Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness by John Donne
"Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness" is a poignant poem by John Donne, likely one of his final works, reflecting his deep engagement with themes of mortality, faith, and redemption. Written after his ordination and following personal loss, the poem illustrates a transition from Donne’s earlier, more flamboyant style to a more introspective and humble exploration of spiritual concerns. It is rich with metaphors that intertwine geographical and religious imagery, suggesting a profound connection between physical existence and spiritual journey.
Donne employs the concept of cartography as a metaphor for understanding life and death, suggesting that just as maps chart physical territory, one’s life can be charted from birth to resurrection. The poem juxtaposes the Eastern symbolism of birth and resurrection with the Western connotations of death, ultimately proposing that death is not an end but a transition toward eternal life. This juxtaposition, along with references to biblical figures and the Garden of Eden, adds layers to Donne's reflection on salvation and the role of Christ as the second Adam.
Through his exploration of these themes, Donne invites readers to contemplate their own spiritual journeys, presenting a narrative that balances intellectual rigor with heartfelt humility before God. The poem serves as a synthesis of Donne’s lifelong interests, marking a significant moment in his literary and spiritual evolution.
Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness by John Donne
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1635 (collected in Poems, by J. D.: With Elegies on the Authors Death, 1635)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
“Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness” is perhaps the last poem that Donne ever wrote and thus serves as a good example of the poetic interests he maintained late in life after his wife’s death and his ordination. Most critics divide Donne’s career into at least two parts: an earlier, more productive period when he was known as a man-about-town and wrote primarily satires and witty treatments of love, and a later period after he accepted Holy Orders in the Anglican Church. Clearly, “Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness” belongs to the latter period. As one might expect, there are similarities and dissimilarities between it and the poems of the earlier period. “Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness” reveals Donne’s continuing wide intellectual interests and his ongoing talent for bringing these interests together in vivid, insightful metaphors; but it also shows a new, humbler concern for the welfare of his soul.
A cursory look at the poem reveals examples of Donne’s intellectual interests. He raises the issue of cartography, the making of maps, popular in the Renaissance when discoveries of new lands constantly made news. Donne reveals his own interest in and knowledge of geography, referring to Jerusalem, Gibraltar, the Pacific Ocean, and the Bering Strait, which had become a hoped-for passage to Eastern riches.
His use of the phrase “per fretum febris” (through the straits of fever) does not establish him as a Latin scholar, though he probably was, but it is his thorough acquaintance with religious topics that is striking. Thus, he writes about how in Christianity the East symbolizes birth and resurrection, how the West symbolizes death, and how just as on a map East and West merge, so birth fades into death and death into resurrection. He refers to Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and the theory current in the seventeenth century that after the Deluge, these three sons repopulated the entire earth.
He shows his familiarity with the classical Christian notion that the Garden of Eden was located on the same spot where Jerusalem was later built and that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil grew on the same site where Christ’s cross stood, thus locating all four of these contrasting, contradicting symbols in the same place and creating a magnificently paradoxical image. Another paradox important to Donne and also indicative of his immersion in Christian theory is the paradox of the two Adams. As Donne points out, through the first Adam humankind fell from grace, forfeited the Garden of Eden, and was condemned to earn its bread with the sweat of physical labor. Through Christ, the second Adam, however, humanity is restored to grace, regains Paradise, and, instead of the pain of the first Adam’s sweat, knows the balm, the saving efficacy, of the second Adam’s blood.
In one of this poem’s most vivid metaphors, Donne brings his knowledge of geography and religion together in a conceit wherein spiritual and physical cosmography unite in the body of Donne. Thus, his physicians become cosmographers, mapmakers, and Donne’s body becomes their map. On this map, East, his birth, and West, his death, can be discerned. As surely as he began his journey in the East, he will conclude his journey in the West. Yet, asserts Donne, his West holds no fears for him, for as in all flat maps, and Donne’s body is such a map, East and West meld into one, so Donne expects his death to merge into resurrection. Death will become life.
Reflecting on the poem to this point, one may discern several similarities between it and Donne’s earlier poetry. It retains the same wittiness, love of learning, and penchant for striking comparisons as those earlier poems do. Yet there arises a difference in this poem. In previous poems, Donne flaunted his knowledge and used his wit to bully his opponents into submission. In this poem, Donne trusts not in his wit or argumentative acumen but in Christ’s “purple” (His Lordship) to save him, and he concludes not with the original swaggering confidence that he has taught his opponent a lesson but with the humbler hope that he may learn from his own poem. Ultimately, his conceit of the map does not carry him to flights of fancy but to submission to his fate as he reflects upon the straits before him and the God who waits beyond them.
Bibliography
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