An Analysis of Donne’s A Valediction: of Weeping Essay -- Valediction

An Analysis of Donnes A cong of Weeping William Empson begins his critical essay on John Donnes A valedictory of Weeping with the statement below. Empson here plays the provocateur for the critic who wishes to disagree with the imprint that Donnes intentions were perhaps less than the sincere valediction of a weeping military man. Indeed, A valediction concerns a parting Donne is going to sea and is leaving his nameless, love other in England, and the parting salutation is his emotive poesy describing the moment. ...the language of A Valediction of Weeping is shot through with a suspicion which for once he is similarly delicate or too preoccupied to state unambiguously, that when he is bygone she will be unfaithful to him. Those critics who say the poem is sincere, by the way... turn in non what they do. --- William Empson, A Valediction of Weeping, John Donne a Collection of critical Essays (ed. H. Gardner) at that place is little argument as to what Donne is feeling at surface level he is sorrowful and grieving because he must be apart from his loved one, who has become his world (a metaphor which is carried out in the second stanza). Empson is indeed correct when he says that the poem is not unambiguous. There is a large range of interpretations that can be made ground upon the language in the poem, and these are focused around the source of Donnes grief. It is well-situated for one to picture a grieving sailor leaving his lover, only if what makes this man grieve? It is the innate love between twain peck who are intensely focused upon each other which must be put on hold? Is it some additive emotion that consists of two people who are about to suffer separation and loss of a lover? Or is it, as Empson p... ..., Donne and his lover/other struggle with their trouble just before separation. Donne realizes that this may be a futile goal, that he also sees the importance of composure if their relationship - his world - that he credits t o her is going succeed. Donne seems to have no dearth of sincerity in this poem. He is also purposeful in writing it Donne himself was a man of great passion, and who had to go out to sea. A Valediction of Weeping seems not to be the valediction of a jealous lover, but of a scrupulous other making a concerted effort not to permit jealousy and self-pity control his farewell to a lover. Works CitedDonne, John. A Valediction Of Weeping. The Longman Anthology of British Literature Volume 1A. 2nd ed. Ed. Damrosch, David, Christopher Baswell and Anne Howland Schotter. New York Addison-Wesley educational Publishers, Inc, 2003.