Elements of Plato in John Donnes The Good Morrow Essay example -- Don

Elements of Plato in prank Donnes The Good Morrow There be clear Platonic elements in Donnes The Good Morrow. The idea that Donne and his lady are halves that complete each other is traceable to Platos theory of love. Lines 7 and 8 of the poem refer to the Platonic World of Ideas the lady is presented as the Idea of Beauty, of which all earthly beauty is but an imperfect reflection. My argument, however, is that Platos hollow out allegory and his World of Ideas are integral to a full understanding of this highly complex poem.The first reference to the Platonic cave comes in line 4 of the poem Or snorted we in the septette sleepers den? The seven sleepers are seven young Christians who were walled up in a cave in the year 249. Miraculously, they did not die but slept for 187 years. This miracle of too soon Christianity is negatively presented by Donne and the plight of the seven snorters may have a relationship to Platos cave there are fundamental similarities between Platos cave -dwellers on the whizz hand, and the seven Christians (and the biblical myth of Exodus, for that matter) on the other hand, according to Downing. In both cases, there is a God who cares for the people involved, even though they are unaware of this fact in the first case because they are asleep, in the second because they mistake shadows of shadows for reality. They are both trapped in a cave from which they apparently cannot escape. And they both dwell in darkness. In a poet of Donnes complexity, it is not far-fetched to argue that line 4 refers both to the seven Christians and to Platos cave-dwellers, and that Donne wished us to read it in precisely this way. Such an argument is reinforced by the fact that the line is immediately followed by... ...a Platonic Idea is, of course, a paradox, as the World of Ideas is not altogether deathless but supposedly has existed since the beginning of time.)Alternatively, one can argue that Donne (or his poetic voice) experiences a transient r elationship in this poem that may or may not develop into a Platonic Idea. Like Platos cave-dwellers who came out into the light, however, he has learned a great deal and become capable, as a consequence, of achieving the Platonic Idea of sexual love in a possibly new, deathless encounter that is mixed equally.WORKS CITED Donne, John. The Good Morrow. The Oxford Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 1. Ed. Frank Kermode and John Hollander. New York Oxford UP, 1974. 1024-25.Downing, Christopher. How Can We Hope and Not Dream? Exodus as Metaphor A Study of the Biblical Imagination. Journal of Religion 48 (1968) 35-53.