A Comma

On my way to the church to drop of Colin at school I pass by this spot that has had me thinking lately. I know, seriously dangerous, me thinking but it's happened and I thought (there I go again) I would share it or at least write it so that I can stop this infernal thinking as it were. Be patient with me, I promise not to do this too often. 

I must begin with a moment out of a movie that was originally a play written by Margaret Edson called "Wit". Emma Thompson then stared in an HBO film production of it and I have to first say that if you haven't seen it, you absolutely MUST. It is in my top 10 movies of all time and shall be there forever. It is one of the few that grace my shelf. It is also one I watch at least once a year just to bathe in its perfection. Need I say it? Strong, weak in no way. 

I'm going to painstakingly type out the scene for you because I happen to have a script of the play so you can read all the words. For it is the words themselves associating with this picture that has me thinking in the first place. 

There are two characters in the scene. Vivian Bearing, PhD who has been diagnosed with stage four cancer and her professor, E.M. Ashford, D.Phil. In this scene Vivian is a student of E.M. and she's remembering a conversation with her professor about a paper she's written on the poem Death Be Not Proud by John Donne. Vivian ultimately becomes a professor of seventeenth-century poetry. She becomes an expert on Donne but in this scene she hasn't grasped even the simplest idea of it all. 

Enter Prof EM Ashford. The scene is 28 years ago. Vivan suddenly turns twenty-two, eager and intimidated.

V:  Professor Ashford?

EM: Do it again. Your essay on Holy Sonnet Six, Miss Bearing, is a melodrama, with a veneer of scholarship unworthy of you - to say nothing of Donne. Do it again. 

V:  I, ah...

EM: You must begin with the text Miss Bearing, not with a feeling. 

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mightly and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe.

You have entirely missed the point of the poem,  because, I must tell you, you have used an edition of the text that is unauthentically punctuated. In the Garner edition -- 

V:  That edition was checked out of the library --

EM: Miss Bearing!

V:  Sorry.

EM: You take this too lightly, Miss Bearing. This is Metaphysical Poetry, not The Modern Novel. The standards of scholarship and critical reading which one would apply to any other text are simply insufficient. The effort must be total for the results to be meaningful. Do you think the punctuation of the last line of this sonnet is merely an insignificant detail? 

The sonnet begins with a valiant struggle with death, calling on all the forces of intellect and drama to vanquish the enemy. But it is ultimately about overcoming the seemingly insuperable barriers separating life, death, and eternal life. 

In the edition you chose, this profoundly simple meaning is sacrificed to hysterical punctuation. 

And Death - captial D - shall be no more - simicolon!

Death - captial D - comma - thou shalt die - exclamation point!

If you go in for this sort of thing, I suggest you take up Shakespeare. Garner's editions of the Holy Sonnets returns to the Westmoreland manuscript source of 1610 - not for the sentimental reasons, I assure you, but because Helen Garnder is a scholar. It reads: 

And death shall be no more, comma, death thou shalt die. 

Nothing but a breath - a comma - separates life from life everlasting. It is very simple really. With the original punctuation restored, death is no longer something to act out on a stage, with exclamation points. It's a comma, a pause. 

This way, the uncompromising way, one learns something from this poem, wouldn't you say? Life, death. Soul, God. Past, present, Not insuperable barriers, not semicolons, Just a comma. 

V:  Life, death....I see. It's a metaphysical conceit. It's wit! I'll go back to the library and rewrite the paper --

EM: It is not wit, Miss Bearing. It is truth. The paper's not the point. 

V:  Isn't it?

EM: Vivan. You're a bright young woman. Use your intelligence. Don't go back to the library. Go out. Enjoy yourself with your friends. Hmmm? 

So, as I drive Colin to school every morning I pass this scene and I think of this scene from the play and movie. I see a living illustration of the pause, the comma between death and life. And again I see the heroics of the firemen. 

Death Be Not Proud
by John Donne
(1572-1631)

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, death, thou shalt die.