Dancing Backwards. Salley Vickers

will get along well with Donne. He had one of the best ears of all time. Do you know what “ecstasy” means?’

      Vi, who supposed it was what happened when you took LSD, thought it prudent to say that she didn’t.

      ‘Good,’ said Miss Arnold, who approved of ignorance in her pupils. ‘Ecstasy is a mystical state in which the soul escapes the body to seek union with the divine. Donne, you see, has made a conceit (that’s also a form of pun, by the way) in suggesting that the entities which flow from his soul and his lover’s unite to create a third entity, a perfect whole or divinity. The divinity is sexual love not God. It is a characteristic piece of his sublime profanity.’