chronic dread. She had nothing to say that would not sound, she knew, ridiculously unsophisticated.
Each week, Edwin handed round copies of xeroxed poems for the class to analyse. At the very last seminar of the spring term, to her astonishment she recognised one. It had been a favourite of Miss Arnold’s who, still alight with the zeal of the novice, had given the poem to her sixth form to read over a half term.
Vi was the only one in the class who had read the poem closely, if at all—and really more for what it might reveal about her teacher than for any improving mental exercise. One verse in particular had caught her attention.
When love with one another so Interinanimates two souls, That abler soul which thence doth flow, Defects of loneliness controls.
The word ‘interinanimates’ intrigued her and stuck in her mind and while she didn’t quite understand the poet’s meaning she was taken by the sound of the words.
‘You have a good ear, Violet,’ Miss Arnold had said, when Vi, a little nervously, mentioned this. ‘You 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.’
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