After Great
Pain:
Responses to
Grief in Emily Dickinson’s Late Poems and Letters
Facilitated by Bruce
Penniman
Bruce.
Well, let me just give an overview of my plan for today, and then we’ll just
dig right in. Lucy’s suggestion of including at least one letter in this
discussion really got me thinking, because I don’t spend as much time with the
letters, and should. So, I ended up reading quite a lot of them, and I ended up
picking not one, but several, because I was especially drawn to the letters
that Emily Dickinson wrote in the wake of her nephew Gilbert’s death, one of
which is extraordinary, I think. Then these lead me to the poems that she was
writing at about the same time – late fall 1883 and then the next couple of
years – and that lead me to the theme for today, which is “After Great Pain”
which of course comes from another poem that she wrote much earlier.
I
don’t want to bias the discussion, but, while several of the poems in this
later period are familiar and have been anthologized, I think that most people
would say that this was not the period of Dickinson’s greatest work, but I
think they’re awfully interesting, especially when read in the context of a
whole series of losses that she was coping with in that time frame, culminating
in the death of her nephew, who was only eight years old. I’m accustomed more
to picking things thematically, but I hope it will prove interesting to look at
things in a timeframe. Then, we can certainly move beyond that time frame, too,
and I assume that those of you who have brought other poems, or may think of
them in the course of our discussion today, can connect them to other poems,
some perhaps better known, that Dickinson wrote about grief, or in response to
deaths earlier in her life, or other poets, as well. I’m sure you have a bunch
in your head that you can just recite, right? [laughter]
Well,
then, let’s start with letter number 868 here, which is to me a tour-de-force
in a lot of ways – the letter to Susan, presumably soon after the death of Gib.
One of the things that I thought was quite extraordinary about this in the
context of the poems of that period and the next couple of years, is how many
motifs are established in this letter that appear in the later poems, so I
think we’ll see echoes of several of the things that are raised in this letter
in several of the poems that come later. So let me read through it, and then we
can take it a little bit at a time.
Dear
Sue -
The Vision of Immortal Life has been fulfilled -
How simply at the last the Fathom comes! The Passenger and not the Sea, we find surprises us-
Gilbert rejoiced in Secrets -
His Life was panting with them - With what menace of Light he cried "Dont tell, Aunt Emily"! Now my ascended Playmate must instruct me. Show us, prattling Preceptor, but the way to thee!
He knew no niggard moment - His Life was full of Boon - The Playthings of the Dervish were not so wild as his -
No crescent was this Creature - He traveled from the Full -
Such soar, but never set -
I see him in the Star, and meet his sweet velocity in everything that flies - His Life was like the Bugle, which winds itself away, his Elegy an echo - his Requiem ecstasy -
Dawn and Meridian in one.
Wherefore would he wait, wronged only of Night, which he left for us -
Without a speculation, our little Ajax spans the whole -
Pass to thy Rendezvous of Light,
Pangless except for us -
Who slowly ford the Mystery
Which thou hast leaped across!
The Vision of Immortal Life has been fulfilled -
How simply at the last the Fathom comes! The Passenger and not the Sea, we find surprises us-
Gilbert rejoiced in Secrets -
His Life was panting with them - With what menace of Light he cried "Dont tell, Aunt Emily"! Now my ascended Playmate must instruct me. Show us, prattling Preceptor, but the way to thee!
He knew no niggard moment - His Life was full of Boon - The Playthings of the Dervish were not so wild as his -
No crescent was this Creature - He traveled from the Full -
Such soar, but never set -
I see him in the Star, and meet his sweet velocity in everything that flies - His Life was like the Bugle, which winds itself away, his Elegy an echo - his Requiem ecstasy -
Dawn and Meridian in one.
Wherefore would he wait, wronged only of Night, which he left for us -
Without a speculation, our little Ajax spans the whole -
Pass to thy Rendezvous of Light,
Pangless except for us -
Who slowly ford the Mystery
Which thou hast leaped across!
Wow, that’s quite a letter. Well, let’s just take it a piece at a time. “The Vision of Immortal
Life has been fulfilled.” Is that the thesis statement of this letter, do you
think? …. Why do you think she started with that?
