Ecstasy Expresses his unique and unconventional ideas about love Theme pure spiritual or real love can exist only in the bond of souls established by the bodies Overview True Love ID: 461808
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Slide1
By
John Donne
Ecstasy Slide2
Expresses his unique and unconventional ideas about love.
Theme pure, spiritual or real love can exist only in the bond of souls established by the bodies.
Overview
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True Love
Soul
BodySlide3
The communication of the souls of lovers reveals the true essence of love. Love
is not sex-experience. It is rather a union of two souls. Each soul appears to keep its identity The fusion of the two souls is the real consummation of love.
The new soul is composed of ‘atoms’ which are beyond decay. Just as the essence of the individual is not the body but the soul, in the same way, the essence of love is not sex but mutual dependence and affection
.
The body is no dross, but an alloy necessary for pure metals to become stronger. The body is the channel for the souls to inter-communicate with each other.
True Nature of LoveSlide4
To this old and complex question, Donne has a satisfactory answer. Love is dependent both on the soul and body. Love has to be concretized. This
is possible only through the physical play of love. Donne feels that physical love is enriched by the mutual understanding of the souls of the two lovers. Spiritual love is not possible in a vacuum. Like heavenly beings who influence the actions of men through manifestation, the souls must express themselves through the bodies. Finally
, the poet feels that love ripens in the soul. As such, physical love and holy love are complementary. If some lover observes the poet and his beloved, he will hardly find any change in their behavior when the lovers return to their bodies.
Is Love physical or spiritual?Slide5
The first stanza provides the physical setting of the two lovers. On the bank of a river over grown with violet flowers, the lovers sit quiet, looking into each other’s eyes and holding hands firmly.
This physical closeness offers a romantic and pastoral setting—their hands cemented in mutual confidence and the eyes as if strung on a thread. This sensually exciting scene is a forerunner to the actual physical union.
The poet compares the two lovers to the two armies. The souls are like the negotiators. They are not committed to either side. Only those who are gifted can understand the dialogue of the two souls, and realize the true nature of love.
SettingSlide6
Where, like a pillow on a bed
A pregnant bank swell'd up to rest The violet's reclining head,
Sat we two, one another's best. Passionate scene as the backdrop for the lovers to embrace
described in erotic terms
reference to pillow, bed and pregnancy suggest sexuality
image of violets symbolizes faithful love and truth
holding each other’s hand and looking intently into each other's eyes “one another’s best” each person complement’s the other
ANALYSIS
Stanza 1Slide7
Our hands were firmly cemented With a fast balm, which thence did spring;
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread Our eyes upon one double string;
Sweaty palmsa sign of repressed physical attractionand our eye-beams (conceived as lines of light from the eye rather than to the eye) intertwined and threaded our sight together as if on a double string.
Stanza 2Slide8
So to'intergraft our hands, as yet Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get Was all our propagation.
Their eyes meet and reflect the images of each other, and their sights are woven together
Stanza 3Slide9
As ‘twixt two equal armies, FateSuspends uncertain victory,Our souls (which to advance their state,
Were gone out) hung ‘twixt her and me.souls are outside their bodies negotiating like 2 armies.
Their bodies meanwhile are motionlessStanza 4Slide10
And whilst our souls negotiate there, We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were, And we said nothing, all the day
Just as the outcome of a battle is uncertain where the opposing armies are of equal strength, our two souls,
Stanza 5Slide11
If any, so by love refin'd That he soul's language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind, Within convenient distance stood,
Only the person refined by love could understand the language they speak to each other in those silent moments
Stanza 6Slide12
He (though he knew not which soul spake, Because both meant, both
spake the same) Might thence a new concoction take And part far purer than he came.
The entire section stresses equalityDonne departs as a “purer” soul as when he first came.
Stanza 7Slide13
This ecstasy doth unperplex, We said, and tell us what we love;
We see by this it was not sex, We see we saw not what did move; T
hey move with the help of the bodies. Body is the medium of contact of the two souls. Therefore, the lovers turn to their bodies and try to understand the mystery of love. Body is the medium to experience love
Stanza 8Slide14
But as all several souls contain Mixture of things, they know not what,
Love these mix'd souls doth mix again And makes both one, each this and that.
Just as all individual souls are a mixture, of unknown qualities, Love re-mixes these mixed souls to make one soul that yet contains both souls, so that each is also the other.
Stanza 9Slide15
A single violet transplant, The strength, the colour
, and the size, (All which before was poor and scant) Redoubles still, and multiplies.
a metaphor of a transplanted violet to show how two souls can be inter animated and how this "new" soul can repair the defects of each of the individuals souls.
Stanza 10Slide16
When love with one another so Interinanimates
two souls,That abler soul, which thence doth flow, Defects of loneliness controls.Two souls as one
Abler: especially capable or talented
Stanza 11Slide17
We then, who are this new soul, know Of what we are
compos'd and made,For th' atomies of which we grow Are souls, whom no change can invade.
lovers know what they are made of so no change can invade them
Unified abler soul which longs for union which may allow peace
“New soul” created when Donne and his lover’s soul mingle
Stanza 12Slide18
But oh alas, so long, so far, Our bodies why do we forbear?
They'are ours, though they'are not we; we are The intelligences, they the spheres.
Questions why we reject our bodiesAlthough the soul is the intelligence, the bodies are spheres which control them
Stanza 13Slide19
We owe them thanks, because they thus Did us, to us, at first convey,
Yielded their senses' force to us, Nor are dross to us, but allay.Thanking the body for the service of bringing the soul to yield their senses
Bodies are vessels, not impurities that weaken usThey strengthen us
Stanza 14Slide20
On man heaven's influence works not so, But that it first imprints the air;
So soul into the soul may flow, Though it to body first repair.
The influence of the heaven imprints the air so that our souls can flow out from the body
Stanza 15Slide21
As our blood labors to beget Spirits, as like souls as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit That subtle knot which makes us man;Blood makes ‘spirits’ which help marries the body and soul, in order to make us man
Stanza 16Slide22
So must pure lovers' souls descend T' affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend, Else a great prince in prison lies.Souls must give in to the affection that our body provides us with
Stanza 17Slide23
To'our bodies turn we then, that so Weak men on love
reveal'd may look;Love's mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book.
Implies that sex is the love revealedAlso suggests that love is grown in the soul (importance of the soul)True love resides in the soul
Stanza 18Slide24
And if some lover, such as we, Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see Small change, when we'are to bodies gone.
Sex is the result of a spiritual union and it strengthens the emotions instead of the bondEmphasizes the importance of the souls’ union over sex
Stanza 19