Emily Dickinson Museum Discussion Group, 18Sep2015, Dickinson and Emerson

Emily Dickinson and Emerson

This discussion was facilitated by David Garnes.

Although I'd been exposed to a bit of Dickinson in high school—and that was not necessarily the norm back in the late 1950s—and later in an American lit. class in college, I didn't become seriously interested in her until grad. school. I'd chosen to concentrate on that incredible burst of literary genius in 19^th century American literature. A Masters thesis was required, and I narrowed my choices down to Melville, Thoreau, Emerson, James, and Dickinson...and then Melville, Dickinson, and James. I think I chose Dickinson, finally, for three reasons: The first, obviously, because I was discovering the greatness of her poetry; the second, I think, because I liked the idea that though now considered part of what F. O. Matthiessen termed the American Renaissance, she was not, during her lifetime and for years after thus regarded. I was intrigued by the fact she was “discovered,” as it were, after her death. And, thirdly, I felt at the time that she was an easier subject to tackle than Melville or James, certainly in terms of  the sheer amount of written material I'd have to deal with.

            Of course, that last reason proved to be an illusion. Fifty years later, I'm still discovering poems I can't remember reading back then, and certainly there is as much being written about Dickinson today, perhaps more, than  any other 19^th century American writer.

            I also came to realize that there were relationships that Dickinson had with other writers that clearly influenced her. Not necessarily face-to-face relationships such as those experienced by Thoreau and Emerson, for example, or Whitman and Emerson, who corresponded and met at least twice....or Melville and Hawthorne...or, later, James and Wharton...but Dickinson had connections, nonetheless, and among American writers, probably no connection more significant than with Emerson.

As Lucy requested, I chose two letters to frame our session. One written by Dickinson at an early age, one written twenty-nine years later, sent to her toward the end of her life. Here’s the first one. In a very long letter to her friend Jane Humphrey, dated January 1850, so, she would have been nineteen, she says, among many, many other things, it’s a very long letter.

“I had a letter and a beautiful copy of Ralph Emerson’s poems from Newton the other day. I should love to read you them both. They are very pleasant to me” - and of course that’s Ben Newton who was a clerk in her father’s office, and in fact the person who introduced Emerson to her.

The second letter was written on January 19, 1879, by Thomas Niles, who by that time was co-publisher with Roberts Brothers, and he wrote to her,

“Dear Miss Dickinson, you are entitled to a copy of A Mask of Poets without thanks for you valuable contribution which for want of a known sponsor, Mr. Emerson has generally had to father. I wanted to send you a proof of your poem, which you doubtless perceive, was slightly changed in phraseology [general mirth]. Yours very truly, T Niles.”

I’m really struck by this letter, because it’s almost thirty years after - she probably knew about Emerson before she got the copy from Benjamin Newton, I would guess. But to think that near the end of her life she received a letter that the editor of this book that she had contributed Success is counted sweetest to would have given her this – this is really high praise. And there was more than one person who attributed it to Emerson. The whole point of that book, A Masque of Poets, was that the poets were not identified. We know now who they are, but you were supposed to guess when you read this book, who had written the poem, so it was a perfect one for Helen Hunt Jackson to tempt Dickinson with. But you can see that there were a couple of significant changes that they made.

Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne'er succeed

To comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need

Not one of all the purple Host

Who took the Flag to-day

Can tell the definition

So clear, of Victory

As he, defeated, dying

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph

Break, agonized and clear

[Here is the poem as Dickinson wrote it]

Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne'er succeed.

To comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host

Who took the Flag to-day

Can tell the definition,

So clear, of Victory

As he, defeated, dying,

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph

Burst agonized and clear!
                     - JJ67/Fr112/M69

[Hear this poem read aloud at https://youtu.be/MxGvlzuJCuo]

Anyway, let’s talk a little bit about Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Sage of Concord, as public a person as Dickinson was private, was in the words of Yale Scholar Harold Bloom, unparalleled in his influence on American culture. I first became aware of Dickinson’s connection to Emerson through George Whicher’s This was a Poe, a critical biography of Emily Dickinson, which, though published in 1938, remains in my view an essential book. And I think it is as beautifully written as any on Dickinson. I was struck again by his prose; he’s a really good writer. Whicher devotes an entire chapter on Emerson, and I’d like to read a little of what he says. This is mostly about did she or didn’t she meet Emerson, which is one of the tantalizing questions among many we have about Emily Dickinson. So he talks about how in 1855 Emerson came to Amherst to talk.

