John Donne’s Dark Teachings

This article is about how Donne imagined and taught the peculiar reading practices demanded by difficult texts. I bring contemporaneous debates over the Bible’s “darke sayings” into conversation first with Donne’s 1627 sermon, “The fourth of my Prebend Sermons upon my five Psalmes,” in which Donne gives one of his most sustained accounts on the purpose and effects of “teaching by an obscure way,” or of teaching so that your audience will not understand the first time. I argue that, for the preacher, debates over interpretation were of both intellectual and professional importance, but across his career, Donne’s interest in difficult texts formed the basis around which he built sustained inquiries into reading and interpretation. I turn to three poems from the Songs and Sonnets—“The Undertaking,” “The Funeral,” and “The Relic”—all of which hinge on the interpretation of obscure things, and are consequently freighted with Donne’s instructions for how to read. Donne explores a hermeneutics in which half-given, half-concealed textual objects force their interpreter to return to the text, to pay attention in new ways, and to give themselves up to an authority. Through different subjects and different readers, these poems spotlight the strain on interpretation in a world where “in-intelligibleness” is possible; together, they offer templates and protocols for learning to read what has been obscured from view.