Milli mála - 2019, Blaðsíða 99

Milli mála 11/2019 99
GREGORY ALAN PHIPPS
from night to day, with the “blue” perhaps referring to both the colour
of the dimities and the sky at daybreak. Set against a blue sky, the
moon would lose its golden colour, becoming white. The suggested
transformation might indicate a reversion to a form of purity or blank-
ness, but it could also intimate that the perfect face with its golden
hue transforms into a skull, before fading away altogether as the day
progresses. From this standpoint, the trajectory of the poem moves
from a description of the face to an abortive perception of the body,
which comes to a halt with the feminine figure dying and then vanish-
ing.
From a historical perspective, the poem invokes dichotomous as-
sociations of blondness and lightness in the mid nineteenth century:
feminine ethereality and voluptuous performance. The golden moon
may symbolize a new phase in a classic version of beauty, but when
the speaker begins describing clothing, the performance begins to
shift from the face to the body. This transition builds upon the hints
of performance and exhibition that are established in the opening
stanza. First, the face gradually comes into view, progressing from a
mere golden chin to a full and perfect countenance, and then the
clothing starts to appear. The movement towards skimpier clothing
(and perhaps undergarments) is symptomatic of a transition towards
revealing more of the body, but the poem ends abruptly before this
movement is completed. Does the “World below” perhaps expect (or
want) the performance to slide into a burlesque or risqué display of
the feminine body? It is difficult to answer this question conclusively,
given that the performative exhibition is itself implicit, appearing
through imagery and suggestion. The poem does, however, create a
multivalent setting for the emergence of a feminized face that is
coded through the interrelated colours of gold, blonde, and amber. In
the context of Dickinson’s productively ambivalent treatments of
whiteness and feminine purity, the poem offers another way of think-
ing about tensions between ethereality and bodily performance. The
golden and blonde face of the moon plays into traditional ideals of
so-called angelic purity, but at the same time, the silence of her per-
formance draws attention to the purely visible. This silence creates
some dignity and even grandeur, but the speaker’s close description
of the face and enumeration of the clothing and accoutrements also