Pleasurable Reading: Donne’s “Valediction Forbidding Mourning”

Abstract

The best-known of Donne’s poems of “Valediction” is a lyric whose analogies of gold and a compass have long been considered touchstones for the so-called metaphysical style. Reading the poem, I have realigned these analogies with the Renaissance practice of making the invisible visible through analogy. In particular, the compass results from a poetic process that is simultaneously intellectual, material, and affective. Its polyphony is amazingly attuned to the multiple pressures and possibilities of Donne’s culture.