Professor Gabriel Emerson is a professor of literature. He’s a Dante specialist, but like most literature professors he’s widely read in many different languages. (He’s proud of this, of course, but freely admits his deadly sin of pride in addition to the other six.)

[For an excellent article on C.S. Lewis’ use of the Seven Deadly Sins in the seven volumes of The Chronicles of Narnia, click here.]

In the novel “Gabriel’s Inferno,” there is a scene in which Professor Emerson remembers the metaphysical poetry of John Donne, which he studied at Magdalen College, Oxford. (Magdalen was also the college of C.S. Lewis and some say that the stone figures in the cloister quadrangle were the inspiration for the stone figures in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.)

[To see the stone figures, click here. Then click in the centre of the Cloister Quadrangle, , and zoom into the row of windows facing you. The figures are hovering over the arches above the ivy.]

John Donne (1572-1631) was an English poet. He secretly married seventeen-year-old Anne More in 1601. Anne’s family was furious and had Donne thrown into prison. Years later, he became a chaplain in the Anglican Church and was widely known as a gifted preacher. In 1621, he was appointed Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, a position that he held until his death. There is a memorial to Donne in St. Paul’s, that survived the Great Fire of London in 1666 with only a little scorching. (Rather like Donne, himself, who survived the scorching of prison and public disapproval over his marriage.)

The poem that Gabriel calls to mind is John Donne’s “The Flea” and it’s an example of a metaphysical poem:

“MARK but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deniest me is ;

It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.

Thou know’st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;

Yet this enjoys before it woo,

And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two ;

And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, yea, more than married are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.

Though parents grudge, and you, we’re met,

And cloister’d in these living walls of jet.

Though use make you apt to kill me,

Let not to that self-murder added be,

And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it suck’d from thee?

Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou

Find’st not thyself nor me the weaker now.

‘Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;

Just so much honour, when thou yield’st to me,

Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.”

You probably have your own ideas about what the poem is about and whether or not you find it creepy. I welcome your comments below.

The poem is widely considered to contain a conversation between a man and his potential female lover, who is a virgin. She is denying him her virginity, and he is arguing that her virginity is inconsequential, using the flea as a conceit. Within the poem, sex (and its attendant discomfort, risks and ramifications), is considered to be as innocuous as a flea bite.

In fact, the man argues, the mingling of the blood of the two potential lovers in the body of the flea is a kind of intercourse that has occurred already. He holds up this example to persuade the virgin and perhaps to berate her, pointing out that the flea does more than she.

The poem is seductive but the seduction is intellectual and not physical. Yes, the man plays on the woman’s bodily desires, but it is her mind and her conscience that he is arguing with. He does so by downplaying her worries and concerns, attempting to convince her that those impediments are too small to stop them.

In “Gabriel’s Inferno,” The Professor wars with himself as he contemplates the poem and the moral dilemma before him occasioned by the virtuous graduate student, Julianne Mitchell. Like Donne, Gabriel allows himself to use reason to consider the path his bodily desires wish to explore and the exquisite delights that her figure holds for him …

but I won’t spoil the story by telling you what he does next …

Thank you for reading,

SR

www.sylvainreynard.com

Twitter

Facebook

Goodreads

PS. If you’re interested in receiving these posts by email, you can enter your email address and click the Subscribe button at the right.