by John Donne
SHE’s dead ; and all which die
To their first elements resolve ;
And we were mutual elements to us,
And made of one another.
My body then doth hers involve,
And those things whereof I consist hereby
In me abundant grow, and burdenous,
And nourish not, but smother.
My fire of passion, sighs of air,
Water of tears, and earthly sad despair,
Which my materials be,
But near worn out by love’s security,
She, to my loss, doth by her death repair.
And I might live long wretched so,
But that my fire doth with my fuel grow.
Now, as those active kings
Whose foreign conquest treasure brings,
Receive more, and spend more, and soonest break,
This —which I am amazed that I can speak—
This death, hath with my store
My use increased.
And so my soul, more earnestly released,
Will outstrip hers ; as bullets flown before
A latter bullet may o’ertake, the powder being more.
Source: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/donne2.php
Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I.
E. K. Chambers, ed.
London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 69.
The title of the poem can have several meanings. In a literal understanding it describes the process of dissolving or disintegration. In the seventeenth century it also was related to the processes occurring in alchemy but also, what can be surprising, the dissolution of body and soul – the death. Among other readings it could relate to the dissolution of marriage and orgasm. The first impression which the reader gets when reading the title of the poem and its first sentence is that it will explore the death of a person, specifically of a woman and therefore he can expect an elegy. Rightly so, because The Dissolution is an elegy on the death of a lover, and if it was not Donne, we could pause here. But as always with the poetry of the monarch of the wit, verses are not what they seem.
In a truly elegiac form Donne ‘laments’ death of his lover at the moment of a sexual death – orgasm. During his lifetime common was a concept of la petit mort – the small death, which term helped to describe the sexual ecstasy, the physical and emotional ‘torments’ of releasing bodily fluid by a man and a sexual culmination by a woman, joined together in a sexual embrace. The middle part of the poem is as a lamentation on a sexual death that runs through the mind of the speaker at the short space of time, while his partner achieves orgasm.
Although the ending implies the impotence of the speaker, the last two verses hint that the speaker experienced a longer sexual act, with more than one ejaculation, bullet flown before. Therefore, the verses 22-23 introduce the process of a mutual orgasm of both lovers. Man shares the passion and elements with woman, the image of her experiencing sexual culmination only heightened his desire and ability to ejaculate, to achieve orgasm. Thus for me, it does not lead to understanding of the poem as dealing with ejaculatio retardata but as a mutual dissolution of both lovers at the moment of a mutual orgasm.
Donne’s genius lies in the ability to encapsulate the ephemeral moment of a heightened passions of true lovers. From the modern perspective, the reader can understand the poem as an affirmation of a mutual orgasm, achieved both by a man and a woman, and ,from the feminist point of view, The Dissolution emphasises the importance of a sexual pleasure and sexual happiness, regardless of lover’s gender.
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