An Autopsy of Lust and Desire in John Donne’s “The Damp”
John Donne writes often about love, lust, and courtship, carefully delineating the nature of soul and body exchanges between lovers. In his poem “An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary,'' Donne insists upon the innate treachery of women, how beginning with “that first marriage” of Adam and Eve, which he calls mankind’s “funeral,” “one by one, [women] kill [men] now.”[1] Donne’s use of ‘kill’ references the sexual climax of man, what he views as the ultimate end of a union between two lovers. However, to Donne these ‘murders’ are not so decidedly single-handed as men “delightfully…allow”[2] themselves to be killed, in order to “propagate [their] kind,”[3] meaning they engage in sex, gladly, to reproduce. While Donne sees men as an agent in the affair, women seem to take on a more active role as the temptress or inducer. Women alone tempt men into sin, while men gladly engage yet evade a certain level of responsibility. In his poem, “The Damp,” Donne continues exploring the roles of men and women in a sexual courtship. However, the speaker of “The Damp” actively claims the role of seducer as he persuasively tempts his counterpart to strip parts of herself away in order to consummate their courtship. He continues mingling the meanings of death and sex, discussing the potent, somewhat contagious power of love and sexuality, particularly a woman’s sexuality. In Donne’s poem, “The Damp,” Donne challenges moral assumptions by questioning chastity and honor, re-positioning them as impediments rather than standards to live by; he uses a play conquest as a tool of seduction, exalting his lover above himself in their roles of courtship, claiming victimhood gladly, and ultimately portraying “the damp of love”[4] as the fulfillment of lust, a pleasure-filled, yet deadly force.
In the first stanza, Donne discusses the power of love as a potentially deadly force. The speaker’s death leads his friends to dissect his body to find the unknown cause. During their autopsy, they find a “picture in [his] heart”[5] of their friend’s lover. This picture, an epitome of the love the two shared, releases “a sudden damp of love,”[6] a noxious poison that infects those surrounding the corpse with the sentiment of the pair’s relationship. This poison “through all their senses move[s]”[7] and does its “work” on them as it did their friend, imbibing them with the contagion that took his life and ultimately killing them as well. As previously discussed, Donne figuratively uses death as a metaphor for orgasm; in these lines, however, the massacre of his friends cannot be so simply explained. Donne writes the “damp of love” will “work on them as me, and so prefer / Your murder to the name of massacre,”[8] shifting the agent of the casualties from the “damp of love” to the addressee or opponent of the poem. Rather than a plague caused by an external, lawless force or contagion, Donne repositions the victims’ deaths as “murders,” placing blame on the lover who lies as a “picture in [his] heart.”
The first stanza acts as a hypothetical consequence of what the speaker wants the woman to consent to. Although the speaker clearly yearns for the woman to concede, he remains fully aware of his figurative death that will result from their union. Beyond the obvious metaphor of a climactic death, Donne may also refer to a moral death of sorts, where sex out of wedlock brings only sinful shame and an acquiescence of desire in its aftermath. However, interestingly, the speaker’s role becomes victimhood while the woman’s role consistently remains the conqueror or murderer. In the next stanza he calls their deaths “poor victories,”[9] characterizing their murders as easily achieved or of diminished importance, as “poor” can refer to something “of little excellence or worth”[10] as well as “undeserving”[11] or “insignificant.”[12] So, although he classifies their murders as a “massacre,” with a clear culprit, these conquests are lesser “victories.” He moves quickly from the “poor” nature of her victory to urge her on her conquest, saying “if you dare be brave / And pleasure in your conquest have,”[13] turning his focus overtly towards the imminent “pleasure” of her “conquest” rather than its metaphoric deadliness. He does this tactfully, and as he proceeds by giving her persuasive commands he ultimately designs to strip her down to “naked[ness]”[14] by the end of the poem.
When Donne’s focus shifts from the death to its agent, the battle of courtship begins. He personifies values the woman possesses as enemies to be defeated to allude to the restraint that often impedes sexual union. While in the previous stanza he portrays the lover as a mere vestige, she takes on life in the second stanza as he positions two lovers at odds in opposing sides of a confrontation. The speaker asks for the woman’s allies “Disdain”[15] and “Honor”[16] to be destroyed, pledging to disregard his own, “Constancy, and Secretness.”[17] He allies disdain, an “enormous giant”[18] with the “enchantress,”[19] honor, both of whom must be overcome for the desires of the body to prevail. Donne likens common values or traits to figures of renaissance fairytale figures to both enlarge the bounds of their one on one courtship and make it less serious, as play fighting rather than a true battle. He capitalizes and italicizes “Honor,” “Disdain,” “Constancy,” and “Secretness,” making them proper nouns as if they described real enemies in a story. Casting honor, which can be indicative of chastity, as an enchantress, which suggests a temptress or seductress creates an interesting paradox which Donne uses to the speaker’s advantage. Instead of allowing honor to prevail, he masterfully manipulates reader’s assumptions, providing a shocking inversion of what one would expect from honor, portraying it as a strong yet unsteady foe rather than a stronghold of moral competency and respect. No, honor is not something to be respected but something to be cautious of, something to overcome.
