Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell Review

Katherine Rundell’s Super-Infinite is a biography on the Elizabethan poet John Donne, most famous for his poem that begins “No man is an island…” and ends with “... for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Given the title and subtitle, and my general lack of knowledge about Donne, I was expecting more than what turned out to be in this book. I thought there’d be cosmic musings or we’d find out that Donne was a brilliant scientist, and the “transformations” suggested a dramatic and exciting life story. And what Rundell delivers instead is a competent, underwhelming portrait of a rather mundane life.

He’s apparently the greatest love poet though I’m definitely no judge as poetry is not my forte - I was in this for the history and literary biography rather than an appreciation of poetry that was lost on me. He also wasn’t as promiscuous as some believe him to be. He was faithful to his wife Anne and after her death he gave up on sex and marriage altogether.

Though he is remembered today primarily as a poet, he was also briefly by turns a law student, a privateer (a Crown-sanctioned pirate who took part in looting Spanish galleons), an MP, the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, a diplomat, and, finally, a celebrity preacher. Although he seems to have gotten most of his positions through writing suck up-y letters to people in power - it’s all about who ya know, especially back then.

Rundell does the best she can with the scant information we have about Donne. He was in the habit of burning all correspondence when the person he was writing to died (which happened a great deal - death was a near-constant presence in Donne’s life which probably explains his gloomy disposition), and a slew of records were lost in the Great Fire that ravaged London 35 years after Donne’s death.

Still, it doesn’t seem like the most interesting of lives. The positions he held suggest more excitement than they turned out to be and a number were short dalliances anyway. I liked learning about the peripheral history though. Like James I being bisexual, Essex’s bizarre (failed) insurrection against Elizabeth, the firm “maybe” over whether Donne ever met Shakespeare, and the overall view of how society worked back then.

Super-Infinite is well-researched, informative and accessible but isn’t the kind of book that offers enough compelling material to have a broad appeal outside of a limited audience of those already interested in Donne and his work.