PHILIP YANCEY REWRITES A PANDEMIC CLASSIC
The author’s new book offers a fresh, contemporary take on John Donne’s Devotions
“Death, be not proud,” “for whom the bell tolls,” “no man is an island” — John Donne’s words are part of our language. But what does a 17th-century cleric have to offer today’s readers?
Quite a bit, according to author Philip Yancey. “I have updated John Donne’s Devotions in a modern paraphrase,” Yancey notes, explaining that he was “struck by its relevance to our modern pandemic.”
In 2020, Yancey was confined at home during the initial coronavirus lock down. “What would a great writer in such circumstances produce today,” Yancey asked himself, “especially a writer of faith?”
The answer was right in front of him in John Donne’s Devotions.
Donne thought he was dying. The poet and author was dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral when he fell ill with what the doctors believed was the pandemic of his age, the Black Death or “spotted fever”, known today as bubonic plague. He anticipated a cruel, lingering demise.
Bedridden, Donne wrote a journal of his terror, frustration, disappointment and supplications to God. These twenty-three meditations constitute his book Devotions, one of the great masterpieces of English literature.
“His journal of wrestling with God is timeless,” Yancey observes in his introduction. “Nowhere have I found such a wise meditation on the human condition as in the journal he kept while confined to bed during a pandemic.”
The result is Yancey’s unique take on Donne’s Devotions — a paraphrase for modern readers. The book is as contemporary as anything we might find in a bookstore. In an age that has turned “authenticity” into a marketing gimmick, this new approach to Donne’s heart-wrenching meditations is timeless in a way that few snappy titles can match.
Many of the passages are refreshing in their candor, wisdom and modern relevance. Those of us struck by COVID-19 can appreciate Donne’s plain language.
I feel miserable! A minute ago I was well, and now I’m sick.
I follow a strict diet and get plenty of exercise. Despite all my health precautions, it sweeps in like an intruder.
I don’t mean to portray the human condition any worse or miserable than it is — if that’s even possible.
Under Yancey’s skillful paraphrase, Donne’s words are at times artful, at times raw and savage. His pious and confident entries are coupled with resentment and despair. He speaks of devotion, adoration, gratitude, frailty, fear and betrayal. In a reverie that is purely Donne, even time seemed to turn on him.
Think about it. As material beings, we’re hemmed in by time. . . . the past has already disappeared, the future doesn’t yet exist, and the present is so fleeting that as soon as you say the word it has joined the past.
The cleric thought the illness would kill him (it did not). He complained to God and challenged death.
In Donne’s day, the pious were encouraged to face death with a placid, obedient, even joyful heart. This model, known as the art of dying well (ars moriendi), did not satisfy him.
His Devotions suggest that fear, impatience and doubt are healthier than any “ideal” of acquiescence. He wrote from experience. After losing three children, three others that were stillborn, and finally his wife, the poet declared that
There is no health . . . and can there be worse sickness
than to know that we are never well, nor can be so?
If grief made Donne stronger, it also gave him an appreciation of the value of life. In Devotions we travel with a patient who refuses to bow meekly to disease and death. His meditations are equal parts acceptance and resistance, heartfelt supplication and bitter demand.
Donne felt a sense of impending demise in a time when he was surrounded by death. He writes with a palpable undertone of anger and resolve. It is in these passages that Yancey’s paraphrase excels.
Though you’ve laid me upon my hearse, I won’t let go until you’ve seen me through this crisis, which holds my life in the balance.
Donne recovered. Fear was replaced by hope. In his weakness from a lifetime of grief and a narrow brush with death Donne discovered new strength.
I have learned that my bodily strength is subject to every puff of wind, and my spiritual strength to every blast of vanity . . . May I become so surefooted as to remove all suspicions or jealousies between you and me.
Yancey inevitably left out much of Donne’s wit, wordplay, rhetoric, allusions and alliterations. (He confesses that the task left him “wincing at my own effrontery.”) This bold approach to another writer’s words is not new to the author.
As a young journalist, Yancey collaborated with Paul Brand to create books on the question of pain, allowing the doctor’s voice and vision to come through unhindered. Yancey applies those lessons to his paraphrase of Donne’s meditations. He never gets in the way.
The result is not a book by Philip Yancey. This is John Donne — as authentic and modern as ever.
A Companion in Crisis: A Modern Paraphrase of John Donne’s Devotions. By Philip Yancey. (April 13, 2021). 160 pages. ISBN-10 : 1947360884 ; ISBN-13 : 978–1947360884.
Sources
All John Donne quotations are from Philip Yancey’s A Companion in Crisis unless otherwise noted.
Donne acknowledges that understanding of his crisis is impossible. Instead, he insists that it is the vastness of thought (and imagination) that enables man to face his inner and outer worlds. See John Carey, John Donne: Life, Mind and Art (Oxford University Press, 1981).
For a study of Donne’s emotions and how Devotions tells us as much about suffering as one man’s relationship with God, see John Stachniewski, “John Donne: The Despair of the ‘Holy Sonnets’,” ELH (English Literary History) 48(4) (Winter, 1981): 677–705; see 677, 679.
For a revealing look at Donne’s thoughts on the art of dying well (ars moriendi), see Alexis Butzner, “‘I feare the more’: Donne’s Devotions and the Impossibility of Dying Well,” Studies in Philology 114(2) (Spring, 2017): 331–67; see 331.
“There is not health . . .” from John Donne, The Complete Poetry of John Donne, ed. John Shawcross (New York University Press, 1968): 91, 93–4.
Disclosure Statement
David Bannon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this review. Bannon is acquainted with Philip Yancey.