Barbara. Well,
if she’s writing to Sue, and she’s in such pain, and Sue is even more so, she
may be offering the concept that Gilbert is physically gone, but not gone, as
one of the few concepts that may offer her some relief.
Bruce. So, it’s
intended to be a comforting statement, you think.
Barbara. Yes,
and not only to Sue, but to Emily too.
Brooke. It’s a
strangely triumphant phrase, isn’t it? It gives you the sense of having had
victory over something, which is an odd sentiment to start a condolence letter
with. But I think it is comforting [inaudible]
Linda. And
biblical. “Death, where is thy sting?”
Bruce. Yes. It’s
kind of what you’re supposed to say, right? Or what you’re supposed to think
right after a death – this is all for the better somehow – there’s meaning in
this somewhere, and so on.
Daisy. But she
was never sure. [laughter]
Bruce. Exactly!
[laughter] Yes, sort of my next question, did she believe this …
Victoria. What
strikes me is that this doesn’t feel as personal as some of the other letters
that Sue may have received, that would have said something like “My dear
friend, I feel so sad "… it’s such a sad letter, but it’s personal in a way that
is just larger. She doesn’t include a lot of .. this is definitely Dickinson.
This is not the kind of personal touch that others would have had in their
letters, I think … although she knew little Gib probably nearly as well as his
mother. She proves the personal in these other metaphorical ways.
Adriana. I was
struck by how many celestial images she brings in. Ascended Playmate – No crescent was this creature/ He travelled from
the full, reflecting the phases of the moon; Such soar, but never set; I see him in the Star, and then Dawn and Meridian. They’re all heavenly
images.
Bruce. So a lot
of suggestions of other-worldly things – the next world and so on… but hardly
the conventional condolence letter, right? “Oh, he’s in a better place now or
something like that.” We don’t get that feeling from it. … Beside the heavenly
referents, we have one to the sea here.
“How simply at
the last the Fathom comes! The Passenger and not the Sea, we find surprises
us.” What do you make of that?
Polly. Death is
not surprising, but that it should have been Gib.
Jules. But I do
have the sense that with fathoms, that
this is overwhelming us, this is engulfing us.
Bruce. You can
almost feel the tsunami coming in, right?
Melba. I do have
to wonder how well it worked as a letter of condolence, because Sue doesn’t
appear in this letter at all. There’s no expression of concern for Sue. There’s
just the assumption that she experiences the loss as Emily experiences it, and
would benefit from Emily articulating that, and I just have trouble thinking
about that …. I have not lost a child, so I can’t pull from personal
experience, but I might have to feel that there would have been something
uncomforting in this for Sue.
Susan. I think
that’s really on the mark, because other condolence letters that she wrote to
people that she was particularly close to, like Mary Bowles, Sam Bowles’ wife,
suffering one stillborn child after another, and others, are much warmer than
this, and you wonder what Sue would have thought of Gilbert rejoicing in
secrets, and Emily saying that he would say to her, don’t tell, and also “My
ascended Playmate,” puts Emily in a very privileged position with regards to
Gib, and she called him her preceptor, something she also called Higginson and
others. So, there’s a real authority, there’s a poet’s authority. You can scan
lots of this into iambic tetrameter, including rhymes like velocity and
ecstasy. It’s really … I mean, you wonder how Sue read this. Did she think it
was wild and crazy? Did she think there was a sub-rosa – I wouldn’t say insult
– but exclusion – a gesture of exclusion in here? Or did Emily just want to
pour this out the way it came and if Sue liked it, good, and if she didn’t,
tough.
Jule. I think
that’s absolutely accurate. I also think that what Emily is doing is offering a
view of the child to a mother who has lost that child, and it’s a unique way of
seeing that child that may or may not have been accessible to the mother. So,
when I put myself in Sue’s place, one of the things that Emily is offering is a
way of thinking about that child uniquely, through the eyes of another who
clearly loved him. And also, Emily’s vision has always been valued by Sue.
Victoria. I
think that’s true. She’s painting over and giving a kind of golden gloss to
this little golden boy. When you think of those last days, the mother’s vision
would be of that little suffering boy lying there in bed.
Julie. I was
struck by the name Ajax. He was second only to Achilles in Bravery. He was
forceful. He was conquered by Ulysses in a contest for the Armor of Achilles.
So … risk taking, adventurous little boy. I had to wonder whether she ever used
the name Ajax anywhere else.
