Emily Dickinson Reading Circle 09 October 2015

Emily Dickinson Reading Circle 09 October2015

Emily Dickinson as a Second Language

Margaret Freeeman

This discussion is a review of my forthcoming book, "Emily Dickinson as a Second Language: Demystifying the Poetry," with discussions of some of some of the poems discussed in each chapter. We began with chapter 1, titled "Words to Lift Your Hat To," which focuses on forgotten words and meanings from nineteenth-century America. 

Margaret F: There are four copies of this poem, so she obviously liked it.

Bari reads:

Pink—small—and punctual—
Aromatic—low—
Covert—in April—
Candid—in May—
Dear to the Moss—
Known to the Knoll—
Next to the Robin
In every human Soul—
Bold little Beauty
Bedecked with thee
Nature forswears
Antiquity—
                   -J1332/1357/M587

[To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/e1XvCYuF6UY
See also "Emily Dickinson as a Second Language: Demystifying the Poetry," by 
Greg Mattingly, p 4 ]

Margaret F: The first one recorded here just has one difference. It’s Known of the Knoll, which is interesting, rather than  Known to the Knoll.

Member:  It’s a flower.

Margaret M: Punctual. It always show up. But aromatic?  It’s still in the ground; how can it be aromatic?

Nick: It’s the trailing arbutus. Where I am it’s still blossoming in May, and in Amherst it’s probably still blossoming in May. In fact, the other name for it is May-flower.

Margaret: In fact, you know, that this is the poem that Masako was going to do in the incense ceremony in spring, in May, because it is the May-flower. Do you remember that one of her poems was May-flower, and because she didn’t do that poem till the summer, she’d dropped that poem out. She didn’t feel that it was appropriate for the season.

Unknown: I think we need to talk about the last two lines.

Greg: Nature foreswears Antiquity.

Alice: Comes every year.

Greg: And I understand it is believed to be an ancient, ancient plant.

Memnber: :Then what would forswears mean?

Alice: Because it comes every year.

Margaret: What does foreswears mean exactly?

Leslie: I just looked it up [general laughter]. To reject or renounce under oath. To deny vehemently under oath. To perjure oneself it also means, to swear falsely.

Nick: Does it give the root?

Leslie: This one doesn’t.

Harrison: It’s renouncing a former sworn statement and also can mean making a false sworn statement.

Margaret F: Yeah, the first meaning of foreswear is to abandon, to renounce.

Greg: The reason why we chose this poem is because of that puzzling word candid in May

Margaret F: Yeah, what does she mean by :Covert in April/ Candid in May?

Unknown: It’s all over the place.

Margaret M: It’s really a very secretive flower. You have to get really down on the ground and move the leaves and sometimes snow away. It’s a creeper.

Margaret F: Yeah, the only time I’ve ever seen it was on the Davenport hike, Our very first hike in March, and Polly pointed out the trailing arbutus.

Margaret M: It smells so wonderful, but you really do have to get down there (laughing).

Polly: But you don’t find it by smelling.

Margaret F: No, because it’s so low, and it’s very small.

Unknown: I think it also has to do with the word white, and clear

.

Greg: That’s how it’s defined in her dictionary – white, whiteness.

.

Nick: So, Greg, the trailing arbutus does two things. When it first comes out it is almost impossible to find, but as the season progresses and you get into May and middle-May, it becomes much more obvious, and therefore more candid, but it also tends to be late in the season of its blooming, white rather than pink.

Margaret F: And I’m interested in  / In every human Soul. Why the arbutus?

Unknown: Because it announces spring, I think.

Unknown: Unfortunately the robin doesn’t do that anymore, right? It’s here all year round now.

Greg: Well, being in three different Emily Dickinson discussion groups, and being a guide at the museum, I’ve heard a lot of questions over the last six years and have come to understand or recognize many of the impasses that readers typically reach. People come to the museum and become interested right there and want an introduction to the poetry. They ask us what we can recommend – do you have anythiing? Up to now it’s been Helen Vendler. It’s the nearest thing I could find for someone who’s just coming to the poetry. So I recognized that there is an unfilled need. There is no real Emily Dickinson primer, not for just anybody. So, that was the inspiration for this volume, and I’ve taken a three-way approach to it, just as is described by Cristanne Miller in the introduction to her book, A Poet’s Grammar. (1) Learn the vocabulary that was available to her. So there’s an example of this word candid. (2)Find the historical  the poem. [Refer here to image of the Amherst Town Vault]. I took that picture, and that’s what Emily Dickinson saw outside the north window of her house on West street.

Nick: That’s where the carriage stopped, right?

Greg:
We paused before House that seemed

A Swelling of the Ground;

The Roof was scarcely visible,

The Cornice – in the Ground -

[To hear this poem read, go to  https://youtu.be/Z6DDR1p03m0]

That’s what that is. And that image has confused a lot of people. “Weird image of a sinking coffin, swollen ground – that’s what you hear in a lot of commentary. So that’s a good example of the historical context

Polly: There’s more to it though, because before this was even built, and it was part of the whole cemetery resurrection that went on with West Cemetary, and this happened with Professor Ebenezer Snell’s daughter, who died in – I think it was late forties or early fifties – if you died in the winter your body was put into somebody’s barn, and there it stayed until the ground thawed. That was very hard on people emotionally, knowing that their loved one was stored in somebody’s barn.

