How The Complete English Poems drew on Lamentations
A documented line of influence: John Donne demonstrably engaged Jeremiah’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Lamentations
Jeremiah · c. 586 BCE
BibleThe influenced
The Complete English Poems
John Donne · 1633
PoetsRelevance
8/10
On The Complete English Poems’s page
- One of these poems is Lamentations — "The Lamentations of Jeremy," Donne's near-line-by-line verse translation of the whole book (after Tremellius's Latin)
- The lament Jeremiah pours over a ruined Jerusalem is the same register Donne turns inward in the Holy Sonnets — penitence, abandonment, a cry for mercy
- Read Lamentations first and Donne's translation stops being a curiosity in the collection and becomes the key to his devotional grief
On Lamentations’s page
- Donne didn't just allude to Lamentations — he translated the whole book into English verse, "The Lamentations of Jeremy, for the most part according to Tremellius"
- It's a near-line-by-line rendering, worked from Tremellius's 1579 Latin, sitting in his collected poems beside the Holy Sonnets
- The book's language of ruin and lament feeds the same grief Donne turns on his own soul in the devotional verse