Tuesday, June 25, 2013

What does purple refer to in Emily Dickinson's poem "Wait Till the Majesty of Death"?What does purple symbolize in this poem?

Emily Dickinson uses the color purple in many of her
poems. Regardless, the symbolism of the purple is not necessarily always the same. For
example, in her poem "We Like March" (see second link below), the color purple
represents the springtime.


In her poem "Wait Till the
Majesty of Death", the color purple represents something very different. For this poem's
reference to purple, "Full purple in his state", the color represents
royalty.


According to a color meaning
website,


readability="9">

Purple has been used to symbolize magic and
mystery, as well as royalty. Being the combination of red and blue, the warmest and
coolest colors, purple is believed to be the ideal
color.



Here, Dickinson is
referring to the royalty associated with the Majesty of Death. There are other
references to Death in which one could justify that Dickinson could be referring to the
Lord God given she raises the Majesty to the highest rank possible, "Lord of
Lords".


This assumption could be justified by looking at
the colors in which God commanded that Moses use the color purple to decorate the linens
in a tabernacle. The color purple not only represents royalty, but the highest royalty
if one adheres to Christian theology.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What is the meaning of the 4th stanza of Eliot's Preludes, especially the lines "I am moved by fancies...Infinitely suffering thing".

A century old this year, T.S. Eliot's Preludes raises the curtain on his great modernist masterpieces, The Love...