Batter my heart, three-person’d God
Rick Reed introduces John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV beside Purgatorio, with the text of the poem.
The souls in Dante’s Purgatorio seek the imposed suffering there as holy penance, a means of purification. What they seek is akin to, but not identical to, what the speaker of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV prays for. He paradoxically asks God to destroy him in order that He might restore him. The arguments within the structure of the poem analogize his soul to a broken pot, a conquered town, and a bad marriage. His prayer requests the great Christian paradox: make me free by making me yours completely.
For Dante Purgatory serves a similar objective.
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.