This week’s choice is “No Man Is an Island” by John Donne. It encourages togetherness rather than division, something that we should bear in mind in times of increasing xenophobia and insularity.
Any man’s death diminishes me,
John Donne (1571—1631)
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
Poem 370. No Man Is an Island
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.
This is from Meditation XVII, part of “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, and severall steps in my Sicknes” written in 1623 by John Donne and although it isn’t strictly poetry, it is often included in collections.
Donne begins by saying that no one is totally independent of the rest of humanity. He uses the metaphor of an island standing apart from the mainland but says that everyone is part of “the continent”—the mainland.
He says that if any part of the mainland is lost, the whole continent is lessened whether the loss is as small as a clod of earth or as large as a headland, or a part of a friend’s property or one’s own. The metaphor is clear—if you draw a dividing line between others and yourself, you are weakening yourself and them equally just as much as the sea’s attrition diminishes the land.
Donne says that he and all humanity is diminished by anyone’s death and so we should never ask whose funeral bell is tolling, as we all die a little when someone passes away.
I like it because the message is as applicable now as it was in Donne’s day, and he puts it so eloquently. We are all ‘involved in mankind’ and we should strive for togetherness and inclusivity rather than drawing divisive and arbitrary lines.
“No Man Is an Island” is the title of several songs, a film, and a book by a Trappist monk and “For Whom the Bell Tolls” is of course well known as the title of an Ernest Hemingway novel (and the 1943 film and other adaptations). There are several versions on YouTube but I like the reading by P.J. Harvey recorded at Down the Rabbit Hole festival in the Netherlands in 2016 just after the UK voted to withdraw from the European Union.