Upon Julia's Clothes
Whenas in silks my Julia goes
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free,
Oh, how that glittering taketh me!
Fashion. How trivial it is and how dominant in our lives. At its heart lies the same intoxication with beauty that has driven poets mad for centuries. Yet so often the fashion world makes it charmless. We see too many blank faces, too many stiff poses where the clothes hang limp from lethargic limbs. We feel none of the carefree joy of the body. There are few models, indeed, like Herrick's Julia.
Herrick's first impression of Julia, "whenas" (meaning when) she enters the room in her "silks," is of a slinky, sheer delicious flow. After this initial glance, his mind appears to go blank. "Then, then" he repeats, suggesting his surprise, sudden transport, and racing excitement. He appears to be searching for the right word, the best phrase for this vision.
Then he finds it. His expression "the liquefaction of her clothes" should be pronounced with a note of triumph, as he captures in mere words the liquid, melting delight of her appearance. His use of such a conspicuously polysyllabic Latin-derived term seemingly raises the tone, as if we had been taken from a domestic interior and set down in a royal court, yet there is certain witty irony too.
Putting inverted commas around "liquefaction" might help us to hear this irony—hear a teasing euphemism that plays on our knowledge of what lies beneath. Building on this, we might also want to put a pause before "clothes," as if hinting at something less chaste.
This is a brilliant example of how in English the contrast of plain Anglo-Saxon words with abstract Latinisms can bring a dance of tone and nuance into a sentence that can turn the literal inside out.
Now it's time for Herrick's second look—often the moment of disillusionment. But, no, he is transfixed again. Her sweet motion has become a "brave vibration"—another Latinate term and one first coined in Herrick's lifetime.
Here its comic effect is more apparent to modern ears. She is all sway and bounce, it seems! "Each way free" she is beyond all petty limitations, passing into pure air or melody, like an angel.
"Brave" is used in the old sense of glorious or splendid—a sense we find in the historian W. H. Prescott's description of an Aztec army as "a brave sight for the eye to look on—such a beautiful array of warriors glistening with gold and jewels." (Today, "brave" in the context of fashion is often a sly put down, as in "What a brave choice to wear acid green!" but we can be sure that Julia has got away with her preferred look.)
Curiously, when we delve into its etymology, we discover that "brave" shares its Latin root barbarous with barbarian. Herrick therefore brings together the wildness of the sensual with the decorous rites of polite society.
In her "glittering" glory, like a pattern of light on crystal or stream, Julia exemplifies the traditional association of femininity with a kind of flowing tender sweetness, while reminding us too of its hypnotic power. She is simply the belle of the ball.
The concluding, breathless "oh," backed up with an exclamation point, brings Herrick's enthrallment to life, making it all too audible before Julia's beauty "taketh" him entirely, rendering him speechless—and abruptly ending the poem. The rest is silence. (Or put more vulgarly, gawking.)
The overall impression is one of intense glamor—a word not invented until the eighteenth century as an alteration of grammar, of all things, and denoting a spell. (People spoke of witches and wizards "casting a glamor" over someone.) Why this link with grammar? One theory is that book-learning was associated with Latin and thus a cause of suspicion by the uneducated, who heard the ancient tongue as nothing more than devilish babbling.
Herrick's Latinate tricks, therefore, perfectly fit his desire to express Julia's uncanny essence; and through the magic of poetry he plucks a radiant, oh so transient moment—perhaps as she walks through the door to dinner—and freeze-frames it forever.
Robert Herrick (1591-1674) was a 17th century English poet.
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