The line that is hardest for me to understand is “Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats --.“ Many critiques skip over the difficulty of this line, taking “Seraphs” literally--if that is even possible. (The snowy Hats would be halos), This reading sets up an opposition between religion and nature--the human space where Dickinson operates. This is in the poem--I don’t disagree--but my gut tells me there is more.
Some read “snowy Hats” as snow-tipped and “Seraphs” as trees, and that Dickinson persists past summer, into fall and winter when the blooms have fallen, still “reeling” in nature. I also don’t mind that reading. I agree that her inebriation, her poetic inspiration, is everlasting. But interpreting Seraphs as trees is a stretch. The Seraphs are positioned in opposition to nature, they are watching the “little Tippler” at the flowers, so, for me, trees don’t fit. (Nor would clouds, pollen, a white flower.)
The temperance movement was strong at the time, as was the Second Awakening of puritanism. Many were railing against drunkenness and other scandalous behavior. The word "renounce" triggers in my mind a feeling of prudish zeal. Succumbing to peer pressure, perhaps, some Butterflies give up drinking. The white bonnet (picture a Pilgrim woman’s bonnet or a nun’s habit) “swings” as she shakes her head disapprovingly. (See this photo of Lucretia Mott wearing a white bonnet.) If male, he wags his powdered wig. “Seraphs” and “Saints” form a zealous Society. More narrowly for Dickinson, Literary Society condemned (or fixed) her poems which used unconventional grammar and lacked charming rhymes (“pearl does not rhyme with alcohol”*).
Another difficulty with the line is “Till.” Until when? Dickinson “tastes,” she reels, and will “but drink the more” until the Seraphs and Saints see her “Leaning against the -- Sun!” Society, protesting, can't but help "to windows run" and see who or what is making all that racket outside on the street. Dickinson, unrepentant, will keep drinking, keep writing poem after poem in which her liberated art shines as bright as the Sun. I can’t decide whether I think Dickinson is playfully teasing Seraphs and Saints, or if she is furious with them.
Dickinson’s creativity, her intellect (as expressed in her poetry) is “never brewed.” There isn’t an editor or publisher she trusts to oversee the poems’ aesthetic or potency. Inebriation is liberation from convention. She may have cared that Seraphs and Saints misunderstood her genius, but she wasn’t going to let them stop her. If her lamppost is the sun (which she can’t literally lean on) then she is relying on herself, her own artistic sensibility. If she leans against the Sun, then there is implied equality of scale between her and the Sun. And let’s not forget fire (Seraphs**, molten, Sun!) Her creative energy burns, renews; her urge to speak is unslakable.
The temperance movement was strong at the time, as was the Second Awakening of puritanism. Many were railing against drunkenness and other scandalous behavior. The word "renounce" triggers in my mind a feeling of prudish zeal. Succumbing to peer pressure, perhaps, some Butterflies give up drinking. The white bonnet (picture a Pilgrim woman’s bonnet or a nun’s habit) “swings” as she shakes her head disapprovingly. (See this photo of Lucretia Mott wearing a white bonnet.) If male, he wags his powdered wig. “Seraphs” and “Saints” form a zealous Society. More narrowly for Dickinson, Literary Society condemned (or fixed) her poems which used unconventional grammar and lacked charming rhymes (“pearl does not rhyme with alcohol”*).
Another difficulty with the line is “Till.” Until when? Dickinson “tastes,” she reels, and will “but drink the more” until the Seraphs and Saints see her “Leaning against the -- Sun!” Society, protesting, can't but help "to windows run" and see who or what is making all that racket outside on the street. Dickinson, unrepentant, will keep drinking, keep writing poem after poem in which her liberated art shines as bright as the Sun. I can’t decide whether I think Dickinson is playfully teasing Seraphs and Saints, or if she is furious with them.
Dickinson’s creativity, her intellect (as expressed in her poetry) is “never brewed.” There isn’t an editor or publisher she trusts to oversee the poems’ aesthetic or potency. Inebriation is liberation from convention. She may have cared that Seraphs and Saints misunderstood her genius, but she wasn’t going to let them stop her. If her lamppost is the sun (which she can’t literally lean on) then she is relying on herself, her own artistic sensibility. If she leans against the Sun, then there is implied equality of scale between her and the Sun. And let’s not forget fire (Seraphs**, molten, Sun!) Her creative energy burns, renews; her urge to speak is unslakable.
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