A slowly decaying piece of meatish fallibility in clothes

The body is, in its essentials, a very, very slow one-man horror show: a slowly decaying piece of meatish fallibility in clothes, over the sensations of which we have very little control. Donne looked at it, saw it, and did not blink. He walked straight at it: no explanation, justification, so cheerful sallies. There was just the clear-eyed acknowledgement of the precise anatomy and scale, the look and feel, the reality of ruin.

K. Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (2022), 69

There were more books in Oxford, more people his own age, less dying

All students over sixteen were required to take an oath acknowledging royal supremacy over all questions of religion: but it was thought that a child under sixteen couldn’t be expected to understand the nature of the oath, and therefore the young brothers could live under the radar in Hart Hall, a place with a reputation for nurturing and protecting Catholics. There was less burning in the streets of Oxford than in London (at least since Archbishop Cranmer, condemned by Mary for refusing toe acknowledge papal supremacy, had med a fiery death in 1556). There were more books in Oxford, more people his own age, less dying.


K. Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (2022), 32-33

That’s where all your lovely John Donne stuff turns out to be a load of crap

All problems have to be solved eventually by oneself and that’s where all your lovely John Donne stuff turns out to be a load of crap because, in the last analysis a man is an island. He may like to communicate but if he cannot it doesn’t kill him. But enough of seriousness, you are on holiday and it’s all whoops and bonnet over the windmill!

C. Stevens, Born Brilliant: The Life of Kenneth Williams (2010), loc. 4,129