How John Donne values intellect above emotion
...s how his ghost will haunt the lover who has previously rejected him, taunting her with calculatedly malicious threats that she is a 'feigned vestal', impugning her honour and tormenting her with vague but ultimately sinister promises to make her life a misery. If these were really true reflections of Donne's own character, he would have been famed not for his wit and ingenuity, but for his cruel and unpleasant personality. Donne's less pleasant characters also feature in poems such as 'Woman's Constancy' in which the persona rants against the impossibility of any kind of long term fidelity from the fairer sex, belittling his lover with the scathing line 'now thou hast lov'd me one whole day' and clearly suggesting that women make up any excuse to move on after a one night stand. However undeniably there is also emotion present in Donne's work: his personas are often angry, hurt and suffering from very bruised egos. Even when a softer, gentler note is struck, such as in 'A Valediction Forbidding Mourning', he cannot resist expressing this more loving side in an obscurely ingenious way, comparing the lovers to 'stiff twin compasses'. At first the image seems simply ridiculous, but Donne's talent is that he intrigues his reader, making it impossible to leave the image untily you work out what he was getting at. In this case he ultimately convinces us that in fact, nothing is so like a pair of lovers as a pair of compasses - joined together and in harmony! The other common use of Donne's intellect is in twisting logic to suit his own ends, thus by the end of 'The Flea' he seems to allow the silent listener to 'triumphs...