“The parlor where Emerson met the learned professors after the lecture has not been identified. It may have conceivably been at the home of his cousin, Mrs. Lucius Boltwood, but he spoke a Wednesday of commencement week, the day when Edward Dickinson invariably entertained the guests at the college at tea. In 1855 Emily was by no means a recluse, and there was nothing but her constitutional shyness to prevent her from hearing Emerson’s address. It is not unlikely that she bowed to the great man in her father’s parlor, but proof unfortunately is lacking. When Emerson next came to Amherst he was entertained by the Austin Dickinsons, and on this occasion Emily may have heard the living voice of the sage, whom she, above all people in Amherst, was best fitted to understand. This was in the fall of 1857, and he goes on to describe the talk. Then he quotes something that Susan Gilbert Dickinson wrote about when she met him. ‘He turned his gentle philosophic face toward me, waiting on my commonplaces with such expectant quiet gravity, and I became painfully conscious that I was I and he was he, the great Emerson’ “[General Laughter]. Then Whicher goes on to say, “In her young hostess’ elation and consciousness that she was she, Sue forgot to record the one thing that posterity would like to know, that is, whether Emily Dickinson attended the lecture and sat before the fire with Emerson afterward. Though Emily rarely appeared in public at this point, she had not entirely renounced the world. In the Autumn of that year for example she had been named one of the judges of the Rye and Indian bread at the cattle show. Could she have watched Emerson come and go only a house away and content herself only with what her family could report of him? After he was gone she wrote ‘It must have been as if he had come from where dreams are born.” And that was what I took for the title of this session – which sounds as though she had not shared her sister-in-law’s privilege. “It must have been like …” she says. But we cannot be positive. So that’s Whicher’s take on this.

            We could spend many sessions on Dickinson and Emerson, but let me just cite several examples from both poetry and prose, where the connections and similarities are evident. Here’s a stanza from the first part of the poem Merlin.

THY trivial harp will never please 

Or fill my craving ear; 

Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, 

Free, peremptory, clear. 

No jingling serenader’s art,

Nor tinkle of piano strings, 

Can make the wild blood start 

In its mystic springs. 

The kingly bard 

Must smite the chords rudely and hard,

As with hammer or with mace; 

Dave: Then later it reads,

Great is the art, 

Great be the manners, of the bard. 

He shall not his brain encumber 

With the coil of rhythm and number;

But, leaving rule and pale forethought, 

He shall aye climb 

For his rhyme. 

“Pass in, pass in,” the angels say, 

“Into the upper doors,

Nor count compartments of the floors, 

But mount to paradise 

By the stairway of surprise.”

   And that’s where Charles Anderson got the title for his, I think, really wonderful analysis of Dickinson’s poetry…. Here’s from Emerson’s essay, Circles.

“The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.” And of course I think Dickinson got her frequent use of the word circumference from Emerson. This is from the essay The Poet.

“The breadth of the problem is great, for the poet is representative. He stands among partial men for the complete man, and apprises us not of his wealth, but of the common-wealth. The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is. They receive of the soul as he also receives, but they more. Nature enhances her beauty, to the eye of loving men, from their belief that the poet is beholding her shows at the same time. He is isolated among his contemporaries, by truth and by his art, but with this consolation in his pursuits, that they will draw all men sooner or later. For all men live by truth, and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.” I mean that, really, is quite like Dickinson, I think. From the poem, Bacchus:

Bring me wine, but wine which never grew

In the belly of the grape,

Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through

Under the Andes to the Cape,

Suffer no savor of the earth to scape

Here’s from the beginning of another essay, Experience.

“Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight. But the Genius which, according to the old belief, stands at the door by which we enter, and gives us the lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strongly, and we cannot shake off the lethargy now at noonday. Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree..”

This statement doesn’t’ contradict, but is one of his stronger statements. In general I’d say he is more positive about people – becoming part of the all, and understanding. Here he is echoing what I think Dickinson really struggled with. From an 1866 journal entry: "For every seeing soul there may be two or three or four steps, according to the genius of each, but for every seeing soul there are two absorbing facts, --I and the abyss." And she uses abyss in one of the poems that we’re going to discuss. From the essay Self Reliance

            "I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions." So, that was our Emerson in five minutes. Now let’s read some poems.

            I had trouble deciding which ones to do, but I felt that we would be able to deal with maybe a few, and I was conscious while picking them of trying to find poems where we could see the connections between the poems and the passages that I just read. But I also feel that we should remember to consider the poems as Dickinson poems and not totally focus on Emerson’s possible influence. Let’s begin with one of her poems that I think is easier to understand on first reading or hearing, and that’s This World is not Conclusion.(Fr373/J501) Would somebody like to read this poem?

