#super infinite: the transformations of john donne

[vashhanamichi]

Language makes demands. It is an excavatory skill; each word needs to have its surface dusted, to see if below there is gold or snakes. Those who do not understand that language was multi-layered and subtle — those who read it lazily, who failed to imagine the demands it daily makes — deserved very little in return.

— Katherine Rundell, Super Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

#katherine rundell #super infinite: the transformations of john donne #john donne

[rionsanura]

In case you were wondering, the Katherine Rundell biography of John Donne that Jamie Parker did the audiobook for does contain Some Poetry.

#holy moly #jamie parker #john donne #katherine rundell #Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

[beguines]

Donne's mind was cacophonous. His relentless imagination was his single most constant feature; he wrote about his "worst voluptuousness, which is an hydroptique immoderate desire of humane learning". In his darker moments, it tortured him. His mind had ceaselessness built into it. It was to be, throughout his life, a site of new images, new theology, new doubts: even those who disliked his work acknowledged that he was a writer who had erupted through the old into the new. A contemporary wrote that, with him, it was "the lazy seeds / of servile imitation thrown away / and fresh invention planted".

But the always of that imagination must have been exhausting. For a mind like that, sex—real sex, true sex—would allow a singleness to hush the multitudinous mind. It's why so much of Donne's imagery around sex is so totalising: the man and woman become one, the woman becomes a state, a country, a planet. Sex, for Donne and those like him: permission, for those who watch the world with such feverish care, to turn one person into the world and to watch only them. It was a transforming of his constant seeking for knowledge. To adore and to devour and to be devoured is its own kind of focus: a gasp of a different kind of oxygen.

Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

#katherine rundell #super-infinite #john donne

[hoursofreading]

best books of 2023

2023 isn't over yet but thought i'd make a post listing my most favorite books that i loved enough to get hard copies.

tom lake by ann patchett. my first ann patchett novel. love, love, love. almost persuaded me to settle down, marry a farmer and pop out babies, preferably 3 girls!

galileo's dream by kim stanley robinson. my first ksr novel. what if time travelers from the future traveled back to 16th century italy and exposed galileo to modern physics and math? this story is so bittersweet

strangers drowning. inspired me to go vegan and donate regularly to charities and animal sanctuaries. see https://niallharbison.substack.com/ for a beautiful example.

a swim in a pond in the rain. such goodness from george saunders. loved his discussion on tolstoy's master and man. look at this quote: “I feel about Olenka the way I think God might. I know so much about her. Nothing has been hidden from me. It’s rare, in the real world, that I get to know someone so completely. I’ve known her in so many modes: a happy young newlywed and a lonely old lady; a rosy, beloved darling and an overlooked, neglected piece of furniture, nearly a local joke; a nurturing wife and an overbearing false mother. And look at that: the more I know about her, the less inclined I feel to pass a too-harsh or premature judgment. Some essential mercy in me has been switched on. What God has going for Him that we don’t is infinite information. Maybe that’s why He’s able to, supposedly, love us so much.” gahhh

a life of one's own by joanna biggs. forever grateful to ms biggs for introducing me to zora neale hurston and elena ferrante. after i read this book, i started listening to lectures by prof. hungerford from https://oyc.yale.edu/english/engl-291

super-infinite, the transformations of john donne by katherine rundell. after i read this, devoured all of donne's poetry. printed out a copy of "love's growth" to affix in my office cubicle

#books

[sheepisreading]

Books I finished in May 2023

Again, not a lot here but y’know.

Edit: forgot a book!

Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, Katherine Rundell, 2022

A book I just randomly picked up at the bookstore. I don’t know, I loved the Bill Bryson Shakespeare biography, and this seemed to be in a similar vein but more genuine than funny, which I appreciate. I was also attracted to the book because the idea of the renaissance man, concerned by all subjects of study, is always of interest to me. I’d never actually heard of John Donne, but after rading the book, I definitely understad why people write books about him. Katherine Rundell writes with such distinction and beauty about Donne, using excerpts of his writing and of other scholars’ writing, the whole book is a delight to read. You don’t even have to care one bit about John Donne to read it, I know I didn’t at the start, but I grew to thanks to the exquisite way Rundell tells us about his life. I recommend it ! 

A Certain Hunger, Chelsea G. Summers, 2020

This book I first heard from last year, bought it, and then proceded not to read it for a year. I just didn’t feel like it I guess. I finally picked it up because I had nothing else left to read at my student accomodation. It’s a book about a food writer who kills her lovers. She writes from prison (not a spoiler) and recounts how it all went down. I didn’t vibe with the overly serious food descriptions at first, but I got used to it as I read. It was kinda cool, it’s a contemporary setting too, and I don’t usually read murdery books, so it was a nice change of pace for me. I grew more attached to the narrator towards the end. She really grew on me, I found her a bit pretentious at first but she does show another more introspective and self aware view which warmed me up to her a lot. Basically, a good crime book!

