Introduction

It is generally admitted that Donne's most famous and successful Metaphysical image is that of a pair of compasses in his 'A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning'; it is so famous and so often mentioned that the novelty of the image seems to be diminishing. Yet its stylistic happiness still gives us some refreshing pleasure: the physical movements of the compasses and the psycho-physical relationship of the woman and the poet are so closely intertwined that they are fused in our mental picture. This fusion of physical and mental realities makes the Metaphysical image what it is supposed to be.

In this mental picture the prominant image is of course that of the compasses, which, being a hard apparatus, is easily imagined, while the circle it draws is rather symbolic and we can never clearly imagine a man taking a circular course, with a woman in the centre; for it is not so much a real, visible circle as a mental, imaginary one. There are, therefore, two elements that constitute the compass image: the hard materiality of the compass itself and the symbolic significance of the circle it draws. In terms of human relationship, the compass tells us that the woman or "firmness" in the centre makes the poet come back to the starting point, tracing a perfect circle. Donne uses the compasses as illustrating the relationship between the woman and the poet, which, if physically apart, is unbreachable. Here the compass image strengthens the stability of their relationship, though the meanings of the poet's circular course remains vague. As Freccero points out in his classic study of the poem, "[t]wo different movements are executed by the compass" (339): the movement of the other foot coming back to the fixed one in the center (ll. 29-32) and the circular motion of one foot (ll. 33-6).

If it is a single instance, this image is surprising and original; but in his time the compass imagery was not rare. Before Donne, Guarini had written a poem in which one of the poet's legs is fixed in the woman, while the other is turning around her. Though in a less elaborate way, Guarini provides Donne with an embryonic and basic pattern of the poet turning around the woman.

Lederer points out that Guarini himself, in turn, owe his image to the device of the printer Christopher Plantin. (119) Therefore, as Powers points out, Donne himself was aware of the device by Plantin, since he had had some books printed at Plantin's. She argues that Donne first knew the device because he used its image in "Love's Progress", which apparently predates the Valediction, and then came to be aquainted with Guarini's.(174-5)

Powers' argument may also explain the fact that Donne's highly emblematic image has no pictorial counterpart in the emblem book tradition before him. So far no emblem has been found which closely resembles Donne's compass image. We have to turn to other traditions for an origin or archtype. Fleissner presents Dante's image as "a final solution" (317). Dante could be the source of the circle image, but not the compass one. Though, as he claims, "the poet's compasses were originated for the sake of the circle image and not meant to be visualized by themselves," his is not a solution of how Donne came to the idea of expressing the metaphysical circle with compasses. Moreover, Dante's circle image is used to represent God or God's love, so that it is very probable that Donne got the idea of circle through many sources, including Dante. Then we have to consider the circle image tradition in its own context.

A recent study by Linden has suggested that a likely source for Donne's image may be found rather in the maps published in the late fifteenth century; in fact, some of them contain a picture of a compass with the legs decorated with human figures, one with a male and the other with a female one. This striking resemblance may lead us to an assumption that Donne directly draws on the image. As Roebuck suggests, it is also possible that "the engravers were themselves 'poeticised' rather than "poets such as Donne were inspired by the cartographic ornament."(47)

Roebuck's argument is thus: that Donne intends not a visual image, because he thinks of a different circle on another plane, which cannot be visualized. We must not forget that the figures are on the divider, which is to measure the distance, not to draw a circle, so that there is still a gap between the image and Donne's.

Thus many currents of traditions flow into Donne's image through his idiosyncratic mind. My intention is to point out each of the traditions in their own context and to look into how these traditions present themselves in the poem, and thus give a skeletal outline of cultural implications that the poem contains, explicitly and implicitly, and the parallel currents of culture which independently flow on in the vicinity of the poem.
  • To Emblem Book Tradition
  • To Iconographic Tradition
  • To Circle Imagery Tradition
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