Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's Duel

About the book

Donne's Devotions follow the stages of a serious illness, giving bodily events a spiritual and intellectual resonance. Each occasion opens into meditation, expostulation, and prayer, so the movement is not simply from fear to reassurance: thought questions itself, addresses God, and returns to the vulnerable condition from which it began. Bells, doctors, the sickroom, and signs of recovery become material for reflection on the relation between one life and the lives around it. The volume also includes Death's Duel and an introductory life drawn from Izaak Walton. Donne's elaborate sentences demand patience, but their turns are part of the experience. They show an intelligence refusing to separate bodily uncertainty from the need to understand what dependence and belonging mean.

• Mortality
• Faith under pressure
• Human interdependence

Why read it

For prose whose intellectual intensity remains inseparable from the immediate vulnerability of a person confronting illness.

Devotional prose with Death's Duel · English