March 11, 2001

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Duke of Earl (seattle, wa usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Death's Duel (Paperback)

for this book,devotions upon emergent occasions and deaths duel has already been so good. Wow! what more can i possibly say....alot. firstly, fascinating stuff. it was really great and jesus Christ we love him, John Donne? WOW?!! what do you think? read it really it is very nicely proportionate for me the dimensions where spectacular and also a very nice size, John Donne? Where in the world is John Donne when we need him now....bye John Donne?