Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Death's Duel
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Death's Duel, one of the handsome series of Vintage Spiritual Classics, contains a rich collection of extraordinary writings, any one of which would be worth the price of the whole book. Andrew Motion's clear, accessible, entertaining, and erudite introduction explains the situation of bothDevotions Upon Emergent Occasions--written in 1624, when Donne was feeble with a fever that doctors believed might kill him--andDeath's Duel--Donne's final sermon at St. Paul's Cathedral, preached only a month before his death at age 59. Also included is Izaak Walton'sThe Life of Dr. John Donne, a spry and penetrating biography of the poet, written in 1640. And then there is the meat: bothDevotionsandDeath's Duelshow Donne at his very best--theatrical, humble, faithful, and doubting all at once. This is a book of severe and joyful mortality. Here is a foretaste fromDevotions: "Death is in an old man's door, he appears and tells him so, and death is at a young man's back, and says nothing.... There is scarce anything that hath not killed somebody; a hair, a feather hath done it; nay, that which is our best antidote against it hath done it; the best cordial hath been deadly poison."--Michael Joseph Gross