With
reference to John Donne’s “The Ecstasy”, Grierson explains “Ecstasy in
Neo-platonic philosophy was the state of mind in which the soul ,escaping from
the body attuned to the vision of God, the one, the absolute.” The term ecstasy
denotes the transition to a higher level where absolute truths are
apprehensible to us beyond sense, reasoning and intellect. Just as another
metaphysical poet, Richard Crashaw, describes spiritual or religious ecstasy in
his “Hymn to St Teresa”. J Weemes asserts that ecstasy occurs when “the
servants of God were taken up in spirit, separate as it were from the body,
that they might see some heavenly mystery revealed unto them.” In the
prescribed poem, the souls of the two lovers free themselves from the definite
confines of the physical construct of the body and become one physically and
spiritually in an ecstatic union of souls.
The poet
employs an unusual desire through ‘extasie’ which means ‘to stand out”. The
souls of the poet and his beloved as it were, stand out of their respective
bodies and hold a dialogue revealing the true nature of their love. In a
religious ‘extasie’ the soul holds a communication with God. Here the
conversation is not between the soul and God but between two souls. Donne has
artistically explained the religious and philosophical belief to throw light on
physical and sensuous love. The greatness of the poem lies in reconciling the
opposites—physical love with spiritual love, metaphysical belief with the
scientific, the abstract with the concrete, the human element with the
non-human. The images and the conceits are carefully selected to support the
poet’s views. The romantic setting in the beginning of the poem sets the mood
of physical love—the violet flowers, the holding of hands and the cementing of
the balms and the threading of the eye beams. The physical aspect of love must
precede the spiritual union. Then comes the image of two armies and the soul
acting as negotiator. Then, there are the images of the new soul—emanating out
of the two souls — stronger and abler because it is made out of ‘atoms’. The
inter-dependence of the body and the soul is expressed through metaphors. The
souls are moving spirits, while the bodies are the ’sphere’ in which the
’intelligences’ move. Just as the stars and planets give rise to natural
phenomena which affect the fortunes of human beings, in the same way the soul
must find expression through the body. Just as the spirits of blood unite the
physical and metaphysical in love, so souls express themselves through the five
senses in the body. The image of the body as lovers, is very vivid and
convincing.
The poet
shifts quickly from the physical to the spiritual and therefore this poem has
an edge over other metaphysical poems. The very fact that critics disagree
about the objective of the poem—seduction or spiritual transport—shows the
complexity and the diversity of possible interpretations. On the whole, the
critics praise the poet for his excellent performance. Coleridge said: “I would
never find fault with metaphysical poems, were they all like this (Extasie) or
just half as excellent.” James Smith commended the poem in the following words:
“Donne does not write about many things; he is content with the identity of
lovers as lovers, and their diversity as the human beings in which love
manifests itself, the stability and self sufficiency of love, contrasted with
the mutability and dependence of human beings; with the presence of lovers to
each other, their physical unity, though they are separated by travel and
death, the spirit demanding the succour of the flesh hampering the spirit, the
shortcoming of this life, summarised by decay and death, contrasted with the
divine to which it aspires.”
For
reconciling the dichotomy between the flesh and the sensuous and the sublime,
particularly in this poem, Donne deserves credit.
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