Batter My Heart Flashcards
‘Batter my heart’,
an apostrophe to God, conveys the strong emotions of Donne’s ingrained guilt regarding his apostasy, and his violent submissive masochistic desire for resurrection.
Donne presents the strong emotion of his desperation
through images of masochistic self-loathing. Initially, he uses a trochaic inversion ‘batter my heart’, which, combined with its cacophony, provides an aural symbol of his distress, as it is an unconventional introduction to a sonnet form. This is exemplified by the juxtaposition between the violent verb ‘batter’ and the devotion of the metaphysical emblem ‘heart’; Donne is so desperate for masochistic punishment that he uses an imperative to command his own abuse, an abuse that ascends the corporeal to become metaphysical, to purify him.
He continues his use of imperatives and trochees
in ‘o’erthrow me’ that he may ‘rise and stand’. ‘O’erthrow’ is an image of descent that juxtaposes ‘stand’, another illustration of Donne’s turbulent and conflicting emotions, but perhaps also an indicator of Donne’s power-dynamic with God. Donne is violently submissive, with the political implications of ‘o’erthrow’ perhaps referring to human corruption – it must be ‘knock’[ed] out of him, so that he can ‘rise’ (inferred as an image of Christian ascendance) a better man- a virtuous man.
Moreover, Donne depicts his strong emotion of desperation
through the monosyllabic plosive tricolon ‘break, blow, burn’ - the caesura serving to emphasise the guttural alliteration and Donne’s aggressive desire for punishment. Interestingly, these imperatives verbs have a semantic field of trade – Donne objectifies himself as something which God can violently shatter (‘break’), mould (‘blow’) and cleanse (‘burn’). Perhaps Donne is wearied of his strong emotions, torturing himself over his apostasy, and wishes to be an inanimate object over which God has total power. As such, these images of pain transgress into an image of progress, of utility, perhaps explaining the sheer desperation of Donne’s masochism, and the catharsis that might be achieved in his salvation.
Additionally, Donne presents the strong emotion of guilt
through the metaphysical trope of conceit. He inserts himself into the trochaic simile ‘like an usurp’d town’. Mirroring the earlier semantic field of politics to symbolise human corruption, the lack of consent implicit in the militaristic lexical set of ‘usurp’d’ depict Donne as ‘captiv’d’; an entity who had no control over his corruption, a distinctly Calvinist allusion. This implication of the futility of Donne’s strong emotions elicit some pathos for the guilt that clearly racks him as he ‘labor[s]’ to ‘admit’ God – the determination of his endeavour vivid in the strenuous tone of the active verb ‘labor’.
Moreover, he laments he is
‘betroth’d unto [God’s] enemy’ – the juxtaposition between marital and sinful lexical sets once again hints at Donne’s guilt, as a Catholic, he perceives he has tied an unbreakable ‘knot’ with sin, betraying his faith.
Finally, Donne presents the strong emotion of his desire,
through his need to purged of his sins. He continues the marital lexical set after the volta, with the admission: ‘dearly I love you, and would be loved fain’. The adverb ‘dearly’ clearly highlights his devotion to that which he feels he has betrayed, and the repetition of ‘love’ deepens the pathos we feel for Donne, as perhaps the only strong emotion with positive connotations is subsequently structurally overwhelmed with violent imagery.
He returns to his initial imperative mood:
‘divorce me’. Notably, With its tone of separation, Donne’s desire for redemption in the eyes of his Catholic God, tempts him to commit the ‘sin’ of divorce – the resulting nihilism of this verb thus exacerbating the futility of Donne’s desperation, no matter how strong it is.
In the final couplet
(notably in perfect iambic pentameter, despite the conflict that reigns beyond the final line) Donne promises he will never be ‘chaste’, begging God to ‘ravish’ him. He juxtaposes one of the few virtuous imagery of the poem (‘chaste’) with the imagery of rape in ‘ravish’ - Donne utterly rescinds corporeal power to God, perhaps in the hope that in the destruction of his sinful body, he might be ‘free’ to achieve purity of the soul, or perhaps more radically, to blasphemously reduce God to his baseness, to banish the strong emotions of his desperation, guilt, and desire for resurrection that so torture him.
