THE EXPIRATION 'So, so breake of this last lamenting kiss' Flashcards
(19 cards)
Summarise- The Expiration
The poem describes the final meeting between 2 lovers–the speaker suggests that this separation will lead to a kind of spirtual and emotional death between them both.
What does expiration mean?
To die/ perish or the exhalation of breath from the lungs.
Key context- renaissance love poetry?
The idealized, worshipful tone aligns with Renaissance love poetry, however, Donne highlights the destructive capacity of love.
Ancient and Renaissance science (e.g., Galen) linked breath (pneuma) to life force. Donne literalizes this by equating breath/soul.
Key context- neoplatonism
- Neoplatonism- saw love as a means to merge fragmented souls + reach the divine.
Key context- sacrifical love
- The speaker’s loss mirrors Christ’s sacrifice, but this loss is contextualised within the secular and erotic realm (flesh)
What are the main conciets of the poem?
- Seperation between lovers- is akin to death (emotionally fatal)
- Vapour conciet- presents a spirtualised image of a kiss of death- which transforms the lover’s bodies into vapour (transubstantiation)
- Ghost conciet- speaker refers to the lovers as ghosts implying spirtual death/ existential fading or that seperation has pushed them into a liminal, purgatorial state.
Key langauge devices/ lexicon?
Imperatives/ emotional intensity- repeated didactic ‘Go’
Paradox- ‘being double dead’ speaker is dead from both leaving and being told to leave.
Key themes?
- Love and death
- Neoplatonic love
- Mutal suffering
- Power of language
Theme- love and death
The act of parting is represented as emotionally fatal and as a profound existential rupture as it tears the souls of the lovers apart (love, once severed annihilates the self)
Which 2 quotes comment on the theme of love & death?
‘Break of this last lamenting kiss which sucks two souls and vapors both away’
‘Turne thou ghost that way, and let mee turne this,’
Theme- mutal suffering?
The speaker implies that both the lovers share the death of the separation- so much so that they make murderers of each other suggesting that their pain is reciprocal and unified (doesn’t idealized the lovers or worship them from afar-like in Petrarchan poetry)
What 2 quotes reflect the theme of mutal suffering?
‘Which sucks two soules and vapours both away’
‘ And let our selves benight our happiest day’
What 2 quotes comment on ‘the power of language’?
‘Goe; and if that word have not quite kil’d thee,
Ease mee with death, by bidding mee goe too’
Being double dead, going, and bidding, goe.
‘So, so breake off this lamenting kiss/which sucks 2 souls and vapours away’ (theme- love & death)
- ‘Breake off’ didactic diction- harsh sudden nature of the breakup/ fustrated tone reflecting turmoil. To be gentle would be inadequate–their fairwell must be a lively, emotional epitaph to the death of their love (brutality vs tenderness)
- ‘Lamenting’ present participle (mourning)- shared sorrow–thus the kiss must be broken off before they loose themselves to grief.
- Lamenting kiss (oxymoronic)- thin veil between love and death.
‘Turn thou ghost that way, and let mee turne this’ (theme- love & death)
‘Ghost’ (conciet)- implies the seperation has pushed them into a liminal, pugatorial state where they are both waiting, and suffering (repenting for Love’s death?)
‘that way..ley mee turne this’ physical apart/ turning different directions yet remain spirtually entangled.
Which sucks two soules and vapours both away’ (theme: mutal suffering”
‘Sucks’ - the kiss is so intense that it draws out their souls and turns them into vapour, which can be understood as a (negative) spiritual and alchemical transformation.
‘Two souls’ (spirtualised image) of a kiss of death– their souls leaving their bodies together like smoke.
‘Vapour’ Vapour a matter which diffuses- their souls mix together and you can no longer tell when one finishes and the other ends. ( form of transubstantiation)
‘And let ourselves benight our happiest day’ (theme- shared suffering)
‘our’ mutal complicity in this spirtual and emotional darkness- (iront- in the fact they are united eternally via mutal destructions)
‘benight’ seeks destructions
– in other words the worst parts of themselves will be entangled forever suggesting there is just a thin veil that separates them. Theme: Shared grief.
“Oh, if it have, let my word worke on mee, / And a just office on a murderer doe.” (power of words)
The lover suggests that if the lovers ‘words/ final goodbye actually takes effect, they have both committed an act of self-murder in which the speaker seeks a ‘just office’ a moral or spiritual justice to amend or balance this sin (suggesting a sense of guilt/ desire to atone)
Theme- power of lamguage
Donne explores how language doesn’t just communicate emotion- it creates real emotional and even existential change.
Reflecting wider Renaissance interest in rhetoric and persuasion — words were seen as almost alchemical– links tol the biblical idea that the Word (logos) has the power to create and destroy.
