John Donne's “Holy Sonnet XIV” is filled with biblical imagery and language reminiscent of psalmic platitude. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Beat my heart, God at three; for you still only strike, breathe, shine and seek to repair; so that I can rise and stand, throw myself and bend your strength to break me, blow me, burn me and make me new. (Giv. 1-4) This imagery is consistent with statements made throughout the Bible such as Hebrews 12:6: "For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives." » The analogy of the speaker as a wayward bride "betrothed to your [God's] enemy" (Donna 10) also evokes the distinctly biblical language and marriage metaphors used in the Old Testament prophets and the Pauline epistles. Arthur Clements pointed out that even the association of “smite, breathe, shine” with “break, blow, burn” is specifically biblical in its language. There are, however, two points in the poem where the biblical language is disrupted by new ideas that are both intriguing and confusing. Ambiguity in a sonnet is certainly not a device invented by Donne, but the importance of the theological questions addressed in his sacred sonnets makes Donne's use of paradox an important literary and historical event. in lines 7 and 8: “Reason your viceroy in me, I should defend myself / But he is captivated and proves weak or false. » This is one of the most interesting deviations from Donne's sonnets; although Donne reasons through a well-known narrative (God as potter or loving disciplinarian), he ends the beautifully written but so far unremarkable octave by casting doubt on his method of maintaining a relationship with his god. It is important to note that Donne does not question the strength of his own reason, but states that "Reason" itself might prove "weak or false." reason could be interpreted as an appeal to the primacy of faith in spiritual development, elevated even above fallible reason. This interpretation works reasonably well until the final lines: Take me to you, imprison me, for unless you captivate me, I will never be free, nor ever cast out, unless you ravish me. (Gives 8-10)The paradoxes can be resolved plausibly up to the last line; one could easily understand that imprisonment is a kind of protection, and although "captivating" might evoke sexual servitude, its relationship to freedom within the line is compelling enough that one could emphasize the feeling of fascination like a shelter. The direct interpretation that one might have constructed thus far is seriously disturbed when the speaker finally suggests being raped as the only path to chastity. When compared with each other, the key words for understanding the final line, "chaste" and "delight," are obviously used in an overtly sexual sense, but, in this sense, the suggestion seems impossible; to be delighted is to no longer become chaste. In order to reconcile this last line with the rest of the poem and resolve the internal paradox, it would be easy to look for another meaning of “delight.” Indeed, if “delight” is understood in its most etymologically literal sense, the phrase could be interpreted as an understanding that God must use violence to steal the speaker away from “his enemy” and prevent any violation. It is unclear, however, whether it is the deixis that is most important to focus on in order to understand the line. The word "chast", as it isused in line 14, also has alternative connotations. It might first be understood as a moral or sexual descriptor, but its status as a form of its meaning used in Hebrews 12:6, "Whomever the LORD loves, him he chasteneth" (emphasis mine ) should not be neglected. The line could in this case be understood as an invitation for harsh discipline on the part of the speaker. There is no clear indication that Donne intended any of the possible interpretations suggested by the last line to be exclusively authoritative. This ambiguity gives a certain license to the reader, and because it is a license related to a theological question, the poem carries an important subtext. John Donne, a minister of the Anglican Church, may not have intended to overthrow the authority of the Church, but he gives readers the power to resolve ambiguities as they wish. This seems to connect Donne's sonnets to a more liberal theology and politics that would ultimately strip the Church of its authoritarian power in significant ways. It's also possible that the paradoxes contained in "Batter My Heart" are better off without a clear resolution. It has been emphasized that “being a Christian in the 17th century was a particularly complex destiny”. (Strier 360) It is a popular opinion among Donne enthusiasts around the world that the inability to resolve the theological and metaphysical paradoxes in the sacred sonnets is a large part of the appeal. The biggest problem with such a view is that it inevitably fails upon any examination. If we consider that the paradoxes reflect the absurdity of theological quibbles, it is because the meaning has been imposed on the text without more evidence than the desire of the reader. We could just as easily consider that the paradoxes reflect the beautiful curiosities of an infinitely complex creation. None of these thoughts are necessarily falsifiable in the text, but the fact is that they are in no way contained in the text. To conjecture about extratextual meaning as if it were a legitimate analysis of the text is to impose illegitimate authority. To achieve meaning independent of prejudices and fanciful chatter of unbridled imagination, it is necessary to consider the true meaning of words. Having a reference that truly disambiguates the meaning of words would eliminate our problems of conflicting interpretation, but such a reference cannot exist for two fairly obvious reasons. First, books are written by human hands that are usually connected to limited human brains that strive to impose meaning on words and worlds, regardless of their inability to know omnisciently or outside the prism of their own consciousness. Second, attempting to define words with words implicitly recognizes the necessary uncertainty of definition. Despite the instability of language, it is not hypocritical to appeal to a standard rather than personal conjecture as the appropriate method of interpretation. Although it should be recognized that words are simply what we accept, it is the consensus of a group rather than that of a single mind that is sought through the use of etymological principles of interpretation. With this in mind, it should be recognized that literary interpretation without personal conjectures might be nothing more than charts of the historical usage of words and numbers derived from surveys applying their meaning by consensus. To provide a meaningful analysis of a text, the recognized “authorities” and the tools applied must be useful, but not as simple as the mechanical application of an algorithm that will spit out meaning. When a creative human mind encodes information into texts, 86. (1989): 357-384.