Blazing Flashcards
What
In passage, the sun is represented as a magical juggler whose multiple guises reveal Dickinson’s somewhat romantic celebration of nature’s grandeur and dazzling ephemerality.
C1
‘Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple’
- L1’s colour symb’sm praises nature’s regality while evoking sun’s path from dawn to dusk.
-verb phrase ‘blazing in gold’ = dawn is replete w. refulgence.
-‘quenching in purple’ = foreshadows sun’s (+humanity’s) inevitable death BUT evokes satis. of light’s death (connoted by ‘quenching’)
C1
‘Leaping like Leopards to the Sky’
-B/c sun = juggler who app. many quises, L2 brings new metaphor of dawn:
sun = oriental leopard, ‘leaping’ from the East.
-Liquid allit. accen. sun’s feline gracefulness streaking across the sky.
-continuation of verbs in present progressive tense -> endows sun’s path w. startling immediacy + intensity.
C2
‘old Horizon/ Laying her spotted Face to die’
-As sun begins descent towards its ‘death’ @ Western ‘horizon’, appears in still another guise: now person. As old woman ‘laying her spotted face to die’.
C2
‘Stooped as Low as the Otter’s Window’
-Sun’s path now nearing sunset = clearly conflated w. human mortality as it ‘stoops’ in old age ‘as low as the otter’s window:’ image evokes twilight creeping low enough across river to peek at otter’s homes.
C2
‘Touching the Roof and tinting the Barn’
-From here sun only ‘touch’ roof + ‘tint’ barn -> almost blessing environment w. crepuscular light.
C2
‘Kissing he Bonnet to the Meadow
And the juggler of Day is gone’
-Sun juggler’s greatest magical trick = only becomes visible as illusionist in final lines: ‘kisses her bonnet’ to thank audience b4 ‘the juggler of Day is gone.’
Why
Overall, Dickinson’s contemplation of the ephemeral qualities of light leads to her assertion, seen elsewhere in her opus, that what is transitory in nature - and in life - is fragile and precious.
