DRUŠTVENA INTIMNOST: LjUBAVNIK SA HILjADU LICA U PESMAMA DžONA DANA

Abstract

Donne’s poems with a distinctive focus on the intimate / public opposition may be read in the biographic context of the poet’s ambitions in terms of social position. The paper at hand, however, aims to offer a different social context for these poems (Good Morrow, Sun Rising, Canonization, Break of Day). The concept of intimate in these poems, it is argued, is not to be read as stemming from the pressure of the public, but rather as an element of a narrative construed by the interpretative community. In that sense, it is not the intimate that begets the desire for withdrawing from the public; rather, it is the social narratives, such as the narrative of separation and initiation, that construe the intimate. Further, all of Donne’s poems invoked in the paper are aubades, and aubades can also be seen as poetic realizations of a segment of the narrative of separation, illumination and the return of the hero (as defined by Campbell). Thus, Donne’s aubades are poetic representations of the nadir of the schematic circle of the monomyth – of the moment directly preceding the reintegration of the hero into the society, with separation and illumination looming from the background. Though problematization of the return is well within the scope of the original concept of the monomyth (as are many of the variations found in Donne’s verses, like the external intervention, the lack of will to exchange the tranquility of the illumination for the raggedness of the world, etc.) Donne seemingly finds room for integrating the metapoetic into the scheme: the ordinary (Petrarchan) verses will not do to pass on the experience of the illumination, but Donne’s new idiom, one that shies not from painting resurrections with orgasms, itself withdrawn from the many, if read right, might prove a vehicle of saints, which will intercede with the higher understanding and exist- ence for the benefit of the understanders. Thus, Donne also seemingly sees his poetry as rein- vigorating and consequently, participating in the creation of the social narratives of intimacy.