Death, be not proud
by John Donne
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so ;
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke ; why swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more ; Death, thou shalt die.
Translation
死亡，不要骄傲，虽然有人说你
强大而又可怖，而你并不真的这样
因为你只是威吓害怕你的人们。
可怜的死亡，本身无法死亡，也不能将我杀死。
休憩与睡眠，这就是你的写照，
无数的欢乐，也是从你，涌流出来，
我们中的最优秀的人随你去得越早，
越能早日获得身体的休息，灵魂的解脱。
你是奴隶，服从于命运、机会、君王和亡命之徒，
在毒药、战争与疾病间徘徊
鸦片、迷药也可以让我们甜美地睡去
那么你的突然降临又有什么好呢？你又为什么骄傲？
一旦短暂的睡眠过去，我们将永远觉醒
死亡再也不会有，死亡，你自己应该死去！
Summary
The speaker tells Death that it should not feel proud, for though some
have called it "mighty and dreadful," it is not. Those whom Death thinks
it kills do not truly die, nor, the speaker says, "can'st thou kill me."
Rest and sleep are like little copies of Death, and they are pleasurable;
thus, the speaker reasons, Death itself must be even more so--indeed, it
is the best men who go soonest to Death, to rest their bones and enjoy the
delivery of their souls. Death, the speaker claims, is a slave to "fate,
chance, kings, and desperate men," and is forced to dwell with war,
poison, and sickness. The speaker says that poppies and magic charms can
make men sleep as well as, or better than, Death's stroke, so why should
Death swell with pride? Death is merely a short sleep, after which the
dead awake into eternal life, where Death shall no longer exist: Death
itself will die.
Form
This simple sonnet follows an ABBAABBACDCDEE rhyme scheme and is written
in a loose iambic pentameter. In its structural division of its subject,
it is a Petrarcan sonnet rather than a Shakespearean one, with an octet
establishing the poem's tension, and the subsequent sestet resolving it.
Commentary
This rather uncomplicated poem is probably Donne's most famous and most
anthologized; "Death be not proud" seems to be, for some reason, the most
famous phrase in Donne. The sonnet takes the oblique reasoning and
topsy-turvy symbolism of Donne's metaphysical love poems and applies them
to a religious theme, treating the personified figure of Death as someone
not worthy of awe or terror but of contempt. Donne charts a line of
reasoning that explores a different idea in each quatrain. First, Death is
not powerful or mighty because he does not kill those he thinks he kills;
second, the experience of being dead must be more pleasurable than rest
and sleep, which are pleasurable, pale copies of death, and the best
people die most readily to hurry to their "soul's delivery" ("delivery," a
childbearing pun, introduces the idea that the death of the body is a
birth for the soul).
In the third quatrain, the speaker mocks Death's position: It is inferior
to drugs and potions, a slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men
(each of which deals out death), and lives in the gutter with poison and
sickness. In the couplet, the speaker rounds out the idea of the poem, by
saying that, if the afterlife is eternal, then upon the moment a person
dies, it is really Death that dies to that person and not vice-versa, for
that person will never again be subject to Death. This final idea
represents the classic metaphysical moment, in which an established idea
is turned completely on its head by a seemingly innocuous line of
reasoning--the idea that Death could die is startling and counterintuitive
but completely sensible in light of Donne's reasoning. Of course, even in
the seventeenth century the idea would not have seemed as startling as
many of Donne's other metaphysical conceits--it is an idea that appears
not only in Shakespeare ("And death once dead, there's no more dying
then") but also in the Bible itself ("The last enemy that shall be
destroyed is death," from I Corinthians).