Brooke. I think
the fact that this letter exists tells us something. I can’t imagine that she
would have kept it if it hurt her.
Bruce. It might
be a letter that you would receive as the mother very differently in October
1883, and maybe two years later when you read it again. It’s clear from the
later letters that each anniversary of the death that they’re thinking about
Gib again. It ends up being quite an elegant elegy, I think, but it’s certainly
not the conventional condolence letter.
Bruce. The
letter to Mrs. Holland here, 873. From later the same year, it talks about
Emily Dickinson’s own ailments.
“The physician says I have nervous
prostration. Possibly I have - I do not know the names of sickness. The crisis
of the sorrow of so many years is all that tires me. As Emily Bronte to her
maker, I write to my lost ‘ Every Existence would exist in Thee.”
The sorrow of so
many years – just think of the few years up until Gilbert’s death – her
morther, her father, Sam Bowles, and Dr. Holland. And then she goes on to remember
almost the moment of Gib’s death here.
“‘Open the door!
Open the door!, they are waiting for me!’ was Gilbert’s sweet command in
delirium. Who were waiting for him, all we possess we would give to know.
Anguish at last opened it and he ran to his little grave at his grandparents’
feet. All this and more, though is there more? More than love and death? Then
tell me it’s name.”
Wow. That’s
quite a different tone than the letter to Sue, isn’t it? I thought that it was
interesting that two years later, the letter 1020, she recalls this same
incident again a little bit diffently.
“October is a
mighty month, for in it little Gilbert died. ‘Open the door!’ was his last cry,
‘The boys are waiting for me.’ Quite used to his commands, his little aunt obeyed,
and still two years and many days, he does not return“
Harrison. That
scans like a poem, too.
Bruce. Yes,
that’s right. … Two slightly different versions of the same story. What do you
make of that?
Greg. When she
quotes the bible and other literature she often seems unconcerned with
precision. She’ll paraphrase.
Jule. How many
times, when we hear a story retold, is it ever exactly the same. (general
agreement)
Susan. And by
1885 she’s lost Judge Lord, and she had lost Helen Hunt Jackson and her cousin
Will. These were tremendous losses. So, she’s bearing a heavier weight, and
she’s also not well. That first letter would have been written in nervous
prostration. She was really, really sick until January 1884. So, when you’re
writing a letter in that condition it isn’t easy.
Bruce. Well, the
wording is very suggestive to me. I may be reading too much into it, but to me
there’s something very different about “Open the door, the boys are waiting for
me,” and “Open the door, they are waiting for me.” From the later letter, you
could almost imagine Gib in his delirium thinking about his playmates. Of
course he got sick playing in the mud with them. But there’s something
different about “Open the door, they’re waiting for me,” and her question, “Who
were waiting for him, all we possess we would give to know,” is this ultimate
question, and that of course comes right on the heels of his death, so it may
be that two year’s time has also given a little perspective as well as perhaps
a different recollection of what the actual words were.
Susan. She also
wrote Christmas notes to that little boy who also made that trip to Schutsbury
and the mud-hole, Kendall Emerson.
Bruce. Yes, that
one’s actually here. “Christmas in Bethlehem means most of all this year, but
Santa still asks the way to little Gilbert’s friends. Is heaven an unfamiliar
road?” … I wonder what little Kendall made of that. [laughter]
Jule. He saved
it.
Bruce. Yeah. And
there’s another one about Santa Clause here. “Santa Clause comes with a Smile
and a Tear. Santa Clause has been robbed not by Burglars, but by Angels. The
Children will pray for Santa Clause.” Well, shall we turn to the poems, then?
Of course, there were a lot of poems written in the years after Gilbert died,
but I wanted to choose some that I was pretty sure that were after his death.
OK, so poem 1624 in Franklin is the one that appears in the letter to Sue, so I
just took them from after that, so of course, who knows if that’s exactly right.
1625 and 1627 are kind of interesting because they both contain the same
quatrain, used in a different way. I thought it might be interesting to compare
those.
Jay. [Reads
1625]
Expanse
cannot be lost —
Not Joy, but a Decree
Is Deity —
His Scene, Infinity —
Whose rumor's Gate was shut so tight
Before my Beam was sown,
Not even a Prognostic's push
Could make a Dent thereon —
The World that thou hast opened
Shuts for thee,
But not alone,
We all have followed thee —
Escape more slowly
To thy Tracts of Sheen —
The Tent is listening,
But the Troops are gone!
