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Some of Donne's ‘Ecstasies’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Merritt Y. Hughes*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison 6

Extract

It is still undecided in what sense, if any, the ecstasy in Donne's most famous poem should be regarded as mystical. Even if we evade the problem of defining mysticism, there is still the question of what ecstasy meant to the poet. In “The Extasie” the word keeps its literal meaning of ekstasis or exodus of the souls of the two lovers from their bodies, for Donne tells us that they “Were gone out” so as to unite into the “abler soul” which “Defects of lonelinesse controules” (11. 43–44), and makes the discovery that sex was not the source of their love. Recent interpreters have stressed the change which comes over the poem at line forty-nine, where the lover, or as Pierre Legouis insists, the seducer, ends the literal ekstasis of the two souls with a plea for their return to the physical senses of their bodies “Else a great Prince in prison lies” (1. 68).

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1960

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