Bloch 1

Peter Bloch
04/24/09

‘Extasie’s’ centrality in Donne’s “The Extasie”

Some literary critics assert that “The Extasie” is an elaborately contrived argument for

seduction, in the line of other seduction poetry, such as “To His Coy Mistress.” “The Extasie”

mirrors “To His Coy Mistress” in three ways: firstly, there is a similarity in the almost syllogistic

progression or narrative within the poem; secondly, the evident euphemisms present in both

poems; and thirdly, there occurs an emphatic shift from quintessential love to physical sensual

love at the end of each. These assertions imply an underlying motive within the speaker; his tone

is pedagogical, yet suspiciously so. In “The Extasie,” why does the speaker shift from the past

tense to the future perfect in the last line: “when we’are to bodies gone” (76)? This implies that

the speaker has not yet consummated the act, but his use of the future voice implies that he

certainly intends to, and thus his whole prior logical argument becomes a sophisticated seduction

through dialectic. In the same way that the poem reads as a subtle syllogistic seduction, it can

also read as a philosophical treatise. The poem obviously deals with heavily debated

philosophical issues ranging from Plato to the Medieval period, and in particular Neoplatonic

thought, and thus to unlock the poem’s meaning requires an in depth analysis of general

metaphysical conceptions surrounding the body and soul. Thus two different readings of the

poem have generally been put forth, especially in critical analyses of “The Extasie,” and these

readings are typically divided between two camps: one reads it as a carnal seduction and the

other as a metaphysical meditation. According to Herbert Grierson for instance, “[t]here hangs

about the poem just a suspicion of the conventional and unreal Platonism of the seventeenth

century.”1 He claims that the poem is a question of the “interdependence of the soul and body.”2

1
The Poems of John Donne, Volume II. Ed. Herbert J. C. Grierson. London: Oxford University Press, 1958. p. 47.
2
Ibid. , 46-7.
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Pierre Legouis, responding to Grierson, claims that “[the poet] has thrown out hints of an

unscrupulous and selfish scheme veiled behind transcendental pretence.”3 Legouis characterizes

the poet of “The Extasie” as a seducer in the vein of “Moliere’s Don Juan, who can call on

Heaven when convenient and cloak his wicked designs in religious cant.”4 After Legouis’s

proposition, his view of the poem has became critically untenable; nonetheless, K. Gustav Cross

manages to support him indirectly, examining the euphemism of the word ‘balm’ in “The

Extasie” in order “not to lend unqualified support to Legouis’s interpretation of the poem, but to

add weight to his view that Grierson and his followers have taken the poem too seriously.”5 A. J.

Smith on the other hand agrees with Grierson, asserting that “[t]he poem is significant as the

statement of a personal philosophical view.”6 Smith essentially espouses a Neoplatonic

importance in the poem, but he fails to trace the correlation between the poem and its

Neoplatonic roots; T. Katherine Thomason, however, building on what Smith has laid down,

traces such a correlation by illuminating “how Neoplatonic ideas and wit interinanimate in

Donne’s ‘Extasie,’ and more specifically just how close in letter and spirit ‘The Extasie’ and the

Enneads of Plotinus are.”7 The critical environment surrounding “The Extasie” is thus divided

between these two camps. One camp proposes that in order to understand the poem one must

examine Donne’s view of the soul and its metaphysical components, while the other camp

asserts that the key to interpreting the poem is the examination of the speaker’s suspicious

emphasis on the body. The true irony here is that the critics have divided themselves between

body and soul just as the image of the ‘extasie’ divides the speaker’s body and soul in the actual

3
Legouis, Pierre. Donne the Craftsman. New York: Russell and Russell Inc., 1962. p. 64.
4
Ibid. , 69.
5
Cross, K. Gustav. “‘Balm’ in Donne and Shakespeare: Ironic Intention in The Extasie.” Modern Language Notes
71.7 (Nov. 1956): 480-482.
6
Smith, A. J. “The Metaphysic of Love.” The Review of English Studies. New Series. 9.36 (Nov. 1958): 362-375.
7
Thomason, Katherine T. “Plotinian Metaphysics and Donne’s ‘Extasie.’” Studies in English Literature: The
English Renaissance 22.1 (Winter, 1982): 91-105.
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poem. The poem itself, in its diction and metaphor defies this dichotomous interpretation. It is

easy enough to single out specific lines in order to claim that the poem is either a subtle

seduction or a philosophical treatise, because the ecstatic event can be interpreted in support of

either of these readings. Thus, the two camps interpret “The Extasie” as either a philosophical

justification of seduction or an exploration of the philosophical relation of the body and soul.