-J1584/Fr1625/M730
[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/bvlqxlnXFso ]
Not Joy, but a Decree
Is Deity —
His Scene, Infinity —
Whose rumor's Gate was shut so tight
Before my Beam was sown,
Not even a Prognostic's push
Could make a Dent thereon —
The World that thou hast opened
Shuts for thee,
But not alone,
We all have followed thee —
Escape more slowly
To thy Tracts of Sheen —
The Tent is listening,
But the Troops are gone!
-J1584/Fr1625/M730
[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/bvlqxlnXFso ]
Bruce. We’ve
often observed here that in the first stanza or two you can follow along pretty
well what she’s thinking, and on the last one she throws you a zinger. I think
it’s exactly the opposite in this poem.
Jay. One word
<inaudile> me here, and that’s troops. Nowadays people use the word
troops to refer to individual soldiers, when troop is actually a collective
noun – hundreds and thousands of people, not individuals, and she does the same
thing.
Susan. Well,
that’s our little Ajax reference.
Jay. OK. Yeah,
maybe it is.
Bruce. Yeah..
Harrison.
Achilles sulked in his tent.
Susan. Yeah,
Achilles sulked in his tent. He said that Ajax was a much nicer guy.
Bruce. But yeah,
that stanza makes a lot of sense to me.
Brooke. I think
the last four lines of the stanza are less challenging than the first four
lines. It seems to me to be saying that immortality or heaven is not something
that she could fathom until this defining moment
Harrison. Is
there a reference to predestination here?
Jay. I get
something of Calvinism here.
Harrison. Your
fate is determined before you were even born.
Greg. And that
is a divine decree in Calvinism.
Bruce. So what
do you make of the Beam there. Beam
of light?
Harrison. “Poets
light but lamps”
Bruce. So,
before my beam was sown in the ground?
Jule. When you
build a house, the gate is the last thing, but the first thing is the beam. So
she hadn’t even started her beam when someone else shut the gate.
Unknown: :She’s
saying that there were rumors of what is in the beyond, but she had no access
to them, or to the beyond. Not even anyone who could predict the future could
make a dent in her unknowing, but then Gib’s death opened that
<inaudible>.
Bruce. It is a
very Calvinistic God here, isn’t it? Not Joy, but a Decree is Deity.
Melba. I think
she was saying that this gate was shut so tight before I began, before my
being, I wasn’t even in this unknowing state of pre-being – that that’s how far
she is away from any kind of intuition.
Bruce. Well,
that also makes sense in a Calvinistic way. The notion of predestination being
infinite.
Robert. For me
the second stanza resonates a little bit for me with “The road was lit with
moon and star” and the last two lines “Unknown the shimmering ultimate/ But he
indorsed the sheen” – that sense that Gib’s death had a sheen that emanated its
own light.
Bruce. Let’s
transition to the next poem, because it uses the same four lines here with a
slight change, but in a different way.
Lucy reads.
The
Spirit lasts — but in what mode —
Below, the Body speaks,
But as the Spirit furnishes —
Apart, it never talks —
The Music in the Violin
Does not emerge alone
But Arm in Arm with Touch, yet Touch
Alone — is not a Tune —
The Spirit lurks within the Flesh
Like Tides within the Sea
That make the Water live, estranged
What would the Either be?
Does that know — now — or does it cease —
That which to this is done,
Resuming at a mutual date
With every future one?
Instinct pursues the Adamant,
Exacting this Reply —
Adversity if it may be, or
Wild Prosperity,
The Rumor's Gate was shut so tight
Before my Mind was sown,
Not even a Prognostic's Push
Could make a Dent thereon —
-J1576/Fr1627/M730
Below, the Body speaks,
But as the Spirit furnishes —
Apart, it never talks —
The Music in the Violin
Does not emerge alone
But Arm in Arm with Touch, yet Touch
Alone — is not a Tune —
The Spirit lurks within the Flesh
Like Tides within the Sea
That make the Water live, estranged
What would the Either be?
Does that know — now — or does it cease —
That which to this is done,
Resuming at a mutual date
With every future one?