Honor has many meanings, all of which I believe Donne plays with in this poem. Renaissance culture esteemed honor in their culture as a symbol of status or renown, as a hierarchical position, as well as a sense of character that complies strictly to moral rules.[20] Honor can also mean a woman’s virginity and chastity as a component of her moral character.[21] In general, honor at the time garnered respect, something not to be trifled with or questioned. Thus, of course Donne must question it. Donne calls the traditional conception of honor into doubt, positioning honor as a seductive figure, an enchantress that must be overcome in order for the lovers to be united. Donne flips typical moral rules here: inclinations towards chastity become wrong or villainous while his efforts at seduction prevail as worthy and respected, or at the very least inevitable.
Disdain, joined with honor, also indicates a heightened status, whether societally or morally, of the woman to her seducer. To the speaker, disdain, “the feeling entertained towards that which one thinks unworthy of notice or beneath one’s dignity,”[22] causes the woman to disregard him and those who came before him, yet her scorn can be overcome. Her disdain, which before caused her to look down upon the speaker as unworthy of her body, must be “kill[ed”[23]; in fact, Donne begins the poem by claiming they are already dead, along with the speaker, leaving the lady alive in her conquest. Alive, yet not present, only a vestige, a memory, a “picture in [his] heart.”[24] His own allies, constancy and secretness, perhaps speak to the determination of the seducer and the discretion with which he will handle whatever transpires between them. However, if these were going to be employed during their affair, why does he “neither look for, nor profess”[25] them? Perhaps he needn’t call on them so overtly, as they are intrinsic to his treatment of their courtship. The inclusion of these two allies add to the persuasiveness of the speaker’s seduction, calling on the lady to trust him and also concede.
Donne uses conquest and battle imagery and allusions to further explore the lovers’ roles in seduction and resistance. Donne mentions the Goths and the Vandals, the Germanic tribes that overthrew the Roman Empire. He seems to equate the woman’s foes, disdain and honor with the Roman Empire, emphasizing their power yet the inevitability of their fall; thus, although she may put up a good fight, the lovers’ union is predestined. The Roman Empire, like honor, seems stable in its esteem and power, yet both will be overcome as the speaker suggests. The placement of the stanzas further reinforces this notion of inevitability, as the poem begins with the speaker’s death, insinuating the lovers’ consummation already passed or soon will. He continues with allusions to conquest, asking her to “like a Goth and Vandal rise, / Deface records, and histories / Of your own arts and triumphs over men.”[26] If her disdain and honor are the Roman Empire, then in these lines, the speaker asks her to act like a Goth and Vandal and essentially destroy her own values. Her “triumphs” result from using her two allies which allow her to object to men’s sexual advances. The speaker asks her to “deface” or disregard the “records, and histories” of this past resistance, against him or other men. He wants her to give into his seduction attempts by slowly stripping away the moral standards she has built through continued chastity.
Her “triumphs over men” seem to complicate the consequence of the first stanza, as Donne positions her resistance as the triumph here rather than the “murder”[27] of her lover and his friends. However, in the beginning of the second stanza he exclaims “poor victories!”[28] labeling the murders of he and his friends as weak or trivial conquests, compared with the woman’s steadfast resistance to seduction, which he portrays simply as a “triumph.” Perhaps this difference in characterization comes from Donne’s awareness that her former resistance was more of a moral feat compared to the moral ‘death’ of their sex. Nonetheless, In either instance, he, the seducer or the victim, remains defeated while she, the resister or the conqueror prevails.
With the line, “without such advantage kill me then,”[29] Donne further explicates the gendered positions of power in a courtship. He compares the woman, who “triumphs over men,” with her resistance to their seduction to the man, who “without such advantage” has never warded off a lover’s advances in the way women do. Donne’s speaker is always the seducer, never the seduced. As we see in the first stanza, the true, and final (but perhaps “poor[er]”[30]) conquest is the sexual climax of a man. Donne playfully flips the concept of conquest here, intentionally placing his lover as the conqueror, in a somewhat exalted position above him. She triumphs before, in resistance, and after, in sex. He has no conquests, only ‘death.’ He tells her to “kill me as woman; let me die / As mere man,”[31] giving her further power as he, a “mere man,” has something inadequate about him that leaves him defenseless; he leaves himself defenseless because his death is the end goal. He acknowledges her agency in their intercourse yet a few lines later he complicates the woman’s position, mentioning her “passive valor,”[32] indicating that while she is necessary for the act to occur, she perhaps takes on a less active role in the logistics of sex.
