The Apparition
The apparition is a seventeen-line poem by John Donne; this makes it a poem and not a sonnet, which consists of fourteen lines. The poem is a rather simple and straight forward witty poem that I interpret to be about a man who has clearly been wronged or pushed aside by a woman for the love of another man, or if not for the love of another man she will later or has replaced him with another man. The first line "when by thy scorne, O murdresse, I am dead, and thou that thinkst thee free from all solicitation from me," I understand this to mean that when she wishes he was dead and says bad things about him it almost kills him as though she has murdered him, and when he dies or goes away she will feel free from them their relationship and any interference from him. Donne then goes on to say this "then shall my ghost come to thy bed" I believe here he has come up with quite a clever idea, when he says ghost this can be taken of one of two ways, either that his actual ghostly presence, if there is such a thing will come and haunt her or the thoughts and feelings and memories they once shared will come flooding back to her. However, the clever part is in that ghosts are supposed to be really frightening things and almost like the worst kind of punishment you can suffer to be haunted by a loved one, and ghosts are supposed to only be around to resolve unfinished business suggesting that he feels they have unfinished business. Also as I have already said ghosts are supposed to be really unpleasant, highly emotional things to deal with, and this is clever because if he is using the idea of a ghost as a sort of metaphor for their memories and experiences then that would suggest that the memories she would be having would almost be unbearable as they would be so emotional.
The apparition is a seventeen-line poem by John Donne; this makes it a poem and not a sonnet, which consists of fourteen lines. The poem is a rather simple and straight forward witty poem that I interpret to be about a man who has clearly been wronged or pushed aside by a woman for the love of another man, or if not for the love of another man she will later or has replaced him with another man. The first line "when by thy scorne, O murdresse, I am dead, and thou that thinkst thee free from all solicitation from me," I understand this to mean that when she wishes he was dead and says bad things about him it almost kills him as though she has murdered him, and when he dies or goes away she will feel free from them their relationship and any interference from him. Donne then goes on to say this "then shall my ghost come to thy bed" I believe here he has come up with quite a clever idea, when he says ghost this can be taken of one of two ways, either that his actual ghostly presence, if there is such a thing will come and haunt her or the thoughts and feelings and memories they once shared will come flooding back to her. However, the clever part is in that ghosts are supposed to be really frightening things and almost like the worst kind of punishment you can suffer to be haunted by a loved one, and ghosts are supposed to only be around to resolve unfinished business suggesting that he feels they have unfinished business. Also as I have already said ghosts are supposed to be really unpleasant, highly emotional things to deal with, and this is clever because if he is using the idea of a ghost as a sort of metaphor for their memories and experiences then that would suggest that the memories she would be having would almost be unbearable as they would be so emotional.
