Et symposium om kjærlighet og begjær

In 2015, you will have the unique opportunity to engage with one of the foremost scholars in Renaissance studies. Professor Catherine Bates from the United Kingdom will be visiting the seminar as a distinguished guest as part of the Sext Symposium on November 5. Her lecture, titled ”‘Only rich in mischief’s treasure’: Sidney, Astrophil and the Masochistic Pleasure of the Text,” promises to offer an insightful and thought-provoking exploration of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella.

Professor Bates is widely recognized for her groundbreaking work in Renaissance poetry, gender studies, and the intersections of desire and literary form. In this lecture, she will delve into the complexities of Astrophil as a poetic figure, investigating how his voice and persona engage with themes of longing, self-inflicted suffering, and the paradoxical pleasures of unfulfilled desire. Drawing on masochistic theory and close textual analysis, she will shed new light on the dynamics of power, submission, and emotional excess in Sidney’s sonnet sequence.

The symposium will also feature a presentation by Kenneth Bareksten, titled “For God’s Sake Hold Your Tongue and Let Me Love.” This talk will explore the tensions between speech and silence, love and restraint, as seen in the poetry of John Donne. Examining the interplay between passion and argumentation in Donne’s Songs and Sonnets, the presentation will discuss how the poet constructs a voice that both demands and resists control.

This is an exceptional occasion for students and scholars alike to engage with leading experts in Renaissance literature and deepen their understanding of some of the period’s most influential poetic works. The Sext Symposium has a tradition of fostering innovative discussions and bringing fresh perspectives to classic texts, and this year’s event promises to be no exception. We warmly encourage all those with an interest in Renaissance literature, poetic voice, and literary theory to attend what will surely be an engaging and intellectually stimulating session.

Innlegg på symposiet

Introduction:

• “For God´s sake hold your tongue, and let me love” the speaker burst out in the opening line of The Canonization. And John Donne is widely known for this witty tone in his poems. Same also with his vibrant love poetry and unusual and sometimes far-fetched metaphysical imagery. The speaker then tells the adressee that he can criticize his gaut and palsy or his five grey hair, but not his love. Alas, alas, who´s injur´d by my love? Have merchant´s ships drowned by my sighs, he wonders rhetorically. Of course not, this is innocent love. What we can see here a mocking of the Petrarcanlove poems, where common comparisons of emotions was like the tide or the west wind.

• In his so-called metaphysical conceits, love was often thematized through the use of odd, absurd and highly unusual imagery. For exampel in the poem The Flea where the speaker woos the addressee for sex using a flea as a sexual image. “Mark in this flea, and mark in this, / How little which thou deny´st me is; / It sucked me first, and now he sucks thee, / and in this flea our two bloods mingled be”. The idea, the speaker argues, is that in that flea they´ve already mixed they´re bodily fluids, and might as well have sex

• [Transition to main points] Ben Jonson, Donnes contemporary and friend, stated once that Donne was the first poet in the world in some things. To close in on Johnsons remark, i´ll focus on two main points where Donne transcends his contemporaries, and that is bodily love and love in the afterlife. 

Bodily love

• In Donne´s Elegy XIX: “To his mistress going to bed”, the speaker is trying to convince his addressee to climb in to bed with him. The speaker goes on exploring his mistress’s body and encourages her into removing one fabric at a time. This differsfrom the traditional Petrachan love poem where the speaker will describe the desired object in some detail, but usually from a safe distance. Donne´s take on this is more hands on, you might say. [yeah, pun intended] He not only describes the various pieces of clothing that fall to the floor, but there is also actual touching involved.

• “Licence my roving hands and let them go, / behind, before, above, between, below. / O my America, my new found land, / My kingdom, safeliest when with one man mann´d.” You can read it as his hands go on to explore uncharted territory like he is Christoffer Columbus. By this we can say two things. First that he exceeds the Petrarchan convention for how to describe women by moving up close and within touching distance, but also that he uses older poetics as inspiration in a new way. It has been said that Donne has played a role in introducing elegy as love poetry to the English language, especially elegies from Ovids amores, Ovid was well known to be rather explicit in his elegies when describing love and sex, often in an absurd and humorous way. In Ovids fifth Elegy a similar scene of undressing occurs, but it is like Donne tries to rival or outdo him, making it more lecherous and exaggerated.

• [Transition to next point] So how about love in the afterlife, without the physical body  ,is that even possible?

Love in the afterlife

• In the poem The Relic the speaker and his beloved are dead and in their graves. The speaker is meditating on what to do in case his grave is broken up again to give room to yet another body? It was customary to bury more than one body in the same grave, someone poor or maybe a victim of the plague.. So what to do if you want to meet your beloved again on the other side, with all those mingled bones? The speaker proposes to tie “A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,” so that the gravedigger will“let´us alone, / And think that there a loving couple lies, / Who thought that this device might be some way / To make their souls at the last busy day / Meet at this grave, and make a little stay.” It was widely known/believed that on the day of judgement – the last busy day – souls went roaming the earth looking for their scattered bones. By tying this blonde lock of her hair around the wrist(s) of his/theirskeleton(s), he would make sure his beloved would find him, so that they could be together in the afterlife. So what is Donne reaching for here? 

• In Ramie Targoff´s new book Posthumous love: eros and the afterlife in Renaissance, she describes how english poets were actually taking a stance against the idea of a transcending love after death. Targoff writes that by asserting love´s mortal limits, the poets actually demonstrated it’s power. Meaning that it made poets like Donne and his contemporaries write highly sensual poems knowing that death is final. In context with The Relic one meaning, perhaps a jokeful one, can be that all though they are dead, at least they are together.

Conlusion Sext Symposium

• So why is Donne´s poetry still as vivid as if it had been written today:

• Donne had a way of putting words to wordless emotions with the use of his far-fetched imagery. By using different and opposing ideas, often expressed at the same time, and in the same poem, he explores human experience. And that experience, as AchsahGuibbory writes, is always in flux. 

• In my MA-thesis in comparative literature I examine Donne´s conceits and comparisons with an aim to shed some light on those contradictory interpretations. Of course there is an obvious celebration on love and the unity of two human beings loving each other, but with Donne there is always more beneath the surface. My love is to scratch that surface. Therefore i would like to end where i began and say “For gods sake hold your tongue, and let me love!”

Symposium ved Universitetet i Oslo. Se publikasjon