“The Extasie” is about love, not carnal love, but a more human love of both body and soul; nor is

it a philosophical treatise, but an experience of love in terms of the body and soul, whether they

are separate or not. ‘Extasie’ paradoxically separates flesh and spirit, while simultaneously it is

both passionate and meditative. Therefore, the image of ‘extasie’ resides in the middle of the

poem as the middle ground between body and soul. The ‘extasie’ is the centrally located event

that makes intelligible the speaker’s narrative experience of a pure love.

Understanding the speaker’s perspective and prominence in “The Extasie” is important to

understanding the poem as a whole. That the speaker speaks is clear, but to whom, about what,

and why are not. The use of past tense throughout the poem is a good place to begin, because as

a narration, “The Extasie” could be a dialogue or a soliloquy. It is doubtful that it is a soliloquy

because the argumentative and pedagogical tone—key elements in dialectic—imply the speaker

is addressing someone not himself. That someone could be either his beloved or someone else

who would benefit from hearing the speaker’s experience. The latter is more likely for two

reasons: the speaker refers to his beloved in the third person “Our soules…hung ‘twixt her, and

mee” (italics added, 15-16), and it would be strange to refer to his beloved in the third person if

he was addressing her; in addition, the speaker repeatedly refers to the benefit that another lover

(one like him and his beloved) would gain from seeing how they love. For example:

If any, so by love refin’d,

That he soules language understood,
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And by good love were grown all minde,

Within convenient distance stood,

He (though he knew not which soule spake,

Because both meant, both spake the same)
Might thence a new concoction take,
And part farre purer then he came. (21-28)

Therefore, the speaker is teaching; moreover, he narrates a past experience to another. His

audience is an inexperienced lover. Thus the speaker appears to be instructing the inexperienced

lover on what pure love really is: “that so / Weake men on love reveal’d may looke” (69-70).

The ‘extasie’ is the metaphor that makes comprehensible the relationship between body

and soul. Ecstasy refers to a “state of being ‘beside oneself’, thrown into a frenzy or a stupor,

with anxiety, astonishment, fear, or passion” (Definition 1. OED), or by another definition, a

“state of rapture in which the body was supposed to become incapable of sensation, while the

soul [is] engaged in the contemplation of divine things” (Definition 3.a. OED). A look into the

etymology of ecstasy could perhaps explain both Donne’s use of the word, and the two

definitions proposed by the OED. “The classical senses of are ‘insanity’ and

‘bewilderment’; but in late Gr. the etymological meaning received another application, viz.,

‘withdrawal of the soul from the body, mystic or prophetic trance’” (Etymology of ecstasy

OED). Thus the lovers in “The Extasie” are in fact in ‘extasie’ when their souls are withdrawn

from their bodies, or at least until the turn in the poem: “But O alas, so long, so farre / Our bodeis

why doe wee forbere” (49-50). Love’s natural progression begins with the body: hence, their

souls “to the body first repair” (60). Are they in ‘extasie’ at the end of the poem? Donne does

not present a problem and then a solution, but rather, he deepens the mystery by not resolving it.

The poem is an examination of those mysteries which surround a pure love relationship: as the

body is important to the soul and the soul to the body. The occurance of the ‘extasie’ is
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therefore, appropriately located centrally in the poem because it is the crucial event that the

speaker uses to convey his experience.

