Batter my heart, three-person'd God...
So I was re-reading Phillip K. Dick's The Transmigration of Timothy Archer and came across this little gem of a poem. Normally, to be honest, I skip any poem I see in a novel (like I tend to skip formalizations), but I was sleepy and kept reading. It turns out to be a Phantastickal poem.
-John Donne
Quite something, eh? "That I may rise, and stand, overthrow me, and bend your force to break blow, burn, and make me new. ...I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free. Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me." ...Super sweet.
I wonder if the rest of the sonnets are similarly good...
PS: The Transmigration of Timothy Archeris probably Dick's best. Like all of his best novels, it is set in Berkeley in the late 70s/early 80s among the detritus of the failed 1960s. It is amusingly cracked -- full of madness and fringe religion. Unlike, say, Neil Stephenson, the madness is not presented in the spirit of fun high-jinx, but, rather, as simultaneously tragically fated and intelligibly alluring. The novel, rather nicely, swings between presenting the wackiness as madness and as fictionally true. Also he manages to have his characteristic shortcomings as an author (crack-pot-ism coupled with intellectual pretentions) come across as flaws in the narrator and not as flaws in his style.
You should read it right now, especially if you're in the mood for a novel about death and suffering. With the spring weather, we all need to nip any dawning optimism with realistic gloom.
HOLY SONNETS. XIV.  Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ; That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp'd town, to another due, Labour to admit you, but O, to no end. Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captived, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy ; Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. |
-John Donne
Quite something, eh? "That I may rise, and stand, overthrow me, and bend your force to break blow, burn, and make me new. ...I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free. Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me." ...Super sweet.
I wonder if the rest of the sonnets are similarly good...
PS: The Transmigration of Timothy Archeris probably Dick's best. Like all of his best novels, it is set in Berkeley in the late 70s/early 80s among the detritus of the failed 1960s. It is amusingly cracked -- full of madness and fringe religion. Unlike, say, Neil Stephenson, the madness is not presented in the spirit of fun high-jinx, but, rather, as simultaneously tragically fated and intelligibly alluring. The novel, rather nicely, swings between presenting the wackiness as madness and as fictionally true. Also he manages to have his characteristic shortcomings as an author (crack-pot-ism coupled with intellectual pretentions) come across as flaws in the narrator and not as flaws in his style.
You should read it right now, especially if you're in the mood for a novel about death and suffering. With the spring weather, we all need to nip any dawning optimism with realistic gloom.
posted by Idris at 1:09 PM
6 Comments:
Wow. That really was quite the poem. Was this Donne guy a one-hit wonder?
I hate to say it of such a famous poet, but having surveyed his powms, I cannot claim to have been much moved by any other... though "Death be not proud" is pretty decent.
Much of the rest consists in besotted love-poetry.
*The Man in the High Castle* was my favourite Dick novel, but I have not read his stuff in many years.
Since I have to deal with Bay Area crazies on a daily basis, I might put this one off until I leave here.
D.AK.:
*...High Castle* was pretty good...
What's your schedule/plan for leaving SF, by the way? It seems that any leaving of the Bay Area would be at least a little sad -- even accounting for the many crazies there.
-Idris
Responding to Bobcat's question about John Donne being a one-hit wonder: That couldn't be farther from the truth. He was the most prolific and famous metaphysical poet/writer of his time (1572-1631). You must be familiar with the term "for whom the bell tolls". That came from one of his writings. Google "no man is an island".
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