So stately they ascend —
It is as Swans — discarded You,
For Duties Diamond —
Their Liquid Feet go softly out
Upon a Sea of Blonde —
They spurn the Air, as t'were too mean
For Creatures so renowned —
Their Ribbons just beyond the eye —
They struggle — some — for Breath —
And yet the Crowd applaud, below —
They would not encore — Death —
The Gilded Creature strains — and spins —
Trips frantic in a Tree —
Tears open her imperial Veins —
And tumbles in the Sea —
The Crowd — retire with an Oath —
The Dust in Streets — go down —
And Clerks in Counting Rooms
Observe — "'Twas only a Balloon" —
-F730, J700, Fascicle 35, 1863
Ah, what a ride this poem takes you on, albeit one with a crash landing. Dickinson’s metaphors can be wonderfully, and maddingly, complex. Here we have a balloon that turns into a swan, which are both a metaphor for…something. Somehow Dickinson manages to keep both of these metaphors afloat at once. As to what this metaphor signifies, it's left up to the reader, but we will get a new twist and possibility in nearly every line.
Let’s take it stanza by stanza.
You've seen Balloons set — Haven't You?
So stately they ascend —
It is as Swans — discarded You,
For Duties Diamond —
Usually “set” means to set down. It’s possible that’s what Dickinson means here, but since this ends with the balloon being torn by a tree and tumbling into the sea, I think “set” here means to set off. You’ve seen balloons set off haven’t you? If you have, you know how stately they ascend. Stately, like all of Dickinson’s adverbs, is rich. It can mean at once dignified, unhurried, majestic and elegant, but there is also something a little grandiose about it.
The second level of metaphor comes into play in the third line. The balloon is like a swan, and it is as if this swan discarded you for duties diamond. Discarded is good verb choice too. It implies that you have been rejected and are no longer useful or desired. So while we admire this stately balloon there is also something snobbish about it. You’ve been snubbed. And for what? For “Duties Diamond.” Dickinson has such a way with a phrase. "Duties Diamond" has such a ring, especially as it half rhymes with ascend, blonde and renowned.
In this fascicle thus far we’ve had a fair amount of meditation on what it means to try to achieve impossible goals. In F724 Dickinson speaks of the impossibility of touching the rainbow’s raiment. "Yet persevered toward — surer — for the Distance —How high —Unto the Saints' slow diligence — The Sky —" And in the poem before this one she speaks of “the perfected life.” These poems seem to waver between admiration for such a pursuit and distrust.
Their Liquid Feet go softly out
Upon a Sea of Blonde —
They spurn the Air, as t'were too mean
For Creatures so renowned —
The feet of swans are “liquid.” “Liquid Feet” is another great phrase. You can imagine the water dripping off the feet of the swan as they lift off from the sea.
Their Liquid Feet go softly out
Upon a Sea of Blonde —
They spurn the Air, as t'were too mean
For Creatures so renowned —
The feet of swans are “liquid.” “Liquid Feet” is another great phrase. You can imagine the water dripping off the feet of the swan as they lift off from the sea.
"Feet" is almost always a code word for poetry in Dickinson, a shorthand for metrical feet. So this one word takes us into the realm of the metapoetic. Indeed, the feet of this poem are quite liquid in their lifting off from the ground of prose. "Their Liquid Feet go softly out/ Upon a Sea of Blonde" just rolls off the tongue. You can read this poem as being about the pursuit of poetry, something far afield from common air of the counting houses.
Liquid is also juxtaposed with “air” in this stanza. The element of the elements in this poem is intriguing. The balloon/swan is rising as if to “spurn the air.” Again, this creature appears to be too good for our atmosphere, which is too “mean,” meaning small, or lesser.
The Sea of Blonde I take to be sunlight. "Sea of blonde" is yet another great phrase. In researching this poem I came across an interesting exploration of the word “blonde” in Dickinson’s oeuvre. While I can’t say I agree with the overall point of it, I did very much enjoy the essay’s in-depth explication of this poem.
Their Ribbons just beyond the eye —
They struggle — some — for Breath —
And yet the Crowd applaud, below —
They would not encore — Death —
That first line shows how adeptly Dickinson mixes her metaphors here. Swans appear to have ribbons just behind the eye, but so do hot air balloons!
Their Ribbons just beyond the eye —
They struggle — some — for Breath —
And yet the Crowd applaud, below —
They would not encore — Death —
That first line shows how adeptly Dickinson mixes her metaphors here. Swans appear to have ribbons just behind the eye, but so do hot air balloons!
And in the next line too, the struggling for breath, you can imagine both the blast valve of a hot air balloon breathing into its belly to help it ascend, and you can also imagine a swan breathing hard as it flies up.
The struggle for breath recalls the spurning of the air in the previous stanza. This isn’t an easy atmosphere for such liquid creatures.
But breathe they must, because the crowd is not going to give an encore unless the Diamond Duty is fulfilled. Here we get the idea of a performance added into the metaphorical mix. The liquid creature appears to be self-conscious of the crowd. It is as if a ballerina had suddenly taken the stage. A blonde ballerina no doubt. There is also a kind of joke in the idea of there being no encore for death. Death is it. There is no coming back out on stage.