The ‘extasie’ bridges the gap between body and soul. Given that ‘extasie’ can both be a

tumultuous bodily ordeal and a non-physical rapture, it appears to contain two contrary elements

just as man is comprised of body and soul. Since ‘extasie’ is withdrawal of the soul from the

body, etymologically speaking, then it is a disjunction of those two elements; it seems

paradoxical that ‘extasie’ could be both a union of radically different physical and mental states

of being, and also a division of the physical and mental elements in man; however, the speaker

takes this paradox and uses it to explain the relationship of soul and body. The ‘extasie’ cuts

man at his joints, thus exposing him and laying out his parts for examination in this most

elemental form, as Tillyard notes: “[T]he ecstasy though temporary has done its work: it has

‘unperplexed’ or untied ‘that subtile knot’ and in so doing has made the strands clearer to the

view. More precisely it has been an exercise in education; it has advanced the great human

function of self-knowledge.”8 The ‘extasie’ allows the two souls to know each other and to unite

into one harmonious soul: “When love, with one another so / Interinanimates two soules…Wee

then, who are this new soule, know, / Of what we are compos’d, and made” (41-46). Thus the

‘extasie’ being both passionate and meditative allows the two separate souls to become one and

know each other, and thus, the ‘self-knowledge’ that Tillyard refers to is both individual

knowledge and knowledge of the two as one. “This Extasie doeth unperplex” (29), that is, it

untangles the “subtle knot, which makes us man” (64) by dividing the soul and body; however,

the reality of the “subtle knot” (64) still exists.

The necessary logical consequent is a return to the body, for if we are both body and soul,

then it is important to realize how that reality operates in terms of the experience the speaker is
8
Tillyard, E. M. W. “A Note on Donne’s Extasie.” The Review of English Studies. 19.73 (January 1943): 69.
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attempting to convey. The speaker argues that “So must pure lovers soules descend /

T’affections, and to faculties, / Which sense may reach and apprehend, / Else a great Prince in

prison lies” (65-68).

This pure love is the love of soul and body, and even the purest non-erotic love is less

substantial than the pure love. The speaker elevates his pure love to an exemplary status through

the introduction of another observant lover as in lines 21-28. The speaker’s love transforms and

purifies even he who “soules language understood” (22), and hence the appropriate use of

alchemical imagery, such as “concoction” (27) and later “allay” (56), help to show how pure

love is refining and purifying but also a conjunction of two things. Pure love conjoins both soul

and the body, yet love of the body is subordinate to the love of the soul. The progression in the

narrative helps to illuminate these two aspects of love, mind and matter. The speaker first

presents two lovers on a “pregnant bank” (2), joined by their senses of touch and sight: “Our

hands were firmely cimented…Our eye-beames twisted, and did thred / Our eyes, upon one

double string” (5-8). The speaker quickly asserts that their bodily contact was essentially sterile

despite the implied euphemisms: “So to’entergraft our hands, as yet / Was all the meanes to

make us one, / And pictures in our eyes to get / Was all our propagation” (9-12). The subsequent

transition to a love of souls without bodies (the episode of the ‘extasie’) culminates in the union

of the two souls. The turn in the poem, which reintroduces the body, occurs at line 49. The

speaker, however, clarifies the role of the body as subordinate to the soul: for the speaker

explains that “Wee are / The intelligences, they the sphere” (51-52), possibly referring to the

angels that move the heavenly bodies, but more importantly, the image of the sphere implies

completeness and harmony. Therefore, the body is good but is also subordinate to the rational

intelligence that moves it. The speaker argumentatively points out that “We owe them [our
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bodies] thankes, because they thus, / Did us, to us, at first convay, / Yeelded their forces, sense,

to us, / Nor are drosse9 to us, but allay” (53-56). The speaker says that since our bodies brought

our souls together, we ought to thank them; furthermore, the metal-work-metaphors imply that in

the commingling or concoction of their souls, they ought not throw off their bodies but allay

them, that is, add them into the mixture. Again the speaker says that “Loves mysteries in soules

doe grow, / But yet the body is his booke” (71-72) claiming that in order to understand love’s

mysteries one must turn to the text—the body, but at the same time, the ideas or mysteries are

what is meaningful not the book by itself.

If the speaker is indeed attempting to give an argument for the necessity of both body and

soul for true love, then the image of ‘extasie’ becomes extremely important. It becomes the

conceit around which the whole poem revolves. It is necessary to the lovers’ understanding of

each other and of themselves as creatures with bodies and souls. “The Extasie” itself remains

mysterious, even after serious analysis; however, despite the inherent mysteries in the poem, it is

evident that no woman was seduced in any such elaborate manner, and, moreover, that no poet

ever won his lady’s heart by illuminating Neoplatonic doctrine.

9
“The scum, recrement, or extraneous matter thrown off from metals in the process of melting” (OED)