At the Threshold between Life and Death. Time of Transience and Transition in John Donne’s Holy Sonnets and First Book of Sonnets by Andreas Gryphius

Abstract

. The article focuses on a comparison of selected pieces of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets and Andreas Gryphius’ First Book of Sonnets as examples of meditatio mortis. It presents the similar ities of form and content between these two cycles, and traces possible inspirations for their creation in the analysis of both poets’ religious pathways, facets of their biography with accentuation of ex periences of death and transience, and their interest in spiritual and carnal processes accompanying the last moments of existence.