The Compass-Circle Imagery in Literature and Donne
Before discussing Donne's compass-circle imagery let me give some examples
from literary works which may be helpful in understanding the whole range of
the meaning that Donne's imagery contains. I have already referred to some
poems which are relevant to the compass image in the Valediction. In
addition to them, Grierson quotes Omar Khayam in his notes to the poem:
In these twin compasses, O Love, you see
One body with two heads, like you and me,
Which wander round one centre, circle wise,
But at the last in one same point agree.
Whinfield's edition, 1901. (2: 41)
Omar Khayam was an astronomist and it is no wonder that he was familiar with
the movements of compasses. As for his relation to Donne's poem, however, it
is unlikely that Donne had access to Arabian literature.
Perhaps one of the oldest examples of compasses in literature is from
Aristophanes' The Birds in which the astronomer is mocked:
They are rods for Air-surveying.
I'll just explain. The Air's, in outline, like
One vast extinguisher: so then, observe,
Applying here my flexible rod, and fixing
My compass there. . . .
(Loeb 227)
In the Greek myth, the inventer of compasses is Talos, a twelve-year-old boy
who was sent to Daedalus, his uncle, so as to be trained under him; but the
latter, envious of his talent, killed him. Ovid relates in the most
elaborate way how he invented them:
primus et ex uno duo ferrea bracchia nodo
vinxit, ut aequali spatio distantibus illis
altera pars staret, pars altera duceret orbem.
(He also was the first to bind two arms of iron together at a joint, so
that, while the arms kept the same distance apart, one might stand still
while the other should trace a circle.)
Metamorphoses 8: 247-9 (Loeb edition 1: 422)
The word "compass" was used to translate Proverbs (8:27) in the
Authorized version:
When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the
face of the depth. . . .
The word "compass" here, no doubt, means a ring. When Wyckliffe translated
the Bible from the Vulgate, he rendered the Latin "gyrus" into "cumpass."
The passage, however, must have something that recalls compasses even in
Latin; hence Dante describes the Creation thus:
. . . Colui che volse il sesto
allo stremo del mondo, e dentro ad esso
distinse tanto occulto e manifesto. . . .
(He that turned His compass about the bounds of the world and within it
devised so variously things hidden and manifest. . . . )
Paradise, XIX, 40-6. (Singleton 273)
Singleton makes a commentary on the lines, citing Proverb 8:27 with
an illustration from God
and Scepter.
Milton seems to be just merging the description in Proverb with that
in Genesis:
. . . in his hand
He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This universe, and all created things:
One foot he centered, and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure;
And said, Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds,
This be thy just circumference, O World!
Paradise Lost, VII, 224-231.
Perhaps Blake was influenced only by Milton when he produced the Ancient Day and the Newton
illustration. It is yet to be decided, however, whether these poets
were inspired by the biblical description or they just followed the iconographic tradition.
Now we consider the compass-circle imagery in Donne. In the Valediction, the woman is the
fixed foot and, as the center, makes a circle complete. This may be an
erotic application of the divine compass which makes one's life complete, as
we have seen in Wither's emblem
book. In "Obsequies to Lord
Harrington" Donne addresses the dead Lord Harrington's soul: his soul is
a "circle", because it contains both ends, that is, birth and death; but it
was also a compass, one foot fixed in heaven and the other exploring its
possibility. Thus Harrington's life could have been secure in the world
since one foot was set in God. Robert Fludd gives us an illustration in which a compass foot is fixed in God
the center.
These two examples of the compass-circle imagery in Donne may be enough to
show where Donne's main concern lies. Donne is in accord with the
iconographic tradition in his sermons:
One of the most convenient Hieroglyphicks of God, is a Circle; and a Circle
is endlesse; whom God loves, hee loves to the end: and not onely to their
own end, to their death, but to his end, and his end is, that he might love
them still. His hailestones, and his thunder-bolts, and his showres of bloud
(emblemes and instruments of his Judgments) fall downe in a direct line, and
affect and strike some one person, or place: His Sun, and Moone, and
Starres, (Emblemes and Instruments of his Blessings) move circularly, and
communicate themselves to all. (Sermons 6: 173)
God's center is everywhere: "Fixe upon God any where, and you shall finde
him a Circle" (Sermons 7: 52). Donne also uses the paradox similar
to the famous definition of God:
for God himselfe is so much a Circle, as being every where without any
corner, (that is, never hid from our Inquisition;) yet he is no where any
part of a straight line, (that is, may not be directly and presently beheld
and contemplated) but either we must seek his Image in his works, or his
will in his words. . . . (Essays 39)
God's circle is perfect, but the circle of human life is not yet complete.
Donne explains the differences of the two circles:
This life is a Circle, made with a Compass, that passes from point to point;
That life is a Circle stamped with a print, an endless, and perfect circle,
as soon as it begins. Of this Circle, the Mathematician is our great and
good God; The other Circle we make up our selves; we bring the Cradle, and
Grave together by a course of nature. (Sermons 2: 200)
This passage makes it clear that the circles associated with compasses are
all human ones, though the operator of the compass is divine.
Christ also makes human circles complete, but not like the fixed foot of a
compass, but rather like the zodiac:
Christ is our Zodiac; In him we move, from the beginning to the end of our
circle. And therefore, as the last point of our circle, our resurrection
determines in him, in Christ; so, the first point of our circle, our first
adoption began in him, in Christ too. (Sermons 4: 68)
God is in the center, but Christ is with man on the circumference.
Nevertheless man sometimes wanders from the circle like the other foot
moving round:
As he that would describe a circle in paper, if he have brought that circle
within one inch of finishing, yet if he remove his compass he cannot make it
up a perfect circle except he fall to work again, to find out the same
centre, so, though setting that foot of my compass upon thee, I have gone so
far as to the consideration of myself, yet if I depart from thee, my centre,
all is imperfect. (Devotions 107-8)
The image of the circle finally comes into the essential matter of
salvation:
God shall raise thee peece by peece, into a spirituall building; And after
one Story of Creation, and another of Vocation, and another of
Sanctification, he shall bring thee up, to meet thy selfe, in the bosome of
thy God, where thou wast at first, in an eternall election: God is a circle
himselfe, and he will make thee one ; Goe not thou about to square eyther
circle, to bring that which is equall in it selfe, to Angles, and Corners,
into dark and sad suspicions of God, or of thy selfe, that God can give, or
that thou canst receive no more mercy, then thou hast had already.
(Sermons 6: 175)
Now the Christian salvation can be told in terms of compass imagery:
The Body of Man was the first point that the foot of Gods Compasse was upon:
First, he created the body of Adam: and then he carries his Compasse round,
and shuts up where he began, he ends with Body of man againe in the
glorification thereof in the Resurrection. (Sermons 8: 97)
In Donne, the compass-circle imagery is fundamentally theological; this is
true even of the Valediction. Now we will see that there are two kinds of
circle in the poem; I do not mean the circles the foot of the compass draws.
Just as the Rollenhagen-Wither
emblem has the human circle in the foreground and the celestial spheres
in the background, the poem has the spheres in the background:
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent. (ll. 11-2)
The poem and the emblem have the same structure; but it does not mean that
one was influenced by the other. Probably they were simply productions of
the same cultural background; or rather they were produced by those who
lived constantly aware of the two different circles which touched each other
on the circumference.
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