Orange Spring Devil Comments

This is a musicians' paradise, that is, one reached through the Art of Music and sustained by a totally committed performance of music. Orpheus, the son of Apollo, was already half divine and his musical exploits completed his apotheosis. So I'm assuming the events in this poem are in no way evil. In fact, the music-making, the ecstasy, the flights of wonder are all stages of man ascent of man and woman to a higher spiritual sphere. Which means the ORANGE SPRING DEVIL is really a necessary angel of the earth (Wallace Stevens) , and the speaker's cavorting with her is either symbolic or Edenic, that is, no sin can be attached to it. So I'm confident the poem celebrates sexuality in the same spirit as it celebrates music: it is a means to achieve a visionary experience of freedom, of a fulfillment which doesn't cloy with satiety (i.e. the wages of sin) but rather overcomes human isolation, egoism, and individual limitations. It may be more vision than reality, but it's a vision which enhances and uplifts the physical to a higher plane of being. Call it a Seventh Heaven, a Paradise Garden, a Homecoming we never expected. Amen to that.