Robert: Do you want me to sing it or read it?
D Garnes: As you wish!
Robert Sings,

This World is not Conclusion.

A species stands beyond -

Invisible, as Music -

But Positive, as Sound

It beckons, and it baffles

Philosophy - don't know -

And through a Riddle, at the last -

Sagacity, must go -

To guess it, puzzles scholars -

To gain it, Men have borne

Contempt of Generations

And Crucifixion, shown -

Faith slips - and laughs, and rallies -

Blushes, if any see -

Plucks at a twig of Evidence -

And asks a Vane, the way.

Much Gesture, from the Pulpit -

Strong Hallelujahs roll -

Narcotics cannot still the Tooth

That nibbles at the soul
                   - J501/Fr373/M198

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AOFMrCwgEA ]

D Garnes: Thank you for singing that song. That was unique. [applause, appreciative laughter]. [variants strong/sure and to guess it/ to prove it are noted.] Here is one of her few poems where the first line ends in a period. There’s another one on the very same topic where the first line in the stanza ends with a period – I know that he exists.

Victoria: Well, I’m just curious right off when you say “the same topic,” what word are you using for the topic? I mean when you’re comparing it to this other poem and the first line of this other poem

Dave: Oh, well I’m talking about a poem that starts out with a seeming affirmation of the Deity, and then ends with a great deal of questioning. They’re very similar. I wanted to include this because both Dickinson and Emerson questioned traditional Christianity. Emerson stopped being a minister. He was a Unitarian minister but he ended up not preaching officially in a church, and instead most of his life – his public speaking – was in the form of lectures. He spoke all over the place. I think Emerson resolved some of his questions by becoming part of the Transcendental movement. I’m not so sure Dickinson ever did. She goes a little further, or takes a somewhat different path in that I think she doubted, but was never quite satisfied with her doubt.

[Poem is read a second time by Harrison.] 

Thank you, Harrison. It occurred to me as you were reading that we’re in the lounge of a Christian Congregationalist church. I’m sure if the minister at the time had ever heard this poem, it would have caused a big scandal. It’s a very daring poem.

Greg: In I know that he exists, we pretty much know that she’s talking about the God of the Christian world, but in this poem, it could be any matter of faith.

Dave: Yeah, it could be.

Daisy: It could be anything that we don’t know.

Dave. Yeah, it is, although she does zero in at the end with the pulpit. You’re right though, this world is not conclusion is a general philosophical statement I suppose. But then she chooses – when the poem takes a turn, and it takes a turn with “faith slips and laughs and rallies,” she does focus on “this is particularly what I’m talking about.”

Harrison: That quatrain is an incredibly extended metaphor. She’s starting with the journey of the believer, the person struggling with these issues, and it’s like walking through a thicket, and getting caught on your clothes and everything. You’re walking through the woods and you slip, then you laugh self-consciously and rally – you’re on your feet again, and then blush to see if anybody saw you, and that’s the way people who have faith try to justify their faith and to maintain it through obstacles and derision and so forth. It’s a very complicated metaphor.

Dave. Yeah, it is, and she packs a lot into four lines. “Asks a vane the way.” I always, when I read this on a tour, hope the people understand that vane v-a-n-e is a weather vane.

Harrison: There’s a pun there, too. The vane is representative of the church; the believer looks toward the church, for affirmation or whatever, and it may be in vain to do so.

Dave. So, faith is portrayed here as somewhat gullible and perhaps innocent, and a little awkward, weak, and needing direction.

Terry: I remember Faith is a fine invention.

Faith" is a fine invention

When Gentlemen can see—

But Microscopes are prudent

In an Emergency.

                         - J185/Fr202/M119, 137

[  To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/unlgDYAJLeI  ]

Daisy: I have a question. Did Dickinson ever define her concept of God? I mean, was it a God who is all-forgiving, and no matter how bad you are..or an all-powerful God who chooses not to stop children’s suffering? Is there any definition? What time frame is this?

Dave: Well, in Franklin it’s 373 and in Johnson it’s 501, so that’s a pretty significant difference, but it’s 1862. Does anyone want to respond to that question?

Greg: “They say that God is everywhere, but to me he always seemed something of a recluse” [laughter]

Davin G” Or what’s that other one? “They all pray to an eclipse they call their father …” Well, those are two views. On the other hand, she uses the word God in a lot in her poems.

