John Donne

  • John Donne
  • English

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, and severall steps in my Sicknes is a prose work by the English metaphysical poet and cleric John Donne, published in 1624. It covers death, rebirth and the Elizabethan concept of sickness as a visit from God, reflecting internal sinfulness. The Devotions were written in December 1623 as Donne recovered from a serious illness. Having come close to death, he described the illness he had suffered from and his thoughts throughout his recovery. The Devotions is divided into 23 parts, each consisting of 3 sub-sections, called the ‘meditation’, the “expostulation’ and a prayer. The 23 sections are chronologically ordered, each covering his thoughts and reflections on a single day of the illness.

Meditation XVII inspired Ernest Hemingway’s famous novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943).

Image painting is John Donne, late 17th century copy of a 1616 work by Isaac Oliver.

Tip!

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 friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

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 friend's or of thine own were;  any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Source:

https://www.ccel.org/ccel/donne/devotions.html