The erotology of Donne's "Extasie" and the secret history of voluptuous rationalism

Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Wntr, 2004 by Catherine Gimelli Martin

   Which, from the carcasse of the old world, free,
   Creates a new world; and new creatures be
   Produc'd: The matter and the stuffe of this,
   Her vertue, and the forme our practice is.
   (lines 75-8)

This new alchemical "concoction" (lines 453-7) will not only elementally unite "the matter and stuffe" of her virtue with his poetic "forme," but also, as in "Aire and Angels," it will create a host of "new creatures," new reunions of body and soul and a new synthesis of feminine and masculine elements. "The Extasie" prepares for this "practice" by meditating upon the Cusan/Ficinian theme that man is higher than angels not through his intellect but through his active, "voluptuous," or pleasurable will. It is also more Cusan than "Aire and Angels" in arguing that not the angelic female but both lovers must suffer an incongruous form of limitation if they are not allowed to expand into the "matter" of heterosexual enactment, the final "revelation" of their spiritual love. This logic is obviously seductive, but it is no more necessarily cynical, illegitimate, or libertine than Cusa's or Ficino's contention that active, material virtus is "intrinsic to the essentia or nature of a given substance." For Ficino, this virtus or "knot" at once passively and actively unites intelligence and will, mediates between "its internal or self-returning" and its "external or out-going" natures, and creates a dynamic interchange intrinsic to vita or life. As in "The Extasie," the "eternal knot and link" in this process is love. (45) The difference is that Donne's poem now makes this dialectic a heterosexual "symposium" in which masculine and feminine elements gradually merge into a higher "dialogue of one" (line 74). (46) Since these two elements are initially in conflict not so much with each other as with themselves, at first, both lovers accept the more orthodox or Stoic limitation of angelic love to the spiritual realm. They then go on to overturn this conventional view with the "learned ignorance" acquired as they are Neo-Platonically and alchemically refined and fitted for their ecstatic union. (47)

As the dialogue opens, both lovers clearly associate "sexe" with the gross matter of original sin that must be purged from their motionless, disembodied encounter. In Petrarchan fashion they declare that

                   it was not sexe
     Wee see, we saw not what did move:
   But as all severall soules containe
     Mixture of things, they know not what,
   Love, these mixt soules, doth mixe againe,
     And makes both one, each this and that.
     (lines 31-6)

In the process, they begin to approach Ficino's strict criteria for holy lovers, who do not "desire this or that body but the splendour of the divine presence ... [which] is why lovers are ignorant of what they desire." (48) However, passing this test permits their further spiritual progress in voluptuous rationalism, so that they can accept passionate desire to the extent that its own inexhaustibleness "proves" that it is not for tangible, finite bodies, but for the infinite souls actively linked both to God and to each other. Since the splendor of the soul's celestial image now shines through the body, the true lover at once fears and worships the sight of the beloved, spurning riches and honors for his or her sake and preferring to become godlike through love. (49) But "The Extasie" then clearly goes beyond Ficino, who, as we have seen, regards beauty as a mediator between goodness and justice but restricts love's realization in pleasure by requiring it to return to its transcendent source--the infinite beauty, goodness, and justice of God. This emphasis upon beauty as an abstract mirror of goodness is neither fully incarnational nor fully compatible with Donne's erotology, which rejects this restrictive lineage by pointedly excluding any description of the woman's beauty or physical appearance from his love lyrics.