Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell (review)

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• Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell
• Nathanael Lambert

Rundell, Katherine, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022; hardcover; pp. viii, 343; R.R.P. US $30.00; ISBN 9780374607401.

In Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, Katherine Rundell has produced an exuberant account of John Donne's life, catechising on sometimes ugly facts of faith, love, sex, and—ultimately—death. She refines his private experiences and the sui generis poetry, 'where his words can be […] galvanic' (p. 1), by describing him in his strangeness. The resulting study is of a most singular individual. His life was 'super-autapomorphic', a scientific usage denoting extreme uniqueness (the 'super' is Rundell's; p. 297). Rich in anomalous qualities, Donne's poetry drew others' attention: 'even those who disliked [it] acknowledged that he was a writer who had erupted through the old into the new' (p. 142). Baroque excess, or irregular shaping, played a part, although Rundell does not deploy the term. 'The world was harsh and he needed a harsh language' is her formulation (p. 49). Certainly, life was harsh: 'to be born a Catholic [as Donne was] was to live with a constant […] terror' notes Rundell (p. 23).

A biography's greatest strength lies in its structure. Exhaustingly researched and cleverly capsulised, Super-Infinite's chapters make superbly organised scene depictions. A childhood and youth vexed by persecution, with recusant deaths accruing. An Oxford formation—'incurably bookish' (p. 28). A residence at Lincoln's Inn, a foot up for 'rich, sharp-witted young men [not intending] to become lawyers' (p. 43). Adventure: the siege of Cadiz, where Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex's, rashness is mentioned. If 'voyaging had got into his blood' (p. 83) as cited, Donne's return to London was into employment as secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, Elizabeth I's Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. In this employ, Donne met Anne More, Egerton's fourteen-year-old niece and ward. This love match proved decisive both for Donne and his poetry (think of 'A Valediction, Forbidding Morning', 'The Good-Morrow' or 'The Sun Rising', to name but three). Yet, following elopement it set him back grievously, for his furious employer dismissed him.

Super-Infinite registers all stages in Donne's life; 'murky' gaps are skilfully threaded with plausibility (see p. 182). However, those chapters that track Donne's domestic life drag in the telling. After his great faux pas, Donne's unpredictable 'route to preferment' (p. 193) saw him generally in dispiriting unemployment. Conversely, it is revealed that his swelling family—ten children survived childbirth—were billeted both hospitably and obligingly by kind friends. From 1607 to 1611, Donne took lodging in the Strand to often escape Mitcham, the family dwelling place. [End Page 335]

Domestic matters aside, the name-dropping glamour is coated in nonchalance. Oxford certainly, yet Cambridge perhaps, too, educated Donne—Ben Jonson carped; court revels hosted William Shakespeare (suggested if not sighted); James I personally bestowed the Deanship of St Pauls; The Savoy occasioned the wedding of poet and muse; Donne attended the Synod of Dort. He conversed with Thomas Kepler (their topics 'all in doubt', alas); Donne purchased a Titian, preached at The Hague; and became, eventually, a celebrity clergyman. Although the glamour has faded unceremoniously with the centuries, the indefeasibly great poetry breathes life yet. And, Rundell proves this exempli gratia.

Later poetic taste would reject Donne. Samuel Johnson, to give a typical response, thought Donne's work 'improper and ugly and broken' (p. 51). '[A]rt had rules', Rundell explains. '[P]oetry was […] monovocal' (p. 51) for Johnson and Pope. Donne's oeuvre could not be more alien to them. 'Why should we all sound the same?' (p. 52), Rundell proposes, setting up a central theme of originality. Each poet must invent his own language. It is necessary for us all to do so; owning one's language is not an optional extra. The human soul is so ruthlessly original (p. 52). Complimenting her stridency is Rundell's admission: 'this is […] an act of evangelism' (p. 11).

The audacity of interpretation has quite rightly won...