The Flea: An Erotic Poem
I flex that literary muscle
[Originally published July 6, 2020]
Unsurprisingly, I’m still purposeless. You mean to tell me, my life hasn’t changed drastically while I sit on my couch watching Clueless and Unsolved Mysteries on Netflix? I actually have to do “work”? Ew.
I 100% believe we can turn ATF into something fun and cool, and while I’ve mentioned it a lot of times (and will continue to do so), I’m struggling to figure out how I’m going to get us there and what my role will be in it. If it were up to me, I’d get paid to write whatever the fuck I wanted (and my ladies will too!). When OSU denied my admissions into their Ph.D. program, that world of academia was broken off. For so long I had wondered if attending university, becoming a professor, was a good idea, was what I was supposed to be doing. It felt so solely because I believed (and still do) learning about literature in this way, speaking and writing about it in that way is the only skill I have. And even then, it wasn’t enough to get to the next step, I wasn’t enough to continue forward on my chosen path — and I am totally unprepared to do anything else. All of that, gone. There are times I stand in our second bedroom which we converted into a home office for the specific reason of me needing to have a space to do work and write my dissertation. Our Ikea KALLAX bookcase cuts the room in half, therefore exposing two sides of shelving, and one side is filled to capacity my “research books.” My desk sits below this part, conveniently locating so I can reach any and all works. These books I’ve been gifted or purchased either for a specific paper or the hopes of one day writing one about it, now sitting there, probably never going to be used again.
All that sob story being said, today I want to take another moment to engage with a literary piece — a short one, I promise — and flex my academic muscle. My end goal, as a professor, was to do what only a handful of great teachers can do, bring difficult texts to a level of understanding for everyone. I’ve aspired to do this through sex, something literally everyone is concerned with. So what better way to showcase my talents than by discussing an early modern erotic poem, written by John Donne. Donne was no ordinary man, and if you remember I’ve talked about one of his other poems “The Forbidden Mourning” which is my favorite poem ever written. As a young adult, Donne was considered a ladies man and grappled with his rakish youth while studying Catholic doctrines. Going back and forth on his own purpose, in 1615 he was already a renowned preacher and sermonist so he was named the Dean of St. Paul’s. In 1631. Suddenly, hiding out in this monolith of a church in England sits a man who once was considered a “great visitor of the ladies, a great frequenter of plays [which were considered lower-class], and a great writer of conceited verses.” Donne wrote strangely beautiful while entirely sexual poetry, all while being a somewhat devout man to God and his church. His career and reputation forced him in one direction, while his inner personality, perhaps a side of him he hated at times, stayed him in defiance. This is the early modern equivalent to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which is why Donne’s prowess as a poet is based on his dramatic skill to jump from philosophy and scholarly works to literal carnal passion. Which is what I’m going to talk about today. Donne’s The Flea is exactly that, carnal passion. Here’s the poem for you to enjoy and anything bolded is a notation made by me.
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.
Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, nay more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w’are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou
Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;
’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:
Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.
Okay, what the fuck is he saying? In short, the speaker attempts to convince his lady friend that they can have sexual relations because a flea has already bitten both of them, therefore they’ve already been “exposed” to each other. The flea, he says, has already bitten him and now bites the other person, therefore their blood has mixed already, inside the flea’s stomach. Because the flea is what combined their essences, it cannot be considered a sin or the loss of virginity. Penetration did happen but by the flea. So insignificant of an insect, yet noticeably annoying, the flea removes the responsibility of her virginity, and therefore, they might as well have traditional intercourse. The speaker goes as far as to say that the flea represents their “marriage bed,” obviously connecting to the assumption that two newly wedded people would have sex for the first time after their wedding.
The speaker then has the audacity to further shift responsibility by saying “Wherein could this flea guilty be, / Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?” Otherwise said, you can’t blame a flea for being a flea. The lady attempts to continue her refusal, by the speaker indicating “that thou find’st not thyself” in behaving his way (sleeping with him), but the speaker insists — she will “yield” to him. She will no longer be scared of him because the flea has already stripped her of her voice. She can’t protest when the flea took her consent.
John Donne’s The Flea is about consent and, more importantly, how trivially it can be taken and manipulated. I’ve been using “speaker” to firmly state I don’t think this is actually Donne’s inner thoughts. Sure, if we consider this poem in the light I just provided, we could conclude that Donne maybe was a creepy dude, but no, I don’t believe that this was his true intent. Instead, I read this piece as Donne bringing sexuality and sex acts off the pedestal they were placed on at this time. He himself, a successful man of the Church, would have placed sex acts and marriage on a pedestal, but here he is, writing about sex as if it’s no big deal as if it’s on the same level as a flea.
And he’s right.
You can pick up the entirety of Donne’s works in my favorite collection here on Bookshop — remember it’s an affiliate link!