The Gilded Creature strains — and spins —
Trips frantic in a Tree —
Tears open her imperial Veins —
And tumbles in the Sea —
To gild something is to cover it with a thin layer of gold leaf. The gold color here reflects back on blonde, but also to the idea of something being stately. The creature is straining to breathe and fly.
But breathe they must, because the crowd is not going to give an encore unless the Diamond Duty is fulfilled. Here we get the idea of a performance added into the metaphorical mix. The liquid creature appears to be self-conscious of the crowd. It is as if a ballerina had suddenly taken the stage. A blonde ballerina no doubt. There is also a kind of joke in the idea of there being no encore for death. Death is it. There is no coming back out on stage.
The Gilded Creature strains — and spins —
Trips frantic in a Tree —
Tears open her imperial Veins —
And tumbles in the Sea —
To gild something is to cover it with a thin layer of gold leaf. The gold color here reflects back on blonde, but also to the idea of something being stately. The creature is straining to breathe and fly.
Why does it spin? Well, the poem takes a spin here, for one. And again I think of a performing ballerina spinning in the air. I think that in the logic of the poem though the spinning happens when the balloon gets entangled in the branches of a tree.
It’s ironic that it is a tree, a thing rooted in the earth, a creator of the very oxygen this creature has been spurning, that has tripped it up.
“Tears open her imperial Veins” is a violent image. It’s painful what happens to this stately, gilded graceful creature. While its ascension was slow and beautiful, the denouement is quick and terrible.
The tumbling in the sea recalls the myth of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. But here Dickinson gives us a more homely version of this myth, in which it is the entanglement with the earth that brings the creature down, not the sun.
The Crowd — retire with an Oath —
The Dust in Streets — go down —
And Clerks in Counting Rooms
Observe — "'Twas only a Balloon" —
The crowd is disappointed and leaves with an “oath.” Oath has a double meaning here. It can mean both a curse, and a prayer. “Jesus!” is an example of this. In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” as well as George Saunder’s “The End of Firpo In The World,” you have a similar idea, a character exclaiming “Jesus!” as both a swear word and a sincere plea at once. Of course "oath" can mean a promise too. It's as if the audience is promising never to try something like this crazy balloon-swan stunt at home.
"The dust in streets go down" is a powerful image. The crowd has dispersed, the dust has settled. The earth has come back to itself, just like the imperial creature that has been grounded.
The final couplet brings a new level of meaning to the poem. On one hand this poem looks askance at the creatures who spurn and discard us. On the other hand what would life be without them? We’d be no better than the money-men who reduce the ethereal swan of the imagination back to a mere a balloon as they count the proceeds.
Dickinson is masterly at seeing both sides of the coin. On one side of the coin we badly want the creature to succeed in its diamond duties, but on the other side, we are suspicious of its ambitions. There is a part of us that wants to bring it back down to earth, back down to we who have been discarded. Still, we hate those coin-counters in the end, don’t we?
-/)dam Wade l)deGraff
“Tears open her imperial Veins” is a violent image. It’s painful what happens to this stately, gilded graceful creature. While its ascension was slow and beautiful, the denouement is quick and terrible.
The tumbling in the sea recalls the myth of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. But here Dickinson gives us a more homely version of this myth, in which it is the entanglement with the earth that brings the creature down, not the sun.
The Crowd — retire with an Oath —
The Dust in Streets — go down —
And Clerks in Counting Rooms
Observe — "'Twas only a Balloon" —
The crowd is disappointed and leaves with an “oath.” Oath has a double meaning here. It can mean both a curse, and a prayer. “Jesus!” is an example of this. In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” as well as George Saunder’s “The End of Firpo In The World,” you have a similar idea, a character exclaiming “Jesus!” as both a swear word and a sincere plea at once. Of course "oath" can mean a promise too. It's as if the audience is promising never to try something like this crazy balloon-swan stunt at home.
"The dust in streets go down" is a powerful image. The crowd has dispersed, the dust has settled. The earth has come back to itself, just like the imperial creature that has been grounded.
The final couplet brings a new level of meaning to the poem. On one hand this poem looks askance at the creatures who spurn and discard us. On the other hand what would life be without them? We’d be no better than the money-men who reduce the ethereal swan of the imagination back to a mere a balloon as they count the proceeds.
Dickinson is masterly at seeing both sides of the coin. On one side of the coin we badly want the creature to succeed in its diamond duties, but on the other side, we are suspicious of its ambitions. There is a part of us that wants to bring it back down to earth, back down to we who have been discarded. Still, we hate those coin-counters in the end, don’t we?
-/)dam Wade l)deGraff
Adam, your Paragraph 1 is a keeper, one for the ages, a perfect summary of this journey we're on. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteAnd the same can be said for your entire explication. I like the shorter paragraphs, too.
ReplyDeleteHigginson called ED his “partially cracked poetess at Amherst” (Habegger 2002) and he may have been right, but that leaves a partially uncracked poet of immense power who composed this masterpiece. To begin, academics seem to have neglected this poem, except for a single explication by Francisco Unger (2016) that is worth ten typical academic postings.
