Drunk on Literature

Greetings everyone and welcome to another start of the week here at The Magical Mystery Blog.

As I've mentioned before, I love to read. Reading for me is what breathing is to every living thing. Without it, we would merely die and cease to exist as nothing more than a cadaver.

I have a wide taste in various types of writing, including poetry. One of my favorite poets is Emily Dickinson, a recluse from Manhattan. Brought up as a Christian, she entertained herself with mythologies, biblical tales, and other stories to fuel her poems. During her introverted life, she read and wrote like a religion.

Like any other curious child, I find her book one day while browsing through our school’s library. Since then I have been hooked to her writing, alongside Edgar Allen Poe’s, Henry David Thoreau’s, and many others. Growing up, I often found translating poetry to be fun. To this day, I still find this activity to be fun.

Today I will be doing a rough translation of Emily Dickinson’s poem,” I taste a liquor never brewed.” Below is the poem.

I taste a liquor never brewed,

From tankards scooped in pearl;

Not all the vats upon the Rhine

Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,

And debauchee of dew, 

Reeling, through endless summer days, 

From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee 

Out of the foxglove's door, 

When butterflies renounce their drams, 

I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats, 

And saints to windows run, 

To see the little tippler 

Leaning against the sun!

The first verse is the introduction to the poem. Dickinson tells us she tasted a brew that’s not normally drunk in a tankard. A tankard is a specific type of drinking mug that is sometimes a pearl shade. Yet liquor or any type of alcohol is not brewed or made in a tankard, it goes through a fermentation process at a factory or brewery. The tankard is crafted (or scooped) to give it a pearl shade. Apparently the brew itself is not your average brew; it's a special one. We do not know what she means as of yet.  

She continues to explain how powerful this specific type of alcohol she drinks is. It is so strong that the vats on the Rhine cannot stop it.  The Rhine in this poem is being referred to as the Rhine River that stretches from Andermatt, Switzerland, cuts through Germany, and spills out at Rotterdam, Netherlands into the North Sea.  There are tons of towns that rest on the Rhine River in Germany and some of them even have breweries. These locations have vats in them of various beverages. Dickinson is saying that the alcohol of her drink is so powerful that the vats of the Rhine River can’t yield how strong her drink is.

In the second verse, Emily informs her audience that she is drunk on air, a degenerate of dew, and is reeling through the summer. From how it appears, she is not inebriated on any sort of physical alcoholic drink but rather nature. She is heavily drinking air, breathing it every day of her life, and enjoying it. She is a “debauchee of dew” (Dickinson); she constantly indulges in the morning dew as an alcoholic does to alcohol. The air and dew have her reeling throughout the days “from inns of Molten blue” (Dickinson). These inns that Dickinson describes could be the sky which at some points during the day has a molten blue shade.

In the third verse, Dickinson uses quotations to emphasize some of her subjects. Throughout this verse, she treats nature like a bar of people and their actions involving alcohol. In the first pair of lines, she refers to a bee as a person getting kicked out of a bar for having too much to drink. The insect is kicked out of the foxglove’s (a flower) door, which is the opening of the flower. The “Landlord” in this case is the flower itself because it has filled the bee to a great degree. In the next pair of lines, Dickinson refers to butterflies giving up their “drams” (nectar); much like an alcoholic would give up their drinking addiction. But as to where the butterflies give up their drams, Dickinson absorbs more of her particular drink.

In the final verse, she claims that she will continue to drink until she attracts the attention of saints and seraphs. These two specific figures are found in one place: Heaven. This could be an implication of her Christian upbringing because angels and saints are thoroughly mentioned in that religion. However, the only way she’ll see these figures is when she is deceased. This concept flows into her final two lines beautifully. Since she is dead in the first pair of lines, she could easily be “the little Tippler leaning against the Sun” (Dickinson) because she has joined the seraphs and saints in Heaven, which is close to the Sun.

So readers, what do you think of this famous poem? Who are your favorite poets? Feel free to leave a comment and followers are always welcomed.