Donne, John - Theresa M. DiPasquale (essay date 1999)
Theresa M. DiPasquale (essay date 1999)
SOURCE: DiPasquale, Theresa M. “The Things Not Seen in Donne's ‘Farewell to Love.’” John Donne Journal: Studies in the Age of Donne 18 (1999): 243-53.
[In the following essay, DiPasquale explores the theme of atheism in Donne's poem, “Farewell to Love,” from Songs and Sonnets.]
Donne's “Farewell to Love” is based on an analogy between religion and love. The speaker traces his history as a lover, looks back on the time when he had yet to experience love and was a naive believer in its divinity, and professes his current rejection of such faith. His perspective is that of a disillusioned atheist who is all the more scornful toward religion because he once believed in a divinity only to conclude, on the basis of experience, that his creed was false and his god a non-entity. In describing his former, naive self, however, the speaker uses a simile—that of the dying atheists—which...
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