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Cruickshank sees both poets fleeing to this specialized discourse, poetry,
to escape the religious debates of their day. For Cruickshank, the region
of poetry allows the authors access to a spiritual realm with a degree of
socio-cultural transcendence (13). In this view, within the text a neutral
ground can be found between Anglo-Catholic and Calvinist ideas.
While critics who strongly side with a particular religious influence
on Donne and Herbert present interesting ways of seeing the texts,
deconstructing the strict binaries between Anglo-Catholic and Calvinist
influence on the poets proves most fruitful. When not bound to a
particular faction, Donne and Herbert can be freed to represent their
own particular blend of Protestantism, often combining ideas from the
different traditions. Specifically, both Donne’s and Herbert’s images of
Christ act as verbal icons for Ignatian meditation, which seeks to lead
the reader to spiritual sanctification (the process of the Christian growing
closer to or being purified by God). For Donne, this meditation is for the
purpose of personal transcendence from a state of spiritual anxiety; for
Herbert, the images work to facilitate corporate meditation (the act of
meditating in a group as one would in a church congregation), much like
a liturgy. This reveals an underlying difference in their visions of Christian
faith. Donne sees Christianity worked out primarily with the individual
seeking God a God who pursues, whereas Herbert sees the Christian in a
community made up of individuals turning to God.
Building on Heather Asals’s work on “Anglo-Catholic” influence
on Herbert, Blaise argues that Herbert’s poetry functions as “verbal
icons” (12). Blaise explains, “words, in Herbert’s poetry, really become a
new verbal equivalent of icons as defined by Byzantine patristics” (12).
These icons are situated in a Protestant theology where the image is
contemplated in order to lead the Christian to the divine, not act as a
substitute or mediator for God. In this way, the icon is “an extension
of the Incarnation” since the study of the image will lead to the study
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of the incarnate Jesus, the ultimate material symbol representing God
(12). Herbert’s concrete depictions of specific images, such as Christ’s
passion, present the reader with a mental image to contemplate and acts
as a religious icon leading to contemplation of the divine. These images
are verbal in that they are made with words and meant to be sensually
experienced through the eyes and ears. They are icons in that they are
concrete images for the purpose of facilitating Christian worship. 3
The idea of verbal icons can be extended to Donne’s poetry as well
because, in Holy Sonnets, he too presents concrete images, which work to
lead the reader to a state of spiritual transcendence. Cruickshank argues
that both Donne and Herbert were “incarnationalists” since “their poetics
took account of the pressure of sensible things on abstract thought, and
used that pressure to shape an imaginative response . . . They rather treat
the synergy of outward and inward as a productive one, bearing the
imprimatur of the Incarnation itself” (1). This idea works along with that
of verbal icons: a physical icon is a sensual experience of the material with
the purpose of guiding the mind to the spiritual, non-material. Verbal
icons use sensory language in order to present the image which works
in the imagination guiding the mind to higher, spiritual thoughts. Both
Donne’s and Herbert’s iconic images are primarily of Christ, thus doubly
working with ideas of incarnation—depicting the Incarnate Christ and
calling on a perfect combination of spiritual and physical in the image
itself. It is this melding of focus on the outward image and inner spiritual
state which allows Donne and Herbert to blend Anglo-Catholic and
Calvinist influences.
“Holy Sonnet XIII” portrays Donne’s use of verbal icons. The speaker
says, “Mark in my heart, O soul, where thou dost dwell, / The picture
of Christ crucified” (2-3). In these lines, the verbal icon is presented in
“Christ crucified,” and the reader is to “mark” this image. One meaning
for “mark” is “to make the sign of the cross” upon oneself (OED). When
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