Instinct pursues the Adamant,
Exacting this Reply —
Adversity if it may be, or
Wild Prosperity,
The Rumor's Gate was shut so tight
Before my Mind was sown,
Not even a Prognostic's Push
Could make a Dent thereon —
-J1576/Fr1627/M730
[To hear this poem read, go to https://youtu.be/IUCDA3SIBkw ]
Bruce. So here
we are, the same four lines ending this poem, but with one change, the Beam becomes a Mind here. … The first part of this poem develops an interesting
argument. It almost seems that from her wondering in the second stanza of the
previous poem she’s now taken a leap to the other side. So the spirit lasts,
but in what mode? What does that look like? Then we get some earthly analogies.
The Music in the Violin/ Does not emerge alone/ But Arm in Arm with Touch, yet
Touch/ Alone — is not a Tune —. So, a violin doesn’t mean anything unless
someone is playing it, so is that the relationship between spirit and body? And
we have another analogy of tides within the sea/ That make the water live/
Estranged, what would either be? Then you’d have tides without water or water
without tides.
Unknown. What
about that second stanza?
Bruce. Yeah,
we’ve got some tortured pronouns there, don’t we? [laugher] OK, so what are the
referents there?
Harrison. “this”
could be the body.
Bruce. Yes, it
makes sense to me that the that and the this are the flesh and the spirit.
Brooke. I’m
interested in “Instinct pursues the Adamant/ Exacting this Reply.” Does that
refer to “Resuming at a mutual date/ With every future one?” That these two
things can be reunited at some future point? … and that we need to think that?
Bruce. Well,
that’s the ultimate question, right? Are our body and soul reunited somehow? So
Instinct pursues the Adamant. My
reading of that is that our instinct wants the answer to that question, but the
answer is hidden. But then we have that quatrain again, so what’s it doing
here?
Harrison. She’s
throwing in the towel? [much laughter]
Bruce. It’s
interesting. If you take the two together it’s almost a continuous meditation.
She starts in the previous poem with a Calvinistic unknowable God – nothing
could make a dent in my unknowing – then she goes through this process of
trying to think about those who have departed and then getting into a larger
meditation on the spirit and the body – can one live without the other and will
they ever be reunited, and then we’re back to where we started. [ laughter]
It’s like the book of Job. You’re not getting any answers.
Susan. She did
write letters at least twice in her life, one of them was to Edward Everett
Hale asking about Ben Newton and what kind of a death he had. Then, around
1882, in the spring when Judge Lord was desperately ill, and in fact was given
up by whoever wrote the Springfield Republican story, she wrote to Washington
Gladden, who was the minister for the court. “Is immortality true?” Washington
Gladden of course knew the judge, so she was asking this minister, “Is
immortality true?” And Washington Gladden is not going to say no. [laugher] So
I think Gladden is concerned that Emily have hope that Judge Lord will get
better, which he did, but you know you’re writing to somebody and you’re going
to get a positive answer. It’s not like she wrote Cutler, of Cutler’s general
store “Is immortality true?” So, she sets these things up, and this poem
strikes me as something that she set up in order to confirm the mystery – a
word she uses when she writes about Gib having forded the mystery.
Bruce: I love
these grammatical puzzles. Is her mind being sown as a garden is sown, or is it
her mind that is being sown into something – into this mystery somehow.
Unknown. She
cold never participate in her family’s enthusiasm for faith.
Melba. I think
that accounts for her shift from the metaphor of light, as in the beam, to
thought, as in the mind, because she searched her intuitions to learn something
about where Gilbert has gone and what his condition is, and all she can do is
work through these metaphors about the violin and touch and the tides and the
sea but in the end concludes that intellection is not going to get her there.
Bruce. That’s
great. The mental exercises ultimately failed. Well, those were from the
immediate aftermath of Gib’s death. Why don’t we turn to the ones from 1884 and
1885, which come with a little more distance.
Jule reads.
Quite empty,
quite at rest,
The Robin locks
her Nest, and tries her Wings.
