Donne's Valediction and Gematria

I found an interesting article through ILL that sheds some light on what may be going on in Donne’s “A Valediction of my Name, in the Window.” The article is called “‘Here you see mee’: Donne’s Autographed Valediction” by Julia M. Walker. Walker is primarily concerned here with establishing whether it is Donne himself who is speaking in this poem, or if he is using a persona. Walker begins by arguing that for most of Donne’s poetry, one ought not assume that Donne himself is the speaker, but she then proceeds to make a case for why this valediction stands out as one that we can assume is autobiographical. Walker makes the claim that Donne’s poem is “autographed” numerically using a system of assigning letters to numbers (called gematria) developed by John Skelton.

Walker builds her argument off of John T. Shawcross, who also argues that Donne is playing with gematria, but Walker comes to different conclusions about which numbers are coming into play for Donne. The crux of Walker’s argument comes from the observation that under Skelton’s system, “JOHN DONNE,” “MY NAME,” and “ANNE MORE” all total to 64. She furthermore adds that “OUR LOVE” and “ENGRAVE,” also add up to the 64. Walker further explores the implications of the numbers of lines and stanzas which make up this poem, and how they may inform an autobiographical reading of this poem.

I’m not entirely sure if this reading of the poem seems like too long of a shot or not. The coinciding of Donne’s name with Anne’s name and also with “my name” is certainly an interesting point, but Walker does’t seem to have any evidence as to why Donne might preference this particular numbering system over another. If Walker is right, I would love to particularly explore the equivocating of Donne’s name with “my name,” as this might lend some interesting thoughts regarding how Donne regarded his own identity, and the interplay of language (his name) and self (his person).