In Emily Dickinson's poem 1577, "The Bible is an antique Volume-," the speaker questions blind adherence to Biblical belief and ultimately proposes the adoption of a new faith. Through skeptical tone and understated form, the poem elegantly demeans the Bible's authority as the sole means by which to interpret human life. In its place, the speaker suggests that poetry, the written word in all its beauty, become the supreme system of belief.
[...] These lines, and the poem as a whole, are largely devoid of the intricate syntax common in Dickinson's other poems. The simplicity of “Satan the Brigadier” and “David the Troubadour” seems pointed; the speaker is reducing the Bible's complexity, its tangled narrative, to a mere list. Animate characters Satan, Judas, David are characterized by titles of notoriety “Brigadier, Defaulter, Troubadour.” Never mind the details of Judas' betrayal or David's multitudinous greatness; the speaker feels these titles convey the necessary information. [...]
[...] Those who do not believe in God and Christianity, those who have not “found the are in a sinful world. While this line seems blatantly sarcastic, it transitions nicely into the subsequent couplet: but the Tale a warbling Teller /All the Boys would come.” With a different bard, the speaker says, all these boys would be lost no more. After seemingly endless derision of the Bible, the speaker presents another faith with which the world can be understood. This belief system is exemplified by Orpheus, of whose sermon the speaker says “captivated” but not condemn.” The speaker respects, to some degree, the importance of faith, of a belief system. [...]
[...] From this discussion of Biblical subjects, the poem progresses into a quatrain on Biblical believers. The speaker's skeptical, even sarcastic, tone continues here with the use of quotation marks in the following lines: “Boys that ‘believe' are very lonesome /Other boys are ‘lost'.” In these lines, the speaker adopts the viewpoint of a contemporary believer. The initial line, about lonesome believers, can be interpreted in several ways. In one regard, the line harkens to the faithful loner, like Christ as shepherd or John the Baptist, who finds faith in the wilderness. [...]
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