Textuality » 4A Interacting
WICHCRAFT BY A PICTURE
Reading the title the reader can understand that a picture is playing a witchcraft to someone. But the title creates curiosity in the reader.. how can a picture play a witchcraft?
The poet John Donne talks about two lovers: he is leaving and his feeling are expressed through the woman’s eyes. As a matter of fact she is crying and he feels guilty because of her tears. However he leaves, hoping the pain will disappear once he will be far from her and even though she will hate him for the pain he caused the man knows that she will always hold him in her heart.
The sonnet is organized into two stanzas. In the fist one the speaking voice talks about the present, where the predominant image is pain as you can understand analysing the semantic field made by words like : pitty, teare, wicked skill, pictures mard, to kill. But there is also the word burning which connotes the lady’s eye: looking her man she feels burning of passion because she loves him.
But does he love her too? The answer is in lines 5-6-7 where the man says that she had the wicked skill to kill by pictures and that crying she is performing her will. So the man feels very guilty because he loves his mistress and now he makes her suffer.
The word picture is repeated 3 times in the first stanza and other twice in the second one, but in this poem it means the picture that the man sees in his lover’s eye: the eye is a mirror where he sees himself and he feels ashamed because his image from the lady’s eye drowns in her tears.
In the second stanza, the man talks about the future (but now). Only in the second line of the second stanzas the reader understands the reason why the lady is crying: I’ll depart.
The oxymoron sweet/salt teares conveys the idea of suffering love: the tears are sweet because they express the love that the woman feels for him, but they are made of salt because they make him feel guilty. The man thinks that once he will not see his picture in his lover’s eye anymore he will not feel ashamed and he thinks that maybe also his mistress’ pain will disappear: this is the reason why the man decides to leave.
The last line is a sort of dedication to his lover: maybe, while time passes, she will leave behind the bad image of him and she will remember only the love that she felt for him.