JOHN DONNE & ANNE MORE

(Quoted from the book:) The poems from his youth show us a womanising Donne. However, later in life, Donne changed. And do you know what the scholastics think was the turning point for this change? He found his twin soul: Anne More, a young lady whose aunt was married to a high-ranking court member where Donne was a secretary (this was the trick Destiny devised to bring them together). It seems like from the moment they met, they knew they were made for one another. And what happened was that the amorous cynicism that he had shown until then, gave way to an increasingly higher and deeper conception of love. A conception that was intertwined with the idea of God, Blanca, as evidenced by the proliferation of religious references in his later works… In one of those poems, Donne warns Anne More about the likely event of one of them dying before the other. There is no need for despair, he tells her, because it will not be an actual separation: it will be like when spouses turn around in bed, after kissing goodnight (“Are but turn’d aside to sleep”). In their sleep, they go their separate ways; but there they remain, lying next to each other, maybe dreaming of one another; knowing that night will be followed by morning, and the morning will awake them.


(Image: John Donne before becoming a cleric in the Church of England)

 https://www.amazon.com/Love-letters-widower-mystery-ancient-ebook/dp/B07CMG3HY3

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