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"THE ECSTASY" by John Donne



                                                                       

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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