Jesse Sharpe PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

Donne’s Incarnating Words 74
Divine Poems. The cycle is an act of praise and devotion that looks at salvation as coming
through the physical life of Jesus. As has been briefly discussed, the first sonnet is a
dedicatory poem in which it is set forth that these poems are an expression of Donne’s
desire for eternal life through Christ, but it also points to Donne’s need to have assurance
of his salvation. In the following six sonnets, Donne’s case for why these poems about the
life of Jesus should result in his guaranteed salvation are put forth in language that places
its emphasis on the humanity in Jesus, and the ways in which God works through humans
(flesh and blood) to bring forth salvation for humanity and union between the divine and
the flesh.
As the cycle continues, the reader is taken to the ‘Annunciation’ in which the
Incarnate Lord is residing in the womb of Mary. The second line of the sonnet declares to
the reader the great mystery and paradox that is at play in this pregnancy as Donne writes,
‘That All, which is always is all everywhere’. In this poem the mystery of the Incarnation
begins with the God who is omnipresent being a baby, a being whose existence is limited
by a womb, and has a clear beginning in history. Of this paradox DiPasquale comments,
‘Through the Incarnation of Christ, the plurality of a human “all” is united with the perfect
singularity of the divine “All”’. 63
The paradoxical state of God as child and human is
continued in the following lines as Donne continues in his description of this ‘All’ ‘Which
cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear; | Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die’. The
reader is now prepared to meditate upon the existence of a being who should not exist, and
whose actions are a contradiction of its very nature. Donne then begins to directly address
Mary in the poem, and in this the paradox of the human and divine is moved past the
Incarnation in Jesus, and is found to be affecting humanity beyond the body of Jesus, as
that body must reside in Mary as it gestates.
63 Literature and Sacrament, p. 68.