ReplyDeleteED’s unexplained switch from plural: “Balloons”, “Swans”, “their”, and “They” in Stanzas 1-3, to singular “Gilded Creature”, “her”, and “Balloon” in Stanzas 4-5, suggests ED began the poem in one direction, then mid-poem changed directions. My guess is that a vague subconscious memory of reading a metaphor about balloons suddenly became a conscious memory of a singular “fallen balloon” (Browning 1856, ‘Aurora Leigh’, Fifth Book, excerpt below; Miller 2016. Footnote 302).
Stanza 1. The verb in Line 1 is an oddity; EDLex provides only 28 definitions of “set”, but Definition 12 applies to balloons: “Land; approach the earth; [fig.] crash; fall”. Many folks have watched balloons rise, but usually we don’t see them “set”, so Lines 1 and 2 seem to contradict:
“You've seen Balloons set- Haven't You?
So stately they ascend –“
Lines 3-4 sound unhappy, sarcastic, as if she felt abandoned by someone she loves who thinks he has “Duties Diamond”, AKA, a “higher calling”:
“It is as Swans - discarded You,
For Duties Diamond –“
In ED’s fertile imagination, this is exactly what happened when Rev. Charles Wadsworth (CW) moved to San Francisco in June 1862. In fact, Civil War disagreements with his Philadelphia congregation were more important than “Duties Diamond” in that transcontinental move (Lease 1990; The Prowling Bee, Poem F708, Comment 3, 26 April 2024, 2:45 PM).
Stanza 2 transitions ominously from “They spurn the Air” like “Swans” to Stanza 3, “They struggle - some - for Breath –”. Then suddenly and without explanation, Stanza 4 switches from plural “they” to singular “Gilded Creature”:
“The Gilded Creature strains - and spins -
Trips frantic in a Tree -
Tears open her imperial Veins -
And tumbles in the Sea –“
Finally, Stanza 5, the denouement:
“The Crowd - retire with an Oath –
· · · · · ·
‘Twas only a Balloon -".
So, given the switch in verb form from plural to singular, what does ED mean by the word “balloon”?
(1) Taken historically, Stanzas 1-3 may mean her lover, CW, has up and left the east coast, and she is both angry and worried that his move west will “crash”. When Wadsworth went west, there were only 12 families attending San Francisco’s Calvary Presbyterian, and his job was to rescue the church from extinction. She needn’t have worried, within months he was filling the pews and then some. This scenario might explain the unexplained switch to singular “Gilded Creature”; perhaps ED was just careless with her verb form. Whether “Gilded Creature” applies to the person, CW, or to ED’s love for that person, we don’t know. My take is the latter.
(2) Taken metaphorically, balloons may represent poems that ED sent her friends or stored in her fascicles for posterity. If true, she was ridiculously careless because Lavinia could have just as easily burned them as saved them after ED’s death. Vinnie did burn all letters, as ED instructed, but for poems ED apparently left no instructions.
(3) Rising balloons may represent “stand-ins for something like the Platonic ascent of the soul, and so of nobler natures. . . . These finer natures have been released into the air only to be destroyed under the observant, yet not quite discerning, eyes of a crowd that makes little of their demise. . . . not to worry, for it is only, after all, a matter of balloons.” (Unger 2016)
Part 2.
ReplyDeleteA footnote on this poem (Miller 2016) suggests ED’s Stanza 4 might be “inspired” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1856):
“I laboured on alone. The wind and dust
And sun of the world beat blistering in my face;
And hope, now for me, now against me, dragged
My spirits onward,—as some fallen balloon,
Which, whether caught by blossoming tree or bare,
Is torn alike. I sometimes touched my aim,
Or seemed,—and generous souls cried out, ‘Be strong,
Take courage; now you’re on our level,—now!
The next step saves you!’ I was flushed with praise,
But, pausing just a moment to draw breath,
I could not choose but murmur to myself
‘Is this all? all that’s done? and all that’s gained?
If this then be success, ’tis dismaller
Than any failure.’”
(Excerpt from EBB, 1856, ‘Aurora Leigh, Fifth Book)
PS. Would the putative “borrowed” idea of balloon(s) soaring and snagging in a tree be plagiarism or poetic license? Louise, my bride of 60 years, published poet, and former university English instructor, says no, it isn’t plagiarism to borrow an idea in poetry without attribution, so long as you “don’t use the idea in the same context”. Hmmm, that vague “same context” phrase bothers me. Louise says ED’s context is different from Browning’s context. If she says it, it’s true for me. Comments, anyone?
• Habegger, Alfred. 2002. My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson (p. 377). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
• Miller, C., 2016, Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them, Footnote 302, p.765.
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 1856. ‘Aurora Leigh’. Fifth Book
• Francisco Unger.2016. You've seen balloons set, haven't you? On three of Dickinson's poems of death. The Yale Review. 104(3): 77-97 (first nine pages).
• Lease, B. 1990. Emily Dickinson's Readings of Men and Books. Pp. 10-11