Greg: “God is indeed a jealous God/ He cannot bear to see/ That we would rather not with him/ But with each other pray.

Victoria: I did a little research and began a list of words that Dickinson used for God, and I’ve come up with 37 so far.

Jay: I did read it initially as you’re suggesting, and then it occurred to me that this poem, like so many Dickinson poems is really about epistemology as it is about theology or even philosophy – in an Emersonian sense. She questions knowing, and she questions it over and over and over again, in a variety of settings, including knowing whether there is a God. This is a lot about how doubt creeps into anything that we take for certain.

Dave: Absolutely. Even in the poem I stepped from Plank to Plank, and it ends “This gave me that precarious Gate/ Some call experience.” Yes, experience may give you more knowledge, but what she’s saying is, it doesn’t really give answers. It brings up as many questions as it does answers, because she says “This gave me that precarious Gate/ Some call experience.” as if it’s a repeated experience, repeating her sense of doubt and questioning, and that’s one of the ways in which she differs from Emerson, finally. I think that her intellect – and I’m not saying that hers was superior to Emerson’s – but her particular intellect did not allow her to stop questioning.

Jay: She could never even become a Unitarian.

Dave: And even though so many of the people in her life were Unitarians. The significant people in her life – many of them were Unitarians. That’s got to be significant.

Daisy: But wasn’t Unitarianism a little different from what it is today?

Dave: Yes it was, and that’s why Ralph Waldo Emerson was too radical for the church where he was minister. Yes, you’re absolutely right. It was still, I think, Christian, and that’s why in some of the Unitarian Universalist churches today, you still see vestiges of Christianity in the interior of the church.

Jay: Especially in New England.

Dave: Yeah. I live in Connecticut, and in Hartford there’s a stained glass window  of Jesus on the cross.

Jay: You wouldn’t find that in Madison Wisconsin, in the Unitarian churches there.

Dave: No. And that church in Hartford is one of the older ones.

Terry: David, what did you mean when you said that you thought Emerson kind of came to a conclusion through transcendentalism.

Dave: I think what I meant was, I think that he ended up believing that the “Eye,” that the mingling of all things, which I think is kind of Eastern in many ways – he was influenced by that too – but the transcendental belief was, I think, that the One becomes part of the All… not to the point where you lose your Eye – your sense of seeing, but the questioning decreases in importance. It’s not such an issue. You blend. You resolve your conflict by blending into the One and All. That’s a phrase he uses.

Harrison: You transcend.

Dave: You transcend. Right. I’ve read from several critics, usually the older critics, that is, things that were written in earlier years, that they do call her a transcendentalist, but I don’t feel that she ever really quite got there. I think she took a different path, but  …

Becky: Did Higginson and Emerson know each other?

Dave: Yes, they did. Of course Higginson was a Unitarian minister as well. Yeah, Higginson was very well connected. He was one of those old Boston families. And Emerson certainly would have been in the Cambridge-Boston area a lot.

Greg: They were both in the Radical club, a discussion group that met in Boston regularly.

Steve: I was going to add that Emerson, in The Poet, is distinctly Trinitarian. “For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear, under different names, in every system of thought, whether they be called cause, operation, and effect; or, more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or, theologically, the Father, the Spirit, and the Son; but which we will call here, the Knower, the Doer, and the Sayer.” And the poet is the Sayer. The one that looks on phenomena and identifies them.

Dave: Yeah, so he observes that Trinitarian concept, but …

Greg: The Unitarians believed that Jesus was somehow the Son of God, but they denied his divinity.

Dave: Correct. That was the eventual split with Unitarianism from Protestantism and the Calvinist tradition. Even today. I go to a Unitarian church – well, I call it a church, but most of the others would say “society” – in Manchester, Connecticut, and most of us, when we’re asked, “Well, isn’t this a Christian religion?” well, very much from Christian origins, but the big difference is that Jesus is not seen as a supernatural being, but as a great teacher and philosopher. That’s the one sentence that you could say, I think, that differentiates them. Our minister refers to the bible and Jesus all the time, but in that context.

Greg: Yes, the early Transcendentalists even believed in miracles – that the miracles were a fact.

Dave: Yeah. When Dickinson uses the word miracle, as she does in one of the poems that we’re going to read, she’s saying something that I can’t explain. Whether she acknowledges that they exist, she’s come to the conclusion that she cannot know how, where a miracle comes from.

