Thinking About Donne’s "Devotions" During Coronavirus

John Donne’s Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions were published in 1624 in London.  I’d bet most people do not know his Devotions, but they would recognize the famous phrase from them: “no man is an island.” Though these oft-quoted words have prompted hilarious cartoons, many in the New Yorker, it’s worth considering how surprisingly relevant Donne’s Devotions are at the present in the time of Coronavirus.  

Donne wrote The Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions as he battled a deadly illness, probably typhus or relapsing fever, in 1623. He came close to dying and when faced with mortality, was compelled to write from his sickbed. Donne was one of those rare people energized by conditions of extremity. Maybe he couldn’t stop his mind from thinking and just couldn’t stop writing. During the course of twenty-three days, he wrote meditations, one for each day, which tracked the course of his illness. There’s something hopeful in that number to me. Twenty-three signifies that his life (symbolized by the 24 hours in a day) was not over.  He recovered and would once again be of use in the world. Maybe not as a lyric poet writing about love and God as before, but instead fulfilling his vocation in the Church of England, where he was now the Dean of St. Paul’s. There his sermons expressed a more inclusive, charitable view of humanity and one can’t help wonder whether his confrontation with death made the difference.

Devotions has always been one of my favorite pieces, but two things in particular strike me as especially appropriate-- not just to me, but to all of us in this present moment.

First, is Donne’s keen sense of isolation, and the anxiety and fear it causes, emotions we all are struggling with now. He recognizes that solitude is the consequence of his disease (his terrible fever, weakness, dizziness as well as spots that appear on his body) and his quarantine to keep others safe is also part of his suffering. “As sicknes is the greatest misery, so the greatest misery of sickness is solitude; when the infectiousnes of the disease deterrs them who should assist, from comming; even the Phisician dares scarse come. Solitude is a torment which is not threatned in hell it selfe… A long sicknesse will weary friends at last, but a pestilentiall sicknes averts them from the beginning. God himself would admit a figure of Society…all his externall actions testifie a love of Societie, and communion.”

We love society, communion, and have been mourning its loss, even those of us who are well. I think of those who are isolated at home. Some quarantined, waiting to see if they are infected, others very sick with Coronavirus, sometimes relapsing. Donne’s words surely speak to the condition of those suffering now. In the final meditation, 23, Donne’s physicians warn him of the danger of relapsing, of the fever returning. And some now around the world are experiencing just that.

Donne also expresses my feelings, isolated in my apartment, unable to go out even for a walk, unable to have visitors, even as I’m grateful that so far I’m one of the lucky ones, that is for now, still healthy.  

The turning point in Donne’s illness, at least spiritually and emotionally --(but maybe that also triggers physical changes with the body and mind being so interconnected)-- comes when suddenly he hears the church bell toll for someone who has died. Donne has no idea who has perished—but the very anonymity of the person makes him recognize it could be anyone, it could be himself. Hearing the funeral bell leads him, that is, from his sense of terrible solitude to a perception of the connectedness of humanity, that we are not just linked by our mortality, but maybe other things as well. 

“No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were. . . any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”

Hemingway adopted, “For whom the bell tolls,” as the title of his famous novel. But how surprised was I to hear Donne’s “no man is an island” echoed by Governor Andrew Cuomo several weeks ago as he took on President Trump’s isolationism, and the government’s policies that pit states against each other and against the government for necessary supplies and emergency funds. He criticized the competitive, market–driven structure of our society, whose inadequacy, indeed brokenness, this pandemic has exposed.

On March 29th, I had been listening to one of Governor Cuomo’s daily press updates. He was criticizing divisions between private and public hospitals, between New York City and upstate. He was creating (for the first time in at least a decade) a meeting between all the health care systems in New York, public and private hospitals, upstate and downstate. He wanted them all working together (as a large community) with the urgent sense that we are going to die and die alone if we do not work in concert. In later broadcasts, Cuomo pleaded for other states to send staff and equipment, promising that New York will also do the same. His message has always been: We need to work together.

And of course what he is talking about is the toxic culture of competition—economic policies and visions that the president and his officials (and dominant Republicans in Congress) support, but which predate Trump. Indeed they seem part of an “American spirit,” voiced now by those demonstrators who insist on being “liberated,” who wave banners, “live free or die.” They want tight national borders to keep others out, though they can’t stop the virus from entering. The culture and structure of competition and rampant individualism are at odds with a vision that we need to work as one nation and not compete. There are two different visions of America on display for the world to see.

And whose words did Cuomo turn to when he said, “No hospital is an island.” Donne’s of course. And though he may have been talking about hospitals, supplies, the availability of tests, the need to support states financially, he also meant it about all of us, about our government’s need to recognize and reform itself if America is going to survive this crisis, and any future ones. 

If this pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we are one world, all interconnected, if only by a life-threatening virus. And that there is an alternative to toxic competition and individualism, an alternative to “America” first. From coast to coast, Governors of seventeen states so far have formed regional alliances, coordinating for reopening, which includes both coasts and the Midwest.

There may be an opportunity for change, maybe even beyond our borders. Seeds for hope are apparent elsewhere. The peaks of the Himalayan mountains are visible for the first time in decades, because the sudden lockdown in India has drastically reduced pollution. We are, for good or bad, one interconnected world.

So, I ask you, has John Donne’s famous words ever been more relevant? It is time to work together and towards changing America’s culture for the better, even if we are, for now, in forced isolation while we do so.