“The Triple Fool” by John Donne
When someone breaks your heart, a loved one dies, or great loss of another nature befalls you, people often say the grief feels like a physical pain. Modern medicine has found that ache and grief can be so extreme as to cause physical damage to the heart.
In John Donne’s poem “The Triple Fool,” a doleful speaker expresses a 17th-century testament to the grief and pain caused by rejection. He starts by calling himself twice a fool — first for having loved and second for complaining about it.
John Donne (1572 – 1631)
Credit: flickr.com
I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry;
He wonders where there might be a man, smarter than he, that the woman who left him would love.
But where’s that wiseman, that would not be I,
If she would not deny?
And then a thought occurs to him. Maybe more introspective writing about his heartbreak might lessen the pain. Maybe deeper reflection would flush the metaphorical salt from his wounded heart the way the earth naturally reduces the saline content of seawater.
Then as th’ earth’s inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea water’s fretful salt away,
I thought if I could draw my pains
Through rhyme’s vexation, I should them allay.
Donne may have been a little ahead of his peers here, even Shakespeare. Therapists today agree writing about loss, in prose or poetry, can mitigate some of its pain — especially if honest feelings are shared with others.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.
And so,by sharing his pain, the speaker begins his transformation to the third fool to which his title refers: a wise fool.
But when I have done so,
Some man, his art and voice to show,
Doth set and sing my pain;
This enlightened writer, who put aside self-pity for deeper reflection, feels a bit better than Fool Number One and Fool Number Two.
And, by delighting many, frees again
Grief, which verse did restrain.
To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,
But not of such as pleases when ’tis read.
By the end of the poem, the once doleful speaker has given himself permission to write about grieving instead of griping. By becoming more reflective, he experiences the well-worn truth that he who has loved and lost is more fortunate than he who has not loved at all.
Both are increased by such songs,
For both their triumphs so are published,
And I, which was two fools, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.
Dare the reader conclude that today, though not a Happy Fool’s Day for him, is at least a Healing Fool’s Day?
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