this little world

[malsperanza]

So just now I was quoting Shakespeare at his most lyrically chauvinist (This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England), in the unlikely context of thinking about English fairy and ghostie stories. The speech is from Richard II, not exactly Shakespeare's most unalloyedly patriotic play. (For Shakespeare the propagandist, vid.Henry V.) And not exactly his most magical, either. I mean, the Wars of the Roses plays are about as brutally unmagical as Shakespeare gets.

It occurs to me that Shakespeare's magical plays (Midsummer, Tempest, Winter's Tale), are not set in England. I am sure this has been observed before. They are in "a wood near Athens," or Illyria, or Corcyra -- Mediterranean places redolent of a Classical Golden Age when pagan gods walked the Hellenic hills. And yet, Shakespeare's "this little world" is not only England but also fairyland--whether Prospero's Corcyra or some fictive version of Bohemia (with coasts) or Sicilia. This "little world" -- whether England or the Enchanted Isle or indeed Marvell's Bermudas -- is always an island, and so is Faerie (Avalon).

And so is a human being. Consider this:

I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements and an angelic sprite,
But black sin hath betray'd to endless night
My world's both parts, and oh both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it, if it must be drown'd no more.
But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire
Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler; let their flames retire,
And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.

This is John Donne at his most magical, which is to say, his most spiritual. That's right--the same fellow who more famously declared that "No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind." One would like him to make up his mind: is each of us a whole world, an isolated (the word comes from the Italian for "island") entity, entire and whole? Or the opposite? Of course, the answer is "yes."

The Metaphysicians had a neat way of turning one metaphor into another, and another. Here we have a series of images linked one to the next: Island/England; England/Faerie; island/Faerie; island/human being. The missing (but implied) ones are: fairy/human being and -- perhaps more of a stretch -- England/human being.

I am a little world, made cunningly... one can almost imagine Donne in a brighter mood, blue editor's pencil in hand, revising Shakespeare, thus:

I am a little world, made cunningly,
Of elements and an angelic sprite,
Another Eden, demi-paradise,
A fortress built by Nature for myself
Against infection and the hand of war,
I am a happy man, this little world,
A precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves me in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier men,--
This blessed isle, this earth, this realm, this island me.

Comments

[chresimos.livejournal.com]

The Shakespeare/Donne synthesis poem brings me joy. :D

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Amused the hell out of me too. Next up: Whitman answers the Shakespeare/Donne dilemma:

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."


Chresimos, do you know lnhammer's LJ? You would like his poetry, I think.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

I agree with chresimos.

I am a happy man, this little world,
A precious stone set in the silver sea,

Close to the bone, there . . .