ABSTRACT
This chapter presents that selfhood as interchangeable, and communicable, rather than self-obsessed, is an idea shot through John Donne's output, in prose as well as verse. Donne's affections and passions have played a central role in the debate over personality and personhood. The affections and passions, he implies, are a natural language, a language without signs, as easy as breathing. T. S. Eliot marked a volte face in the reception of Donne's emotions when he said in 1921 that A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility. Donne's reference to the portrait in his will is to that Picture of mine who is taken in Shaddowes: is obliquity as much a part of his self-representation as transparency. The portrait of about 1595, long at New battle Abbey until acquired in 2006 for the National Portrait Gallery, is described by Roy Strong as the most famous of all melancholy love portraits.
