G. M. Hopkins Heaven-haven



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An impassioned plea


In the sonnet Batter my heart Donne quite deliberately goes out to find as many paradoxes as possible. But far from being an intellectual exercise, it is a deeply impassioned plea to the ‘three person'd God’. The Trinity is invoked as if the term ‘God’ alone would not be sufficient as the person addressed.

Apathy?


As always, Donne's drama requires someone to address or argue with or, as here, plead with. The forceful opening is a plea for deliverance from a supposed state of apathy or lack of devotion and for a renewal of spirit. In fact the desperation voiced suggests a state far from apathy! So there is an unconscious paradox underlying the conscious ones.

In the first quatrain, then, God has to be very active. In the second quatrain Donne explains why. Try (‘Labour’) as he might, he just cannot seem to allow God to have control of his life. He knows God should govern his life, but it is as if he's been taken over by other forces, though he does not say what these forces might be. They might be apathy, or they may be more obviously evil.


Love for God


In the sestet, he declares his continuing love for God, and his desire to receive God's love. Here the language becomes very sexual. Unless God really acts and takes Donne by force, he is never going to get out of his present spiritual state of sinfulness and indifference.

Donne here is not unique but is echoing the cry of many Christians down the centuries who have expressed a desire to be free to love and serve God more deeply, yet who have felt that something has held them back. The classic biblical passage expressing this comes in Romans 7, where Paul cries out: ‘O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’(Romans 7:24 AV). Paul finds a way out; Donne leaves his poem unresolved, yet at the same time there is a sense that the battle has in fact been won.



Investigating Batter my heart

  • Relate Batter my heart to your own experiences of, perhaps, wanting to do something good or loving, but finding it difficult

    • How would you describe Donne's spiritual life? Do you find his struggles surprising?

Sinful, unworthy, unfaithful


The overriding theme of Batter my heart is Personal Sinfulness and Unworthiness, to which, almost as a corollary, the theme of Unfaithfulness is attached. The imagery of the sestet is quite explicitly that of marital unfaithfulness: ‘am betrothed unto our enemie’; ‘Divorce me’; ‘ravish mee’. It might seem shocking to use such explicit human terminology for spiritual unfaithfulness, but, then, the Metaphysical poets do set out to shock. For Donne, we feel, this is not some rhetorical trick, but an expression of his own sense of being a divided personality.

A divided personality


Various critics have made suggestions about why Donne feels so divided:

  • His leaving of the Roman Catholic church may still have haunted him with feelings of betrayal and of division.

  • It may be more temperamental. Some people are supersensitive to their own shortcomings and failures.

Whatever the reason, it makes for dramatic poetry.

Investigating Batter my heart

  • Pick out words and phrases in Batter my heart that express Donne's sense of his own sinfulness

    • Is this sense of sinfulness a general malaise?

      • Or do there seem to be specific sins behind it?

Force and bending into shape

blacksmith, photo by hans de kroon, available through creative commons


The sonnet Batter my heart is dense with imagery. The verbs in the first quatrain suggest a variety of activities: from the domestic picture of a housewife cleaning and polishing to a blacksmith or metalworker bending into shape some obstinate object. The biblical image of a furnace used to shape us, as seen in Isaiah 48:10 and Ezekiel 22:20-22, is echoed here.

Under siege


In the second quatrain, the central image is of a besieged town, perhaps picking up on the opening word ‘Batter’, as in a battering ram to break down a city's gates. Interestingly, another religious writer of the same century, John Bunyan, uses this image as the central symbol in his fiction The Holy War. The simile is an extended one, as the poet works out its details. Reason is ‘your viceroy’, or governor, but is powerless to act. Donne is unable to reason himself into a better spiritual state. It is as though God's forces are outside, but Donne cannot get to the gates to let them in – hence the need for the battering ram.

Rape!


In the sestet the imagery becomes markedly sexual – and paradoxical.

More on paradox: see Affliction I by George Herbert

Donne is portrayed as in love with God but betrothed to his enemy. In his time, when arranged marriages were not uncommon, this could happen. So the ‘Divorce mee’ means God is to dissolve the betrothal, undo the knot of the engagement. Then come the clinching paradoxes: that of ‘enthral/free’, where to enthral means to enslave, mentally or morally. The sexual overtones are made explicit in the last line, where ‘chast/ravish’ are set alongside each other. In the sonnet As due by many titles, Donne talks of the Devil ravishing him, a more obvious use. But God ravishing?! The shock reverberates through the whole poem.



Investigating Batter my heart

  • Look at the male/female roles in Batter my heart

    • Which role does the poet take?

  • Compare this role with that taken in much of his love poetry

    • What significant differences do you see?

Dramatic language


The language used by Donne in Batter my heart is highly dramatic.

  • The monosyllabic verbs especially hit us, as they are run off as a list in quick succession:

    • ‘knocke, breathe, shine’ contrasting with

    • ‘breake, blowe, burn’ The alliteration is carried on from the opening ‘Batter’

  • The paradoxes are similarly paired:

    • ‘rise and stand’ with ‘o'erthrow’;

    • ‘imprison...enthrall’ with ‘free’

    • The verbs predominate, just as monosyllables do.


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