Jay: It used to be that Unitarians debated whether they were Christians. Now, and this is more true the further west you go, they debate whether they’re religious. Those are very different kinds of debates, but they’re real.

Dave: Yes, and there’s always been a split among the Unitarians between the humanistic side on the one side and the spiritual on the other. On the other hand there is a rise in the spiritual side, too, but that may be more in the Eastern societies.

Victoria: According to Franklin this poem was written around 1862, and Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859. So what I remember is that Harrison lead a group some years ago on Dickinson and evolution, and this was one of the standout poems; This World is not Conclusion is about evolution and the opposition of the church to it. So when I read this poem, there’s that, so I’m wondering where did Emerson fit into that debate? And what is it did he say?

Dave: I’m not sure. I think he would have been on the side of it because it fits right into his sense that we’re all one.

Bruce: As a long-time writing teacher, one thing that struck me about this is that … it’s sort of a failed composition.[much laughter]. I mean, it has the structure of a school essay, it’s got a very strong thesis in the first quatrain, but then, instead of accumulating evidence to support the thesis, but the evidence keeps unravelling [more laughter]. So, you start off with a very strong claim, then end up with just questions, nibbling at the soul.

Dave: And I’m sure if anyone had said that, she’d say IT’S IRONY! IT’S IRONY! [laughter]

Casey: When I see this poem, I go to one that I use when guiding , Those dying then knew where they went/ They went to God’s right Hand/That Hand is amputated now, and God cannot be found. It’s sharp and strong, and I’m wondering if, as she got older, she got braver and braver.

Dave: Well, that’s a good point. And it argues not against, but it makes me feel that she did come to some conclusion, but maybe it means the hand is amputated in the sense of my being able to reach out and find it. It’s a stronger statement than I would have imagined.

Lucy: She uses fewer words and she comes to her point so quickly. I see the point of this poem as different. It’s more illustrative of desperateness; it crescendos in desperateness by the end. It makes me think of her time at Mount Holyoke, especially where she has some of these lighter descriptors, where she’s kind of laughing at herself. She’s that time of her life when she’s more satirical, and saying “Well, I don’t have to fit in,” but behind that there’s this desperateness.

Dave: In that interpretation the narrator is kind of unravelling. I think there’s never one correct interpretation. I want to say, that last line, it’s so brilliant ….  how ….. where did she come up with that? [laughter] Now you may be interested to know that the word she had originally for tooth was mouse. Narcotics cannot still the mouse that nibbles at the soul, Mouse fits perfectly with nibbling, but tooth goes so well with narcotics. We take narcotics for toothache. Tooth is a much stronger word

Harrison: You still have the image of the mouse nibbling, thought, even without the word mouse.

Dave: Mouse still leaves a feeling of an ongoing nibbling, but narcotics and tooth are very strong words.

Harrison: Also, tooth brings in a quasi-pun on truth, which is what this poem is all about.

Lucy” The disembodied tooth makes me think of the disembodied eye of Emerson.

Jay: What I find most congenial, because I’m a sociologist of religion, is a reading of her poetry where she’s talking not about herself and her own beliefs, but about others.

Dave: Yes, and you bring up a very interesting point, because, when we read a poet, or a novelist, or a playwright – I’m talking about fiction in those three genres – we tend to think when we’re reading that “Oh, this is Dickinson speaking.” You have to be careful about that, because that’s not always the case. It’s especially true in poetry that you tend to think that the poet is expressing her own feelings. Let’s go on to The Brain is wider than the Sky. This is Franklin 598 or Johnson 632. This is a closer assigning of chronology. [Bruce reads]

The Brain -- is wider than the Sky --

For -- put them side by side --

The one the other will contain

With ease -- and You -- beside --

The Brain is deeper than the sea --

For -- hold them -- Blue to Blue --

The one the other will absorb --

As Sponges -- Buckets -- do --

The Brain is just the weight of God --

For -- Heft them -- Pound for Pound --

And they will differ -- if they do --

As Syllable from Sound –
                         - J632/Fr598/M273

[  To hear this poem read aloud, go to Vhttps://youtu.be/LHwYa33Ofk4  ]

Dave: Who has some thoughts about this one? …. Well, let me throw out a question. Is she minimizing God, or somewhat diminishing God in this poem, would you say?

Daisy: I think she’s saying they’re equal. God and thought.

Dave: Yeah, because she’s saying “if they do,” which I think is the clue, that she’s equalizing them.

