Literature Comparison Paper

Project 2- Literature Comparison Paper

“I love you”, No other sequence of words has so much power. These words have the power to strengthen a bond, weaken a relationship, ruin a friendship or bring two people together. The concept of love is puzzling and we have struggled to understand it for centuries, everything between the Greek goddess Aphrodite and today’s Romantic comedies have attempted to comprehend and explain it. The theme of love is popular in Donne’s early poetry and also Romeo and Juliet. Donne’s poem, “Love’s Alchemy” reveals the strength behind Donne’s idea that sex is the end goal in relationships and that true love is physical and Romeo and Juliet is a timeless tale of lovers whose misfortune and immaturity was a cause of their own destruction.

In the first two lines of “Love’s Alchemy” Donne sets up his attack on platonic love when he compares it to the unsuccessful results of alchemy. The words “deeper digged love’s mine” (1) creates the association between platonic love and alchemy. The mine represents both the physical mine in which we find base metals, and secondly the spiritual mine in which we find love. For Donne, the idea of platonic love is as worthless as the metals pulled from the mine – and much like the alchemist cannot turn it into gold, the Platonist will never turn his idea into true love. The metaphor of depth implies a direction inward, mainly into one’s soul. The “centric happiness” (2) of the next line reinforces the idea of inner digging; the center of the soul is where Platonists believe love to be. Another interpretation of the mine demonstrates how digging deep is necessary for love; since alchemy never produces gold, the only way to obtain it is to actually burrow into the earth. These first two lines can then be interpreted to imply that Donne believes in certain elements of platonic love or to signify the importance of penetration which reinforces the argument for his belief in a purely physical love. Donne does...