Radical Intimacy, Sophie K. Rosa, 2023

This book was probably handed to me by the gods above. I say that because I read an old fanfic (here, it’s amazing (it’s also fall out boy fanfic be warned)) in like April in which radical intimacy as a concept is mentioned as basically relationship anarchy mixed with non monogamy and like sex and romantic gestures between friends. All of which I subscribe very very much to. I googled radical intimacy after reading it and immediately this book (which JUST came out) popped up! It’s amazing and basically full of everything I’ve always wanted to read on the topics of relationships (or all kinds)! It’s separated in chapters dealing with romance, sex, family, death, friendship under capitalism, and how relationships between people are the thing. As in the thing ever. And I could not agree more! Nonconformative relationships are precious to me and seeing them being spoken about so openly and true-ly was wonderful, especially put into perspective with politics! It’s like Rosa wrote my thoughts out (after doing some research and applying theory to them). I can not recommend this book enough!

#bookblr #books #bookish #book community #book review #chelsea g summers #sophie k rosa #a certain hunger #radical intimacy #katherine rundell #john donne #i guess

[west-o-the-moon]

John Donne was, according to Katherine Rundell, "a neologismist. He accounts for the first recorded use in the Oxford English Dictionary of around 340 words in the English language. Apprehensible, beauteousness, bystander, criminalist, emancipation, enripen, fecundate, horridness, imbrothelled, jig." — Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (Faber, 2022)

#john donne #katherine rundell #neologisms #words #Oxford English Dictionary #etymology #super-infinite #literature #poetry #poets #seventeenth century #metaphysical poetry #Renaissance

[modadivas]

Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood Spring Summer 2023 collection

This collection is my dream. I didn’t know how to explain it to Vivienne, I just had to do it. I left the house and thought I was in Paris and something in the sky made me realise how much I wanted to be there. ‘Super-Infinite – The Transformations of John Donne’ by Katherine Rundell – a wonderful writer – is a portrait of an exceptional man and the era of James I of England.

#Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood #Irina Shayk #bella hadid #Spring Summer 2023

[loneberry]

“The difficulty of Donne’s work had in it a stark moral imperative: pay attention. It was what Donne most demanded of his audience: attention. It was, he knew, the world’s most mercurial resource. The command is in a passage in Donne’s sermon: ‘Now was there ever any man seen to sleep in the cart, between Newgate and Tyburn? Between the prison, and the place of execution, does any man sleep? And we sleep all the way; from the womb to the grave we are never thoroughly awake.’ Awake, is Donne’s cry. Attention, for Donne, was everything: attention paid to our mortality, and to the precise ways in which beauty cuts through us, attention to the softness of skin and the majesty of hands and feet and mouths. Attention to attention itself, in order to fully appreciate its power: ‘Our creatures are our thoughts,’ he wrote, ‘creatures that are born Giants: that reach from East to West, from earth to Heaven, that do not only bestride all the sea and land, but span the sun and firmament at once: my thoughts reach all, comprehend all.’ We exceed ourselves: it’s thus that a human is super-infinite.”

—Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

#poetry #literature #john donne #katherine rundell #death #attention #wonder #infinity

[kamreadsandrecs]

The 2022 Shortlist:

Caroline Elkins - Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire (The Bodley Head, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK)

Jonathan Freedland - The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World (John Murray Press, Hachette)

Sally Hayden -  My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World's Deadliest Migration Route (4th Estate, HarperCollins)

Anna Keay - The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown (William Collins, Harper Collins)

Polly Morland  - A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story (Picador, Pan Macmillan)

Katherine Rundell - Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (Faber & Faber)

#books #nonfiction

[2024readingyear]

[thedimpause]

Finished reading: Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell 📚

[beguines]

There is the meat and madness of sex in his work – but, more: Donne's poetry believed in finding eternity through the human body of one other person. It is for him akin to sacrament. Sacramentum is the translation in the Latin Bible for the Greek word for mystery: and Donne knew it when he wrote, 'We die and rise the same, and prove/Mysterious by this love.' He knew awe: 'All measure, and all language, I should pass/Should I tell what a miracle she was.' And in 'The Ecstasy', love is both a mystery and its solution. He needed to invent a word, 'unperplex', to explain:

'This ecstasy doth unperplex,' / We said, 'and tell us what we love…' / But as all several souls contain / Mixture of things, they know not what, / Love these mixed souls doth mix again, / And makes both one, each this and that.

Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

#katherine rundell #super-infinite #john donne

[hoursofreading]

super-infinite: the transformations of john donne was super good, best nonfic I’ve read so far this year

[recentlyheardcom]

£50,000 Baillie Gifford non-fiction prize won by Katherine Rundell | Books

£50,000 Baillie Gifford non-fiction prize won by Katherine Rundell | Books

Katherine Rundell has won the £50,000 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for her book about poet John Donne, described by the judges as a “glorious celebration” of his work and life. Rundell, who is best known for her children’s books, said Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne took her 10 years and three drafts to write. It showcases the myriad lives of Donne, who, in addition to…

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[shannybasar]

From Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell - absolutely loved this book: “We, slapdash chaotic humanity, persistently underestimate our effect on other people: it is our necessary lie, but he (Donne) refused to tell it. In a world so harsh and beautiful, it is from each other that we must find purpose, else there is none to be had: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”” https://www.instagram.com/p/CixgX50LUqK/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=