Thursday, September 16, 2010

"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" John Donne

After reading the poem once, I looked up the word valediction, because I didn't know what it meant. The definition, according to dictionary.com, is: the act of bidding farewell or taking leave. Understanding the title made the poem make much more sense. I read it multiple times and recieved the speaker as someone who has lost their soul mate. He says "no tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move," which brings me to believe that he does not want to be depressed by it. When he says "Men reckon what it did and meant," I think he is thinking about what their love meant now that she is gone. He says that their love cannot "admit absence," which I took as their love is so strong that they have grown together as one. That thought is reassured when he says "Our two souls... which are one." He speaks of how he is going to miss her eyes, hands, and lips. In the second to last stanza, I believe he is talking about their two souls, and as her soul leaves, his will still depend on hers. Then in the last stanza, I feel like he is saying that he cannot go on without her. "[W]ho must/ Like th' other foot; obliquely run." Oblique can mean more than one thing; it can mean to be morally, ethically, or mentally wrong OR indirectly aimed at or reached, as ends or results; deviously achieved. Either way, I interpret it as him wanting to die too.

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