Harrison: There’s a kind of procession here. The first stanza expresses pretty much a commonplace thought – the brain is big enough to hold the world. That’s not an original thought. The second stanza develops the same idea metaphorically with the sponge. The third stanza is telling you to take God on the one hand and the brain on the other and weigh them. Alright, so which one’s the syllable and which one’s the sound?

Dave: Alright. Let’s talk about that. The reason that I asked that question is because I don’t think she’s trying to minimize something supernatural that we can’t really know about, but I think rather to enhance the concept of the human and the importance of the brain.

Member 2: What I got out of this was that she’s speaking as a scientist. We’re carrying around this limitless world in our head, which is an amazing concept. It’s right in here within us.

Dave: And always pay attention to the first line in a Dickinson poem. She hits you quite often in the first line, and you’re captured because it’s so strong, and chances are she will follow through, even if she takes a turn in the poem, as in This World is not conclusion.

Julie: She includes in her poems far-distant places that she’d never been to. She incorporates places that are exotic and well-known that she has no intention of visiting because she knows about because she has that power of imagination. So in that way her brain is limitless in what it can think about and incorporate in a very original way in her poems.

Dave: Yes, I agree. The experience that she talked about in the first poem that we discussed is through her imagination, not that of a world traveler.

Lucy: God works in mysterious ways, and the way the brain works is still mysterious, a hundred years later. We still don’t truly know how it does what it does, but it’s working and it’s active and it’s making things happen unconsciously. So, the brain is the only other analogous thing that works in unforeseen ways. It’s always there.

Steve: The sound is a universal something that’s created by God – the universe, and syllable is an interpretation in the brain.

Bruce: Along the same lines, if you follow the logic of the poem, God is equivalent syntactically to Sky and Sea, and they’re all the imponderables of the natural world. It follows again from the logic of the poem that sound corresponds with God and syllable with the brain. So syllable and sound are synonymous in some ways, but syllable carries with it language and the way that the world gives meaning to natural phenomena. So they do differ, I think, in a very important way,

Dave: Yes, sound is universal in that, presumably, if you hear a sound you’re all hearing basically the same sound, but syllables can be different depending on whoever’s uttering the syllable. Sound is vaster, but also you could possibly say that the brain is interpreting the sound.

Dave: Next let’s do what I think is a rather dark poem, not that there’s a paucity of dark poems in Dickinson’s output. This is Franklin 515 and Johnson 599

There is a pain – so utter -

It swallows substance up -

Then covers the Abyss with Trance -

So Memory can step

Around – across – upon it -

As one within a Swoon

Goes safely – where an open eye -

Would drop Him – Bone by Bone
                           - J599/Fr515/M252

[  To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/NqiRGJwE4G0  ]

Dave: I picked this one because of the word abyss. It’s a word that Emerson uses alot, but I think he uses it in a somewhat different way, in the end, from the way that Dickinson is using it here, where it is definitely a frightening thing.

Jay: As with so many of her poems, what seems obvious will prove not to be. You mentioned earlier that the first line is always critical and needs to be emphasized. I would say that the first stanza can be very misleading. I’d have to say it’s about death, but it’s a painful way of talking about death, which is what makes it so dark.

Dave: Yeah. There’s no turn in this poem, so that the first stanza you have to reinterpret. It is consistent right from the beginning. The tone never changes. So, what is the abyss? Here’s the definition from her Webster’s.

A-BYSS', n. [Gr. αβυσσος, bottomless, from α privative and, βυσσος, bottom, Ion. for βυθος, See Bottom.]

1.      A bottomless gulf; used also for a deep mass of waters, supposed to have encompassed the earth before the flood. Darkness was upon the face of the deep, [or abyss, as it is in the Septuagint.] Gen. i. 2. The word is also used for an immense cavern or cave in the earth in which God is supposed to have collected all the waters on the third day of the creation. It is used also for hell, Erebus. That which is immeasurable; that in which any thing is lost. Thy throne is darkness, in the abyss of light. – Milton. The abyss of time. – Dryden.

2.      In antiquity, the temple of Proserpine, so called from its immense treasures it was supposed to contain.

3.      In heraldry, the center of an escutcheon. He bears azure, a fleur de lis, in abyss.

Let me read you a few ways in which Emerson used this word, because it’s a strong word, and it has a darker meaning in our modern definition of it. “But the treasures which Nature spent itself to amass,—the secular, refined, composite anatomy of man, which all strata go to form, which the prior races, from infusory and saurian, existed to ripen; the surrounding plastic natures; the earth with its foods; the intellectual, temperamenting air; the sea with its invitations; the heaven deep with worlds; and the answering brain and nervous structure replying to these; the eye that looketh into the deeps, which again look back to the eye, abyss to abyss;—these, not like a glass bead, or the coins or carpets, are given immeasurably to all. “

That’s a rather tempered use of the word abyss, I would say,. “A thousand negatives the oracle utters on all sides, but the sacred, the affirmative it hides in the deepest abyss.” “Under all this running sea of circumstance lies the aboriginal abyss of real being.” He uses it also in other ways that are darker, but it’s interesting that he has various interpretations of it. Dickinson would have been familiar not only with the 1847 edition of the poems which was given to her by Benjamin Newton, but his essays as well. So how is the narrator in this poem describing the way that it is dealt with.

Daisy: Trance. Just blank it out.

Dave: Yes, and “bone by bone” is where death comes in. The body is deteriorating

Member 2: What struck me was that abyss can be about depression. It can be a bottomless pit, it can be all kinds of things.

Dave: And what are the trances that help depression these days? Medications. Narcotics. Drugs. In other words, there’s a veil.

Member 1: She’s always interested in knowledge and knowing, and here I think she’s recognizing that there’s a time to stop questioning and knowing. You have to just blank things out to recover.

Dave: Exactly. It reminds me of the poem I felt a Funeral in my Brain, that ends, “I finished knowing – then –.“ It was horrible, that descent, and you don’t want to know what the narrator knows.

Bruce: I was thinking also of After great Pain/ A formal feeling comes. “First chill, then stupor/ Then the letting go.”

Dave: Yeah. Isn’t “Then the letting go such an incredible phrase for a nineteenth century poet to have used? That’s so modern. Where did she come up with these terse statements? Like in that very short poem, Presentiment is that long Shadow on the Lawn/Indicative that Suns go down. So terse. This is one of Dickinson’s realizations that I think casts a darkness on what is possible to know, but perhaps better not to know or surmise.

Victoria: She doesn’t say that you can turn to God or Faith or any of those Christian …

Dave: No. In poem number 508, there’s a poem with the line “A Pit, but heaven over it.” The pit is not open to much interpretation. A pit is not a very happy place to find yourself.

Victoria: But you have Heaven over it

Dave: Yeah, you do, but are you in heaven? OK, next, let’s do Behind me dips Eternitly.

Behind Me—dips Eternity—

Before Me—Immortality—

Myself—the Term between—

Death but the Drift of Eastern Gray,

Dissolving into Dawn away,

Before the West begin—

’Tis Kingdoms—afterward—they say—

In perfect—pauseless Monarchy—

Whose Prince—is Son of None—

Himself—His Dateless Dynasty—

Himself—Himself diversify—

In Duplicate divine—

’Tis Miracle before Me—then—

’Tis Miracle behind—between—

A Crescent in the Sea—

With Midnight to the North of Her—

And Midnight to the South of Her—

And Maelstrom—in the Sky—
                        - J721/Fr743/M373

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYO2tF6_m5I  ]

Dave: I think this is the most difficult poem of those I picked. The last line in this poem is kind of a downer. [laughter] If you want to put it that way. It is a somber ending to the poem. On the other hand, if you want to begin Behind me dips Eternity/ Before me Immortality, it’s very grand. Lofty. It’s majestic. Myself the term between. Notice that the narrator is not in either place.

Harrison: One thing it’s about is that life is short, temporary.

Dave: As opposed to eternity and immortality. The term between is short.

Lucy: I picture “Behind me dips eternity” as the setting sun, and “Before me immortality” is the rising sun.

Dave: Yeah. You’re experiencing both in your short term.

Steve: Why then is death but the drift of eastern gray?

Daisy: As the sun goes from east to west, the east become gray.

Dave: I just saw it as the passage of time as the sun goes from east to west. What about the second stanza? What about the “they say?” A very pedestrian two words, but very significant I think, very powerful. Who is “they?” Not the narrator. That collective “they” out there, either preaching or stating as fact. Something that the narrator is not necessarily agreeing with; I mean “they say … “

Member 1: The kingdom of Heaven

Dave: Yeah. And afterwards, after the term between, I think. What about “whose prince is son of none?” That’s pretty direct. This poem is 743 in Franklin and 721 in Johnson; it’s sort of in the middle there, but that’s still in the early 1860’s, so it’s during that period of great productivity. Clearly a Dickinson at full force, so to speak.

Member 1: It almost seems to me – very personal – that that last stanza almost shouldn’t be there.

Dave: You’re right in that the poem does go from the particular in the first stanza to the general in the second and then reverts back to the me. It’s almost like it’s put in there to say, “and oh, by the way.”

Jay: It closes with a “Her.”

Dave: But nevertheless, she’s still an individual. She’s gone from a personal “me” to a “her,” but it’s still more than the kingdoms that she talks about in the second stanza, where there’s no reference to a human being.

Lucy: Very cutting against this idea of the prince – “whose prince is son of none.” “Dateless dynasty,” “Duplicate divine.” He’s false, almost.

Dave: This is a poem, had it been seen publically – you can see why apart from reasons of shyness or timidity she didn’t want to publish – these are really very daring poems.

Harrison: She’s mocking Christianity.

Dave: Yeah, she is. What about the last stanza? Miracle? Can miracles be explained without faith? How is she using “Miracle before me then?”

Lucy: I think the “then” is really important, because she’s just talked about, depending on how you read it, she’s using the church’s terminology to say that the beauty and rhythm of life just continues on.

Dave: I think she’s saying that at the very least this thing is a miracle that I can’t understand. Just as in Christianity you’re not really meant to intellectually understand, but rather accept a miracle.

Burleigh: So you think “a crescent in the sea” might be the parting of the sea.

Dave: Well, that could be. I saw the crescent as the moon, and the tide, but yes, you’re right, why not?

Jay: Well surely the most important word in that stanza is maelstrom, because that brings it all back despite all your talk about miracles.

Dave: Right. This narrator is saying, “I don’t care if it’ miracle or not, all I’m aware of is this maelstrom in the sky.”

Dave: Let’s do Of Bronze and Blaze, which I think is a great poem.

Of Bronze — and Blaze —

The North — Tonight —

So adequate — it forms —

So preconcerted with itself —

So distant — to alarms —

An Unconcern so sovereign

To Universe, or me —

Infects my simple spirit

With Taints of Majesty —

Till I take vaster attitudes —

And strut upon my stem —

Disdaining Men, and Oxygen,

For Arrogance of them —

My Splendors, are Menagerie —

But their Competeless Show

Will entertain the Centuries

When I, am long ago,

An Island in dishonored Grass —

Whom none but Beetles — know.
                             - J290/Fr319/M152

[To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/OCTe2r-D3Sw  ]

Dave: So what’s going on in this poem?

Greg: I’d say that in those lines “An Unconcern so sovereign/ To Universe, or me —“ she couldn’t get any further away from Emerson and the Transcendentalists.

Dave: Now this was Franklin 319 and Johnson 290, so, no, I agree with you. It’s not the one in all, is it? What else about this poem?

Victoria: I think of this poem as about her witnessing the aurora borealis.

Dave: Yeah. Oh Yeah. It’s generally thought to be that it’s about the northern lights. She takes off from that, though. I think that it’s the setting, then her commentary is what’s significant. And she sees that, I think, as the unknowingness of the vastness of the universe, and as opposed to the poet’s feeble attempts which are “menagerie.” Helen Vendler points out that it’s easy to interpret “their competeless show” as referring to my splendors, but the “their” refers back to the first stanze, to the northern lights. Isn’t that a beautiful first line, too? What do we make of dishonored grass?

Greg: A grave is supposed to be hallowed ground, but by the time she’s talking about dogs will be walking over it and lifting their hind legs on it ….

Dave: I’d like to end with a few quotes, the first from Keller’s book, The only Kangaroo among the Beauty.

“I am suggesting that it was not Emerson’s ideas, certainly not his ideology, that Emily Dickinson experienced, so much as it was Emerson as push, as stimulus, as prophet-motivator, as prime mover, as provocateur—his intended service to any devotee. Even as she answers him, she is, thanks to Emerson, standing up to do so. He made her even without her having to know him very well. . . .”

And I tend to agree with that. And then I’ll leave you with these intriguing words that appeared in the September 7 issue of the New Yorker by Dan Chiasson.

Whitman was a fact of American life from that moment forward. It took a little longer for an equally important disciple to surface: Emily Dickinson, who treasured an edition of Emerson’s poems given to her by an admirer, and whose brother and sister-in-law, Austin and Susan Dickinson, had hosted Emerson many times at their handsome house, the Evergreens, just across the field from her home. Of course, Dickinson’s poems sound nothing like Emerson’s. He provided, for the wild synaptic activity of his protégés, the framework. He was their server. If Emerson’s poems had been just a little better than they were, we might not have American literature as we know it. Our greatest writers, seeing their own visions usurped, might have been content to remain his readers.