Child in Red
Child in Red - meaning Summary
Anticipation in a Red Dress
The poem observes a young girl in a red dress whose small, tentative movements reveal an inner life already shaping her future. She alternates restraint and spontaneous motion—hesitating, inventing dances, then forgetting them—suggesting energy and possibility constrained by her body. The red dress becomes a lasting emblem: in later, risk-filled life it will recall a moment of free, fermenting vitality that once felt innately right.
Read Complete AnalysesSometimes she walks through the village in her little red dress all absorbed in restraining herself, and yet, despite herself, she seems to move according to the rhythm of her life to come. She runs a bit, hesitates, stops, half-turns around... and, all while dreaming, shakes her head for or against. Then she dances a few steps that she invents and forgets, no doubt finding out that life moves on too fast. It's not so much that she steps out of the small body enclosing her, but that all she carries in herself frolics and ferments. It's this dress that she'll remember later in a sweet surrender; when her whole life is full of risks, the little red dress will always seem right.
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