In his final line, Donne leaves the reader with a carnal image, “naked you’ve odds enough of any man,”[33] almost throwing the subtlety of his metaphors out the window with the clearness of this statement. His cheeky lewdness reaches new heights as he physically strips his lover down. By claiming she has “odds enough of any man” once “naked” Donne raises the woman to equal footing with the man. Throughout the poem he consistently flatters his lover with a heightened position yet in the final line he seems to conclude the poem by equalizing them in their nakedness, in their intercourse.
The “damp of love,”[34] released from his autopsy post-mortem, or rather, post-sex, moves on his friends due to the power of pleasure it conveys. His friends, when they “have [him] cut up to survey each part,”[35] search in his body for the cause of his death and find his lover’s “picture in [his] heart,”[36] or rather the embodiment of fulfilled desire and a successful seduction. Additionally, the “enormous giant,” “Disdain,”[37] the ally that allows her to resist seduction prior to the speaker, what Donne calls “triumphs over men,”[38] makes the speaker’s “death,” or his success even more agonizing for the men who tried and failed at their seductions. The “damp of love” is not love at all; it represents the fulfillment of lust. To the men whose lust has yet to be satisfied, their friend's “death” increases their desires tenfold, leading them to seek out their own “deaths” more fervently than before. Donne seems to imply the success of their efforts, as “the damp of love” leads to their “massacre,” or their own sexual completion. Donne’s characterization of this contagion, the damp, as the fulfillment of desire makes me question exactly what he means by connecting the two. Donne seems very keen for the act to take place in this poem yet remains questioning the consequences of its conclusion. Does the fulfillment of lust bring worse effects that outweigh the pleasure it creates?
Donne consistently and artfully plays with readers' commonly held notions about sexuality, morality, and desire, carefully pulling at the threads that bind all of them together. The woman who the speaker addresses in “The Damp” acts as an embodiment of that reader, one whose strict morals Donne insists upon challenging and assaulting with shocking twists and turns. While “The Damp” appears straightforward at first, its complexity slowly reveals itself as the confusing battle and subsequent death leads to a surprising triumph that one would not expect. Donne strips his reader down to “naked[ness]” just as he strips down his lover, asking us to throw out our preconceptions and follow him into his experimental explication of pleasure. Even now, after all the time spent toiling over this poem, Donne’s intention still eludes me to some extent. I think that is perhaps the point; many of the questions Donne explores do not have clear answers. Is the fulfillment of one’s desire truly so contagious, truly so deadly? Can the aftermath of sex bring only a moral death?
Bibliography
Donne, John. “An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary.” In Seventeenth-Century British Poetry. Edited by John P. Rumrich and Gregory Chaplin, 63-69. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.
Donne, John. “The Damp.” In Seventeenth-Century British Poetry. Edited by John P. Rumrich and Gregory Chaplin, 63-69. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.
Oxford English Dictionary
[1] John Donne, “An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary,” in Seventeenth-Century British Poetry, ed. John P. Rumrich and Gregory Chaplin (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 63-69, lines 105-107.
[2] Donne, 63-69, line 108
[3] Donne, 63-69, line 110
[4] John Donne, “The Damp,” in Seventeenth-Century British Poetry, ed. John P. Rumrich and Gregory Chaplin (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), 42-43, line 5
[5] Donne, 42-43, line 4
[6] Donne, 42-43, line 5
[7] Donne, 42-43, line 6
[8] Donne, 42-43, line 6-8
[9] Donne, 42-43, line 9
[10] Oxford English Dictionary, “poor, adj” 2.a
[11] Oxford English Dictionary, “poor, adj” 2.b
[12] Oxford English Dictionary, “poor, adj” 2.d
[13] Donne, 42-43, line 9-10
[14] Donne, 42-43, line 24
[15] Donne, 42-43, line 11
[16] Donne, 42-43, line 12
[17] Donne, 42-43, line 19
[18] Donne, 42-43, line 11
[19] Donne, 42-43, line 12
[20] Oxford English Dictionary, “Honor, n” 1.a - 2.a
[21] Oxford English Dictionary, “Honor, n” 7.a
[22] Oxford English Dictionary, “Disdain, n” 1.a
[23] Donne, 42-43, line 11
[24] Donne, 42-43, line 4
[25] Donne, 42-43, line 20
[26] Donne, 42-43, line 13-15
[27] Donne, 42-43, line 8
[28] Donne, 42-43, line 9
[29] Donne, 42-43, line 16
[30] Donne, 42-43, line 9
[31] Donne, 42-43, line 21-22
[32] Donne, 42-43, line 23
[33] Donne, 42-43, line 24
[34] Donne, 42-43, line 5
[35] Donne, 42-43, line 3
[36] Donne, 42-43, line 4
[37] Donne, 42-43, line 11
[38] Donne, 42-43, line 15