Themes
1:Courage and Willpower in the Face of Death
In Death Be Not Proud, Johnny faces an overwhelming adversary for anyone,
let alone a teenager: death. The poem by ##John Donne# that opens the
memoir (Divine Meditation 10) is an attack on death, and, to an extent,
Johnny and his family do attack his tumor—through operations, diets,
injections, and so on. But more than that, Johnny seems to reach a placid
acceptance of death while he fights it. He never tries to defy death, but,
rather, he simply loves life too much to let it go. He twice exclaims,
"But I have so much to do, and so little time," and the statement
indicates not a fear of death but a desire to live. Johnny even says at
one point, in what seems to contradict his optimistic outlook, that the
"worst thing is to worry too little" about death. The implication is that
one must not agonize over these questions of death but accept them as a
battle. And, for Johnny, a battle it is: he endures surgery after surgery,
physical debilitation, constant moves in and out of hospitals, and the
loss of a normal adolescence, yet he rarely complains. When he does, it
only shows the strength of his conviction to get well. Mostly, he keeps
his fears to himself, not out of pride, but to spare others. Everyone who
comes to know Johnny finds him remarkably courageous and mature about his
fate, one that he rarely acknowledges but seems to be aware of deep down.
Johnny, however, focuses on living his life—furiously keeping up with his
lost schoolwork, crafting interesting science experiments, and maintaining
contact with friends. While it may simply be good fortune that his life
extended far past what the malignancy of his tumor normally would have
permitted, one cannot read Death Be Not Proud and not feel that Johnny's
unwavering bravery may have had something to do with it.
2:The Uniqueness of Loving Life
Gunther often meditates on how all the traits that we know of a person
emanate from the brain; it not only controls thought, but everything from
a person's gait to his smile. He cannot explain away the irony that a
tumor happened to inflict itself upon Johnny's most refined part of his
body, but the best the tumor can do to destroy the teenager's mental
capacity is occasional amnesia attacks. Johnny constantly rises above his
illness and puts his brain to use in all areas of life, both intellectual
and interpersonal. He possesses a remarkable intelligence, especially in
the fields of chemistry and physics, and hr makes an intriguing
experimental discovery about ammonia as well as demonstrating an awareness
beyond his years of a difficult physics problem. His wit, too, is sharp
and perceptive, though sometimes self-deprecating. This would all account
for little were he not able to transmit his intelligence into a deeper
maturity, affability, and selflessness, which impresses all whom he meets.
Many people can have a memorable intellect, but few can combine that with
something that transcends mere personality—a genuine humanity. As early as
age six, Johnny decided that God was "what's good in me," and his drive to
do good, in science and in life, becomes his philosophy, one that
surprisingly few people ever embrace, let alone children. Frances remarks
that Johnny's sum of passions, his "love of love" and "love of life," is
what she has learned from him and hopes will pass on to others. Their
hundreds of condolence letters surely testify to his success. His
unremitting courage is better understood when we see for how much he had
to live, on both abstract and personal levels.
Childhood versus Adulthood
Johnny lives more than a crucial year of his adolescent development while
facing an illness that most people assume will soon kill him. He is
described physically by his father as somewhere between child and man, and
this portrait also applies to his personality in the best terms. The child
in him is curious for knowledge without wanting to hoard it, and the adult
in him is able to utilize it elegantly and maturely—Gunther even remarks
once that Johnny's intellectual development has become frightening. He
loves people and things for their own sake and unconditionally, as
children are wont to do, but he has a deep understanding of what love
means and how to express it. Overall, he has a child's innocent passion
for life and an adult's sensitive maturity for how to approach the
inevitable pitfalls along the way. These attributes show up in less
obvious combinations too. He is polite to all who care for him, yet he
also manipulates the doctors to elicit the information about his illness
that they try to shield from him. He is curious about his illness, but he
is often unaware of the purpose of simple procedures he undergoes.
Johnny's rapid emotional maturation presents another difficulty: how much
freedom should Gunther and Frances grant their ailing and aging son? He
is, after all, already thinking about girls and the senior prom. The
tension between extending his life—restricting Johnny to rest—and
enhancing what he has left of it—allowing him the independence a
seventeen-year-old wants—appears in the later stages of the memoir.
Motifs
Johnny's Bump
While a non-
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