sweetest noise Flashcards
perfect common meter
imbues with a pleasant cohesion and fluidity, a harmony that we might concede with the genesis of spring. However, the meter belies a more complex and paradoxical nature of Dickinson’s world view.
‘the saddest noise, the sweetest noise, the maddest noise that grows’ + ‘birds’ and ‘in the spring’
the anaphoric superlative adjectives rush intense but paradoxical reactions to ‘noise’ environment (sweet but also threatening)
- connotes incomprehensible even abrasive sound within the environment. Therefore, its surprising to discover beautiful but unnerving noise = ‘birds’ ‘in the spring’
At night’s delicious close
Diction and metaphor, sounds of birds announces spring at ‘close’ of ‘night’ (winter) their sounds = unnerving but also delicious (sensorially delightful)
Overall, ED unnerving portrayal of spring subverts riverdi tradition which celebrates regretting of the earth ( for ED spring is both ‘sad’ and ‘sweet’
March and April line + magical frontier + summer hesitates
diction = delightful seasonal movement from Spring to summer evidenced by diction of ‘march and April’ line + ‘magical frontier’ summer personified ‘hesitating’ beyond ‘magical frontier’ therefore Summer = heavenly but also melancholic because its arrival involves time passing / its own death
‘it makes us think of all the dead’
sharp shift to morbid, mournful tone ( continually subverting riverdi) rather than the birdsong = full throated romantic riverdi, awareness of nature’s sweetness triggers thoughts of death and life’s ephemerality therefore speaker grieves ‘all the dead’
‘What we had and what we now deplore’
tone of world-weariness past tone reflects on sweet times and persons gone (‘what we had’) then present tense to lament travails of quotidian (‘what we now deplore’) including prospect of certain death
’ We almost wish those siren throats would go and sing no more’
mournful assonance reveals speaker no longer able to tolerate birdsong, whose beauty must end ‘almost wishing those siren throats would go no more’ birdsong= like Homeric sirens song because it’s maddening aural beauty can break ‘the human heart as quickly as a spear’ however the qualifier ‘almost’ means speaker resists temptation to turn away from or Denys natures sweet beauty