She does not
know a Route
But puts her
Craft about
For rumored
Springs —
She does not ask
for Noon —
She does not ask
for Boon,
Crumbless and
homeless, of but one request —
The Birds she
lost —
-J1606/Fr1632/M731
-J1606/Fr1632/M731
[ To hear this poem read, go to https://youtu.be/KJcZOEB8410 ]
You know, you
said “throwing in the towel.” I think this is where she stopped thinking. I’m
not going to; I’m at rest now. I’m just going to put my house in order and die.
Bruce. And set
out for rumored springs. We still
don’t know if they’re there, right?
Jule. I wonder
if it relates to rumor’s gate. So,
she’s heading to that gate.
Bruce. I was
struck by how many words in the poem appear in the letters. The bird, and the
boon, and the crescent. … 1668 is one that is well known, but I found it
interesting to read it in this context.
Harrison reads.
Apparently
with no surprise
To
any happy Flower
The
Frost beheads it at its play —
In
accidental power —
The
blonde Assassin passes on —
The
Sun proceeds unmoved
To
measure off another Day
For an Approving God.
-J1623/Fr1668/M654
[ To hear this poem read, go to https://youtu.be/NQbFgoEQkCU ]
It strikes me as an almost nihilistic poem
It strikes me as an almost nihilistic poem
Unknown. I’m struck by the sun is unmoved, but God approves. That’s a very active emotion.
Bruce: It seems a long way from her letter to Sue, “The vision of immortal life has been fulfilled. That’s not where she is here.
Bruce: It seems a long way from her letter to Sue, “The vision of immortal life has been fulfilled. That’s not where she is here.
Lucy.
It’s interesting to contrast the accidental power of the frost with the
approving God. It’s not the frost’s fault. It just goes up the ladder.
Harrison.
The 18th century clockmaker God just sets everything in motion. And
what he set in motion was natural selection, red in tooth and claw, and all is
ordained by God.
Bruce.
It reminds me of some of the discussions of God in Moby Dick – something that
Queequeg says when looking at the sharks tearing each other apart and tearing
apart the whale blubber, and he says something to the effect that, I don’t know
which God is in charge, the God from where I come from or the God from Nantucket,
but whoever he is he must be one damn Injun. That’s the same one that Emily’s
contemplating in this poem, I think.
Brooke.
I think if we were to assign one of the seven stages of grieving to this poem,
it would be anger.
Bruce.
Yes. Think of all the metaphors that she has for God. In the poem Abraham to kill him/ Was distinctly told
it ends with Moral – with a Mastiff/
Manners may prevail.
Melba.
I’m having trouble pinning down a tone. Sometimes it seems like anger or maybe
resignation, but at other times it seems like such a vast expression of
loneliness. It’s like, I’m so alone that neither human, or even a flower
understands the loss.
Lucy.
I think there’s violence in it. The beheading, the assassin, and an accidental
power seems so careless and callous and cold.
Jay.
It’s all part of her ongoing theological argument. I don’t think she’s
surprised at this. This is the truth… and you have to accept it.
Julie.
I also find it like a carpe diem mood here, the way the sun proceeds to measure
off another day, so you just better seize your own day because it’s going to
happen. So, I see that kind of resignation but that a little defiant carpe diem
at the same time.
Greg.
I do hear irony in those last two lines. Not peaceful acceptance. Some people
hear, in an approving God an echo of
Genesis where at the end of each day of creation God says, “and it was good.”
Unknown.
I’m reminded of Those dying there,1581,
written in 1882.
Those
— dying then,
Knew where they went —
They went to God's Right Hand —
That Hand is amputated now
And God cannot be found —
The abdication of Belief
Makes the Behavior small —
Better an ignis fatuus
Than no illume at all —
- J1551/Fr1581/M638
[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/Iu8V2R11_xU ]
Knew where they went —
They went to God's Right Hand —
That Hand is amputated now
And God cannot be found —
The abdication of Belief
Makes the Behavior small —
Better an ignis fatuus
Than no illume at all —
- J1551/Fr1581/M638
[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/Iu8V2R11_xU ]
Bruce.
Well, let’s compare that to the last poem on the sheet here, 1675. It’s getting
close to her own death at this point.
Of God we ask
one favor,
That we may be
forgiven—
For what, he is
presumed to know—
The Crime, from
us, is hidden—
Immured the
whole of Life
Within a magic
Prison
We reprimand the
Happiness
That too
competes with Heaven
-J1601/Fr1675/655
Greg. I have used this as a Thanksgiving
toast. [laughter]
Bruce. So, yeah, we have the auctioneer
of parting here, we’ve got the assassin beheading flowers randomly, and human
life is sort of a spell in prison for a crime that’s never named.
