Super-Infinite Quotes

“Donne loved the trans- prefix: it's scattered everywhere across his writing—'transpose', 'translate', 'transport', 'transubstantiate'. In this Latin preposition—'across, to the other side of, over, beyond'—he saw both the chaos and potential of us. We are, he believed, creatures born transformable. He knew of transformation into misery: 'But O, self-traitor, I do bring/The spider love, which transubstantiates all/And can convert manna to gall'— but also the transformation achieved by beautiful women: 'Us she informed, but transubstantiates you'.

And then there was the transformation of himself: from failure and penury, to recognition within his lifetime as one of the finest minds of his age; one whose work, if allowed under your skin, can offer joy so violent it kicks the metal out of your knees, and sorrow large enough to eat you. Because amid all Donne's reinventions, there was a constant running through his life and work: he remained steadfast in his belief that we, humans, are at once a catastrophe and a miracle.”
― Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

“Donne baked time’s accumulation and love’s accumulation with it into the structure of the poem: twenty-four ten-syllable lines, plus four of six (equalling twenty-four): the hours in the day. Seven rhymes per stanza: the days in the week. Twenty-eight lines in the poem: the days in a lunar month, each day part of love’s growth.”
― Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

“To adore and to devour and to be devoured is its own kind of focus: a gasp of a different kind of oxygen.”
― Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

“[Donne] discovered very swiftly - as many men and far, far more women have discovered before and since - that domesticity had neither the outside witnesses necessary for glamour nor the drill-down intensity of private study.”
― Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

“outrageous”
― Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

“But there are elements of each of us so particular, unwieldy, so without cliché, that it is necessary for each poet to invent his own language. It is necessary for us all to do so; owning one’s own language is not an optional extra. The human soul is so ruthlessly original; the only way to express the distinctive pitch of one’s own heart is for each of us to build our own way of using our voice. To read Donne is to be told: kill the desire to keep the accent and tone of the time. It is necessary to shake language until it will express our own distinctive hesitations, peculiarities, our own uncertain and never-quite-successful yearning towards beauty. Donne saves his most ruthless scorn for those who chew other wits’ fruit, and shit out platitudes. Language, his poetry tells us, is a set, not of rules, but of possibilities.”
― Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

“Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls,/ for, thus friends absent speak.”
― Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne