The Emily Dickinson Reading Circle 11Sep2015

The Emily Dickinson Reading Circle began the new season with one of our members, a composer, leading the discussion and explaining how she approached three Dickinson poems to music. The three poems were chosen for the theme of recollecting and are givens below with some ancillary information. A few of the composer's remarks follow.

Dickinson’s Recollection Poems (notes and details from the Franklin Variorum edition)
Note: All of the manuscripts are in the Amherst College archives and therefore accessible on their
website. The “A” numbers indicate their location. You can see (and download) the manuscript images for yourself by going to https://acdc.amherst.edu/browse/collection/ed

F9/J33
Two fair copies, variant, about 1858 and 1859. About summer 1858 ED transcribed the poem onto a sheet
(A 82-7/8) in Fascicle 1. 

A
Oh if remembering were forgetting -
Then I remember not!
And if forgetting - recollecting -
How near I had forgot!
And if to miss - were merry -
And to mourn were gay,
How very blithe the maiden
Who gathered these today!
                         - M40

Division 4 forgot! || [indicates page break]

Although the pencil copy (A 647) prepared for Samuel Bowles in the summer of 1859 (signed “Emilie”) is variant, ED did not add the changes to the fascicle—her record copy and probably source for the copy to Bowles.

B 
If recollecting were forgetting,
Then I remember not,
And if forgetting, recollecting,
How near I had forgot,
And if to miss were merry,
And to mourn were gay,
How very blithe the fingers
That gathered this, today!
                   - J33/Fr9

[  To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/s2oSNvwdneU  ]

Variants occur in three lines:
1 Oh if remembering] If recollecting 7 maiden] fingers
8 Who gathered these] That gathered this

F1080/J898 How happy I was
About 1865, in Set 6b (A 92-15/16)

A
How happy I was if
I could forget
To remember how sad
I am
Would be an easy
adversity
But the recollecting
of Bloom
Keeps making November
difficult
Till I who was almost
bold
Lose my way like a
little Child
And perish of the cold.
                      - J898/Fr1080/M484

[  To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/60bNM6cX7bM  ]

About 1875, in pencil on a letter to Lavinia Dickinson from Mrs. N. E. Harrison, dressmaker for Lavinia and ED (A 244). On the same piece of paper is a later draft of the poem “An antiquated grace.”

[Alternates are given to the side:]

I’d rather recollect a
Setting
Than own a rising
Sun
Though one is beau -
tiful forgetting                                  forgetting] Secession
And true the other one.                     true] real / bland the other] the newer / [the new]est
                                                          And best /fine / fair the newest one -
Because in going is
a Drama
Staying cannot confer -
To die divinely
once a twilight -
Than wane is easier -
              - J1349/Fr1366/M589

[  To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/QrgFY4DHrOA  ]

Alice: I need to have a conception of the whole work clear in my own head before I start putting it down on paper, because putting it down on paper is like glue, or something, because you're stuck. You've started something and then you have to go on from that point, so you hold off as long as possible.

Unknown 1:The same with writing! (General laughter)

Alice:
Yeah.
So and then this second one. (reads first part of How happy I was) so the only way I could get to it - I just love breaking it up into little phrases - So you start out as if you're just transparently HAPPY! Oh, how happy I was, that was a time ago. Like, how happy I was if I could forget. Oh, if I could just forget –we’re really not worried about what it is at this point in our reading, but how happy I was if I could just forget, and I guess I’m forgetting now. If I could forget to remember – she’s doing these 63.little puzzles … she’s putting how happy I was on the opposite side of how sad I am, and in between is this double-negative kind of thing again. And then you have to go back and add all of these pieces together and they finally make sense. In the song, I did exactly that, the first phrase is just How happy I was. So you just keep adding on little phrases like that, and all of that is a sentence that ends in it would be an easy adversity. So you have all of these puzzles and they turn out to be a complete sentence. I love easy adversity (general laughter), and I put a period there in my own thinking. But the recollecting of Bloom begins a new sentence.

If recollecting were forgetting

Then I remember not.

And if forgetting, recollecting,

How near I had forgot.

And if to miss, were merry,

And to mourn, were gay,

How very blithe the fingers

That gathered this, Today!

Alice:

How very blithe the fingers/ that carried this today. So she’s remembering something, very strong. You have to ream your way down through the poem to see what she’s really getting at through all the negative.

So let me go through these three poems because I had to select them and get them in order in my own mind before I could begin writing because I need to have a clear conception of the whole work before I ever begin putting something down on paper.

Unknown 1:
The same with writing! (General laughter)

Alice:
Yeah.
So and then this second one:

How happy I was if I could forget

To remember how sad I am

Would be an easy adversity

But the recollecting of Bloom

Keeps making November difficult

Till I who was almost bold

Lose my way like a little Child
And perish of the cold.

So the only way I could get to it - I just love breaking it up into little phrases - So you start out as if you're just transparently HAPPY! Oh, how happy I was, that was a time ago. Like, how happy I was if I could forget. Oh, if I could just forget –we’re really not worried about what it is at this point in our reading, but how happy I was if I could just forget, and I guess I’m forgetting now. If I could forget to remember – she’s doing these little puzzles … she’s putting how happy I was on the opposite side of how sad I am, and in between is this double-negative kind of thing again. And then you have to go back and add all of these pieces together and they finally make sense. In the song, I did exactly that, the first phrase is just How happy I was. So you just keep adding on little phrases like that, and all of that is a sentence that end in it would be an easy adversity. So you have all of these puzzles and they turn out to be a complete sentence. I love easy adversity (general laughter), and I put a period there in my own thinking. But the recollecting of Bloom we’re on another thought obviously, completely, and we do have a capital B for But

So let me go through these three poems because I had to select them and get them in order in my own mind before I could begin writing because I need to have a clear conception of the whole work before I ever begin putting something down on paper. But the recollecting of Bloom/ Keeps making November difficult, I love that. But what I also love here is that we’re in a very, very simple English ballad meter, 8-6-8-6 syllable count  [ not exactly ], and if you can view the line breaks the way they are here, just look exactly like an Isaac Watts hymn text. You could sing it to any number of hymn tunes, except that she’s got this sentence that uses the first three lines, and then the second sentence uses line four of the first verse and line one of the second verse, so she’s completely working against traditional form, which is just hammered in to English ballads and hymn texts. So, she’s playing the same kind of games with the forms as she is with the words, continually doing what you don’t expect. Then you get the next three lines, which take on fully the November reference here, Till I who was almost bold, and you wonder here what she was getting at with that memory, but she was almost able to forget the things that were hampering her. Losing my way like a little Child And perishing in the cold, so November moving on into full winter. She started with “How happy,” and she gets all the way down into the perishing in the cold, just in these little eight lines. Astonishing, and then that lovely poignancy as a little child. All her grow-up, thinking with words, playing these games, is making the words bounce, like you’re juggling with them. They all go away and I’m just overshadowed because November is so difficult.

            So I let the piano, at the very end of that song, reiterate the How happy theme, so you get the feeling of coming out of that [inaudible]. So, I’m not only working with Emily’s basic structure underneath, but my own structure that the music makes … layer on layer.

            And then the third poem, again, she leaves out so much of the grammar and the explanation, you have to read it as if you were reading a puzzle.

I’d rather recollect a setting
Than own a rising sun
Though one is beautiful forgetting—
And true the other one.

Because in going is a Drama
Staying cannot confer
To die divinely once a Twilight—
Than wane is easier—

I’d rather recollect a setting. Well, the first line makes no sense at all – a setting of what? [laughter] Oh! Than own a rising sun. Finally we get it. And which one is beautiful forgetting?

Margaret F: I think the variants help in that respect. She was very uncomfortable with the word true, so she chose real and bland. And then if you look, she’s got bent, bind, and fair, as well as real and bland. So, that’s five alternates for true. She must have recognized that true refers to both, so she was trying to capture the distinction she was trying to make. So for me, the setting of the sun was the beautiful forgetting. The other is the newest one, and it’s coming up, and it’s staying with you, and I think that’s confirmed by the second stanza.

Alice: I think, if I understand what you’re saying, I almost think the opposite. Because in going is a Drama, we’re stepping right into the outer world. To die divinely; it sounds like Sarah Bernhardt. [laughter] really over the top. Than wane is easier. Well, there’s where she left out half because there’s the sun and there’s the moon. The moon wanes, the sun doesn’t wane. It sets but it doesn’t wane.

Margaret: Oh thank you. That puzzled me because it didn’t work with my reading.

Alice: She’s saying that It’s much easier to die divinely than to wane, to just fade away, you know. I had fun with that in my setting, than wa-a-a-a-a-nn [Alice draws out the sound allowing it to fade into silence]. …. To die divinely is such an un-Emily-like phrase. She’s pretending to be somebody else so she says that.

Margaret F: I’ve been working a lot on this right now, metaphor, where you often shift by using a different meaning of a word, in the same kind of context, and here of course To die divinely can mean the Sarah Bernhardt stuff, but it can also mean to God. So, to die was to Go to God’s presence, which of course she was struggling with all her life. I like the poet’s play on that word.

Alice: Well it’s almost as if recollecting and forgetting were two sides of the same coin and she just flips the coin and says “Well, I wonder which one’s going to come up this time. [laughter].

Margaret F: Well, they are, because when I was looking at the first poem, I suddenly realized that again there’s something really beautiful going on here. In her first copy, it’s Oh if remembering were forgetting, then I remember not and she changes it to If recollecting were forgetting. In that change I suddenly realized that the etymology of recollect is literally to gather, to collect. So what are you collecting? You’re collecting what you’d forgotten because remembering is remembering something that isn’t there; you have to remember it, right? If it’s there, you’re not remembering, you’re knowing. And remembering implies absence. You say I remember something in my childhood, and your childhood is absent, and I’m having to bring that to my present memory, because I’m not always there in my childhood. So recollect has that wonderful idea of collecting the memories that have been forgotten, because they have to be recollected. They have to be brought back into your mind, so they are two sides of the same coin.

Alice: I can’t make that much of a distinction between remember and recollect because re-member means putting a body back together.

Margaret M. One of the poignant things about Because in going is a Drama is that she didn’t go. She’s a woman that stayed home. [laughter]

Margaret F. Well perhaps she didn’t like drama. [more laughter]. And she probably had also thought of Shakespeare, the tragedies, where going is death.

Unknown 2: Going back to recollecting and remember – I like recollecting better because of the sound.

Margaret F, I wanted to comment, too, that in fascicle 1, which is where this poem is, you mentioned right at the beginning Alice, her love of playing with opposites, and she has another poem in the same fascicle, the first line is To lose if one can find again/ To miss if one shall meet.  Do you want to have a look at that one? Which one is that?

Unknown 1. 30, 22 in Johnson.

Margaret F. I think Greg should read it.

Greg: This is one where Franklin split the poem and Johnson kept it as one. Franklin has the last two lines as a separate poem.

Alice: All these my banners be is the first line. (In Johnson).

Margaret F. Dickinson used lines to separate her poems, and if you look at that first fascicle, she doesn’t have a line until the bottom of the third page, so for me that whole thing is a canto; it’s a procession. Even Johnson doesn’t put the three pages together, but he puts more together than Franklin does. I just find Franklin completely – what’s the word – tread. He has a hard tread. [laughter]. He’s heavy-footed about poetry.

Greg:

All these my banners be.

I sow my pageantry

In May—

It rises train by train—

Then sleeps in state again—

My chancel—all the plain

 Today.

To lose—if one can find again—

To miss—if one shall meet—

The Burglar cannot rob—then—

The Broker cannot cheat.

So build the hillocks gaily

Thou little spade of mine

Leaving nooks for Daisy

And for Columbine—

You and I the secret

Of the Crocus know—

Let us chant it softly—

"There is no more snow!"

To him who keeps an Orchis' heart—

The swamps are pink with June.
                         -J22/Fr29/M35

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

That’s like a coda

Alice: But I want to ask why we don’t pronounce again to rhyme with plane and train. Just a question.

Greg: (pause) I don’t need it in my ear. I just need the n, the consonant rhyme.

Margaret F: Well, Northern English is again (rhymes with plane). I have both in my mixed dialect. Again (agen) is more southern. It’s more standard. Or perhaps it’s my Americanization. John McCarthy, who is the phonetics expert at Umass – he’s now the dean – he came here once for lunch with his wife, this woman who wanted Julie Andrews to speak Dickinson’s poems in her own dialect, in Dickinson’s dialect, and of course she had no idea what the dialect was like. So John came, and he said an interesting thing. I apologized because we were reading poems and I had this English accent, and he said that actually Emily Dickinson’s accent would have been closer to yours than to current American. And don’t forget, Dickinson abandoned rhyme almost immediately, right?

Unknown: This is rife with rhyme. [general agreement]

Second Unknown: So was that statement. [laughter]

Greg: Well, wait a minute, she has

To lose—if one can find again—

To miss—if one shall meet—

The Burglar cannot rob—then—

Alice: So, she goes with both.

Margaret O. Well I’ve been reading correspondence from the revolutionary war, and if they’re writing anything like what they spoke … we gotta hope that Emily Dickinson didn’t talk like that [laughter]. because it was awful.

Margaret F. Well, you have to remember that the dialect line is the Connecticut River, and Amherst is East of the Connecticut. You have Northampton in the west. The people who grow up in Northampton have a slightly different dialect than the people who grow up in Amherst. I hit that, because I went to secretarial school in Northampton – I was somewhat thinking I’d better get some skills – and I just couldn’t get over it, because my shorthand instructor, who of course was dictating, and she had a Northampton accent, and she’d say Novemberrr, Decemberrr.

Unknown 3: Where Boston would be Decembuh.

Margaret F. That r-less factor of the east is not west of the Connecticut. Can we go back for a minute to the first poem? I found it very interesting, too, that after she played with all this recollecting and forgetting, she then puts in some hypotheticals. Well, she’s got if recollecting, and we forget the if at the beginning, or at least I do, because I think “Oh! Recollecting, forgetting, and you forget the if/then; and she’s got If to miss were merry, so she’s got that same structure, right? If to miss were merry is a counter-factual, isn’t it? To miss isn’t merry, so she’s doing the same thing. What is she actually doing in this poem? That’s my question. She’s sending that to Bowles, and she’s often criticizing Bowles’ not writing, and things like that, or saying how much she missed him, you know, when he didn’t come, or if she refused to see him. So I’m just wondering if she sent flowers to Bowles, and often of course her poems are flower poems, too.

Greg: There’s another one … If she had been the Mistletoe/ And I had been the Rose. That went to Bowles – to both of them.

Margaret: Yes, that’s right. And then there’s the one about If it had no Pencil. Sent with a short stub; you know that one?

Greg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. People read things into that poem that I don’t.

Margaret F. I remember that poem because some graduate students at Tubingen, in linguistics and literature, and they would give you ten different readings of that poem according to its ambiguity of syntax, completely overlooking the point of the poem – she sends it to Bowles with the stub of a pencil with the poem, you know … if it had no pencil, let it use mine It’s a criticism. “I’ve worn my pencil down writing to you, but you haven’t written to me. [laughter]. That’s what she’s saying.