John Donne and Memory as "The Art of Salvation"

Abstract

IN A SERMON preached at Lincoln's Inn, John Donne proclaims that art of salvation, is but the art of memory. 1 As this intriguing definition would suggest, he attributes enormous importance to memory. Traditionally considered one of the three parts of the rational soul, memory for Donne becomes the surest faculty by which men can approach God. An understanding of Donne's conception of memory in light of the Augustinian tradition from which it derives will explain why Donne so closely links salvation with memory, and it will also illuminate some of the fascinating ways his concern with memory informs his religious prose and poetry. is part of the divine image which God imprinted on man at Creation. Donne explains that, God, one God, created us, so wee have a soul, one soul, that represents, and is some image of that one God; As the three Persons of the Trinity created us, so we have, in our one soul, a threefold impression of that image, and as Saint Bernard calls it, A trinityfrom the Trinity, in those three faculties of the soul, the Understanding, the Will, and the Memory (II, 72-73). Though Donne cites St. Bernard, this idea actually goes back to Augustine. In De Trinitate, Augustine explains that the three parts of the rational soul constitute an image of the Trinity, because not only is each one comprehended by each one, but all are also comprehended by each one. '2 As the memory has a likeness to the Father, so the understanding which is formed from memory corresponds to the Son, and love (or will), like the Holy Spirit, proceeds from knowledge and combines memory and understanding (XV, xxiii). By Donne's time, this Augustinian conception of man's triune soul had become a theological commonplace.3 Donne, however, gives an unusual weight to memory, for rather than seeing the three faculties of the soul as equal, he finds memory most reliable for leading man to God.