A Look at Spiritual love in A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

Shakespeare once said, “ Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.” This statement that true love is between two minds, or spirits, not bodies, is in congruence with John Donne’s poem, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. Donne uses similes to convey the message that true love is spiritual love that transcends the mere physical world, and therefore, is not affected by distance. Donne invokes the nature of spiritual love to discourage “tear floods” and “sigh-tempests” that are usually associated with departures from loved ones. All of Donne’s comparisons and exaggerations delineate the idea that genuine love is on a spiritual plane separate from the earthly, carnal desires of mankind.

Donne uses many similes to convey this theme. For example, Donne states, “Though I must go, endure not yet/ A breach, but an expansion, / Like gold to an airy thinness beat”.This simile is comparing Donne’s separation from his lover to gold. Gold, which also represents purity and perfection, is used here to illustrate how their souls, which will be separated physically, but, like gold when stretched, will not really be separated because their spiritual love keeps them connected at all times. Donne also states, “ Such wilt thou be to me, who must, / Like the other foot, obliquely run;/ Thy firmness makes my circle just”. This simile compares his lover to the foot of a compass. This illustrates a picture that basically demonstrates that by her being true to him, it keeps him true to her because as long as she doesn’t falter his circle can’t falter either.

This is a prevalent theme in numerous poems, novels, and movies from all time periods. For example, Shakespeare wrote about “the marriage of true minds, as well as more modern authors such as Anne Rice in The Tale of the body Theft, where she writes about a man who switches bodies with a female, but those who truly loved him previously were unaffected by the change because their love transcends the physical. In summary, the theme of the poem is very universal and is something that everyone in some way can relate to.

So what do you think...does true love transcend physical appearance? Or does it only happen in poems?