Bees and Fleas: Been There, Donne That

[Deng, Stephen]

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From:  LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU[SMTP:LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]
Sent:  Wednesday, May 07, 1997 1:58 PM
To:  pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject:  Bees and Fleas: Been There, Donne That


The poem is simply called "The Flea" and is by John Donne.

To paraphrase the 3 stanzas:
Poet asks lover to regard flea and "how little that [i.e. sex] which
thou deny'st me is".    Since the flea has sucked on both of them
and co-mingled their blood, and it is not a sin or shame for it
to have done so, "and this, alas, is more than we would do."

The poet then asks the lover not to kill the flea, since it would
be a triple murder: the flea + blood of the two of them--and it
would be suicide to boot!

But she kills it anyway, and he wonders what harm the poor flea did.
She points out that neither of the two of them is any weaker for the
death of the flea, but he rebounds: "Then learn how false fears be"--
you don't have to worry about losing your honor when you yield to me any
more than I had to worry about the flea's death taking life from her.

A nice example of "Metaphysical" wit--the kind that Samuel Johnson 
denounced
and TS Eliot resurrected.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)


And part of the long tradition of "Carpe Diem" poems going back to Catullus 
and Ovid in which the poet attempts to convince his subject to sleep with 
him and live life before she turns to a pile of bones and worm food. 
 Modern versions include such song lyrics as "Birds do it.  Bees do it. 
 Even educated fleas (a mere coincidence?) do it" as well as Billy Joel's 
"Only the Good Die Young"