A loud splash below the bridge- did someone throw a rock? Am I alone here? Again, the noise. The source, a fish, flash of slippery black, slips into view only to promptly vanish. Silence. After a time it rises and rivulets obscure a more sinister reality below the water’s opaque skin. A larger fish below gives chase, its prey breeching reportedly into the air, seeking asylum with the sky. From stage left and the jumbled pile of rocks that obstinately interrupt the channel, white wings take notice. A lone seagull swoops down and interrupts the desperate struggle, plucks the fish from the surface of the water. The fish’s fate is sealed. As beaks descend, first one, then two, five, the certainty of death is looming. In less than a breathe the fish’s flesh is consumed by a swarm of hungry gulls. One day the fishy molecules may find new life in the down feathers of a fresh hatchling. It is here the cycles of consumption and birth, memory and reincarnation by biology drive life’s processes.
Metempsychosis describes the phenomenon of “soul-matter” and presents a kind of biological proof for reincarnation. Donne also argues for an inherent equality between beings, a “great soul” that seeks communion with plant, animal, and mankind alike. According to Pythagorean doctrine, the nature of life carries “one soul from man-to-man...man to beast...[and] indifferently to plants also.” Simply by nature of existence, all living beings in Metempsychosis are equals. As I read these stanzas and considered Donne’s Progress of the Soul, I witnessed the above drama involving gull and fish from a bridge in East Providence. What better timing for this spectacle than while reading passages about the progress of The Soul, “Thoughtless of change...confined...and enjailed...Into a small blue shell” that eventually “pecked itself a door.” The image of a fleeting transcendent being inhabiting fish, then gull, then hatchling, demonstrates a universal biological process of chemical inheritance, biological reincarnation.
A common element in the Pythagorean beliefs regarding transmigration of souls is the eternal, or deathless quality of souls. References to “the progress of a deathless soul,” from the garden of eden “first in paradise,” to the womb of Themech, “sister and wife to Cain.” The “great soul” journeys far and wide, spanning hundreds even thousands of years of biblical history, and in theory would have eventually been present in the body of Jesus Christ. As Christ is reincarnated in the Bible and achieves eternal life, the great soul “which always was all, everywhere” transforms linear time into a cyclical reality.
The cyclical nature of death and rebirth in animals and humans in Metempsychosis exemplifies reincarnation through biological cycles. Donne introduces a reality where time is non-linear, allowing god to observe mankind’s “ways and ends” at one “instant.” The great soul abandons Eve’s child, “overblowing quenched and dead,” for the brook and “a female fish’s sandy roe.” Life cycles continue when a sea pie spots the tiny fish and ends “her doubts and her, bears her away,” consuming not only the organic components of the fish’s body but the “unfettered soul” within. Certainly, If Donne had been seated on the bridge with me that Sunday afternoon to witness the graphic scene of gulls squabbling over a dead fish, stanzas from Metempsychosis would make an appearance in our conversation. I would particularly enjoy asking him about his beliefs on the transmigration of souls, reincarnation biology, and the experience of non-linear time.
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