"WHAT I WILL SAY": REREADING JOHN DONNE’S "THE APPARITION"
The article presents the analysis of “The Apparition”, an early poem by a great English metaphysical poet John Donne. The poem deals with a famous Petrarchan theme when a lover dies for unfulfilled love and his afterlife revenge is supposed to teach his short-sighted lady a lesson. The poem is not just a description of a ghost appearing in the lady’s bedroom and a visualization of the act of punishment, but a sort of poetical recovering from a break up by the means of imaginative sublimation. The analysis shows how affective impulse transforms into didactical and metaphorical poetic technique and forms the opposition male / female, transcendental / immanent, active / passive. Rhetoric of power and poetic of domination bring into focus the importance of a man’s word and his influence, introduce him as a subject, and treat a woman as an object and an inferior human being. In the new reading, the cultural-historical deterministic baroque treatment of the traditional plot is complemented by a non-historical interpretation of the statement of male domination in love relationships.