Milli mála - 2019, Page 104

104 Milli mála 11/2019
GILDED CR EATUR ES STR A INING A N D DY ING
On the figurative level, the stanza presents an image of an exhausted
dancer gasping for breath as she tries to jump and leap, before slam-
ming into the stage in a bloody heap. But even though the invocation
of a woman performer is fairly overt here, the speaker also brings the
balloons back to the forefront of the poem. The stanza is a portrayal
of the performer’s collapse and a description of a balloon being torn
open by a tree and falling into the sea. Once an image of self-contain-
ment and superiority, the balloon is now swept by the wind into a tree,
destroyed by the very thing it simultaneously disdained and used to
elevate itself. The performer’s situation might be analogous, but it
seems likelier that it forms a contrast, a point evinced by the distinc-
tion between the puncturing of the balloon (releasing air) and the
tearing open of the woman’s veins (releasing blood). The performer is
not destroyed by the air, but collapses because of a lack of it.
The final stanza places more focus on the crowd and the surround-
ing social context, which includes not only the audience observing
the performance but also the group of clerks that apparently orches-
trated it. The clerks attempt to nullify the figurative and metaphoric
value of the balloon:
The Crowd - retire with an Oath -
The Dust in Streets - go down -
And Clerks in Counting Rooms
Observe - “’Twas only a Balloon” -
These lines describe the official reception of the balloon’s fall, invit-
ing a return to the question of the speaker’s motives in detailing it.
As mentioned, one explanation of these motives is that the speaker
wants to provide her own version of this collapse, even if the reader
has already witnessed something like it before. Is the speaker there-
fore attempting to provoke the reader into a reconsideration of how
she understands this event? If so, the speaker could be levelling a
critique at the clerks’ dismissive comment that “’Twas only a
Balloon.” The heavily metaphoric description of the fall appears to be
directed towards eliciting sympathy for the crash of a “Gilded
Creature.” In this context, the poem as a whole lays stress on reading
the fall of the balloon as the elevation and then tragic degradation of