Greg. It’s a magic prison. She doesn’t
want to get out.
Bruce. Well, that’s one tone. What about
some of these others? Do you see anything different? How about 1673?
Victoria reads.
Go
thy great way!
The Stars thou meetst
Are even as Thyself —
For what are Stars but Asterisks
To point a human Life?
The Stars thou meetst
Are even as Thyself —
For what are Stars but Asterisks
To point a human Life?
I
love that one. There’s something elevating about it.
Julie,
But that’s what sailors have done, they look to the stars to point the way. And
I guess it’s just human nature to gain some kind of – well everything is bigger
than just us
Bruce.
Wasn’t it a practice to put in a list of names an asterisk next to someone who
has just died? Because I remember that something my father once built for a
family reunion, and he had created a memorial to the first generation of the
family, and it listed all the siblings and their … and something that he did,
sort of by instinct, is put an asterisk next to those who were dead. So I
didn’t know if that was a traditional practice of some sort.
Susan.
It is from the word star, so there’s that wonderful little pun in here and also
all of those references in Shakespeare to Romeo among the stars.
Victoria.
It does sound like it could be from a soliloquy in Shakespeare.
Bruce.
It’s an interesting image, though, to think of a star as a reference to a
particular person who has died.
Susan.
That second line is just so funny. “He is presumed to know.” She doesn’t say
“He knows.” He is presumed to know.
Unknown. It reminds me of Thoreau, when he was near the end of his life, was asked if he had made his peace with God, said, “I did not know that we had ever quarreled.” [laughter]
Unknown. It reminds me of Thoreau, when he was near the end of his life, was asked if he had made his peace with God, said, “I did not know that we had ever quarreled.” [laughter]
Victoria.
I like this one about Oscar Wilde, lying on his death bed, looking around him
in the Victorian decorated room and saying “Either this wallpaper has to go, or
I do.” [much laughter]
Bruce.
Well let’s finish up here with a few we haven’t looked at yet, which establish
I think a quite different tone. ? Will someone read 1662?
Susan reads.
The
going from a world we know
To one a wonder still
Is like the child's adversity
Whose vista is a hill,
Behind the hill is sorcery
And everything unknown,
But will the secret compensate
For climbing it alone?
-J1603/Fr1622/M733
[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/Y21IfZaCBts ]
To one a wonder still
Is like the child's adversity
Whose vista is a hill,
Behind the hill is sorcery
And everything unknown,
But will the secret compensate
For climbing it alone?
-J1603/Fr1622/M733
[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/Y21IfZaCBts ]
Jay. She seems reconciled to secrecy,
doesn’t she! She can’t possibly know everything, or neither can anyone else.
But she sure as hell comes to resent those who claim to know it all.
Bruce. And the analogy is of the child
climbing the hill, but I’m sure the actual child climbing the hill was not far
from her thoughts. Alright, could someone read 1651?
Jay reads.
As
from the earth the light Balloon
Asks nothing but release —
Ascension that for which it was,
Its soaring Residence.
The spirit looks upon the Dust
That fastened it so long
With indignation,
As a Bird
Defrauded of its song.
-J1630/Fr1651/M650
Asks nothing but release —
Ascension that for which it was,
Its soaring Residence.
The spirit looks upon the Dust
That fastened it so long
With indignation,
As a Bird
Defrauded of its song.
-J1630/Fr1651/M650
Bruce. Again some echoes of the letters,
the soaring, the birds … This one seems a much more hopeful poem to me; the
soul is at last released from what was binding it.
Unknown. Yes, this of all of these
poems this is the one that most closely fits with that first letter to Sue.
Jay. As a bird defrauded of its song?
There’s something defrauding about that.
Harrison. Is she saying that life is
defrauded of her song?
Bruce. Yes, I think you can read it as
life had defrauded it of its song. Now, it can really sing. Yeah, go back to
the letter, “Now my ascended playmate must instruct me. Such soar but never
set.” There’s a lot of the same language. So that’s maybe a little bit better
one to end this discussion on in terms of it being a little more hopeful than
some of the others.