Nick: Yes, and many old cemetaries have these vaults because of that.

Greg: Yes, Nick, it was you that alerted me to this fact when we discussed Because I could not stop for Death several years ago in this very room. It was you who told us about these vaults and how they worked. … The third way of attack is to read the word or expression in the context of her entire body of work. So, she says, “My business is Circumference,” you might not know what to make of that, but if she says somewhere else “My business is to love,” and she’s got the word circumference in fifteen other poems, you can zero in on it that way. In this book I’m taking all three of those approaches, wherever it works.

Barre: Should the new reader use the dictionary as she reads?

Greg: One of the tools that I provide in an appendix is a little tutorial on the Emily Dickinson Lexicon, which is online, and which also gives you access to Emily Dickinson’s dictionary, her 1844 printing of Webster’s 1841 edition of his An American Dictionary of the English Language, and I use those definitions extensively throughout the book, both the Lexicon and the dictionary.

Margaret F: And we also must recognize however that Dickinson did not just rely on Webster’s dictionary. Her reading would have given her an incredible vocabulary. She read extensively, and you’re working on reconstituting the library Polly, right? How much there was that she read.

Greg: And that word vocabulary includes the vocabulary of Calvinism, her bible, Shakespeare.

Margaret F: They had all those magazines and journals coming into the house.

Polly: They passed books around and there were a lot of ways that they had to read things that weren’t actually in the Homestead.

Jeff: And the college library was open to her.

Polly: Well, it was open to the societies, so her brother and friends could get books for her.

Greg: Well, if you notice on this outline under chapter 1, Words to lift your hat to, you’ll see that the left-justified entries are sub-headings within that chapter, Chapter One, forgotten words – just giving examples here, Whiffletree - J1636/Fr1656., in one poem there’s a whiffletree of amethyst. Most people don’t know what a whiffletree is; it’s a crossbar that’s part of the gear that hitches a horse to a carriage. The sun was reining in the west is the poem. Then there’s the word candid, which we just covered.

   Under the subheading The Language of Home, historian of feminism Gerda Lerner establishing Dickinson as the greatest woman writer of the century for having dared to address issues and topics from which women were properly proscribed in her patriarchal world., and she used all these feminine, gentle images, bees and buttercups to do it, in a kind of subversive way – balls of yarn in I felt a cleaving in my mind, or the distaff in There is a morn by men unseen. These are words that would have been very familiar to them. :Then, under the heading Victorian Flower Language, you see the word “poem” underlined, followed by Essential Oils are wrung. I thought that would be a good one to discuss next.

Margaret F. Could we have a look at the balls poem, OK? It’s 937 in Johnson and 867 in Franklin.

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind —

As if my Brain had split —

I tried to match it — Seam by Seam —

But could not make it fit.

The thought behind, I strove to join

Unto the thought before —

But Sequence ravelled out of Sound

Like Balls — upon a Floor.
                       - J937/Fr867/M423

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/aVnGS7EfQjM
See also "Emily Dickinson as a Second Language: Demystifying the Poetry," by
Greg Mattingly, p 20 ]

Margaret M. Johnson [Three volume variorum edition] has an asterisk next to this poem and says see poem 992 refers back to 937. It ends the same way

The Dust behind I strove to join
Unto the Disk before
But Sequence raveled out of Sound
Like Balls upon a Floor

Doesn’t that sound like a dustpan? … Not to anybody else, huh? [laughter]

Alice. I think you have to realize how the yarn came into their houses. It came in a skein that somebody would have to hold while the other one made the ball, and the balls were not machine rolled, and they unrolled very easily. If you were knitting and your ball dropped on the floor and you had a cat you really had a problem. [laughter]

Margaret M. It’s interesting, she has that same idea in two different periods of her life.

Nick: Margaret, do you have that in Franklin? [Three volume variorum edition].

Margaret F. Franklin has both versions under 867

Nick. So they were found in different places, or …?

Margaret F. He says one in 1864. A copy of the second stanza was sent to Susan Dickinson without address or signature. The entire poem was recorded in Set Two, so that means that it’s in the fascicles – with two alternatives, neither of which is in the stanza for Susan. For “The Dust behind I strove to join” he has “The Dust behind I tried to join,” and “But Sequence raveled out of Reach,” instead of “Sound.” Often her second choices aren’t as good as her first, right?

<Interlude>

Greg. We’re under the heading Victorian Flower Language. I’ll just read this little intro here.

Early in the nineteenth century, there developed in Europe a novel method of communication by way of flowers. Individual varieties of flowers were assigned specific symbolic meanings, and in Victorian times, when overt expressions of emotion were so often restrained, one could express oneself indirectly by sending or presenting the appropriate flower. Dictionaries were published containing alphabetical lists of flowers with their associated meaning and were wildly popular. The practice soon spread to England and the United States during the reign of Queen Victoria. In such dictionaries, the day lily was associated with “coquetry.” While it’s hard for this particular writer to imagine that Emily Dickinson was sending a coquette’s subliminal flirtation to the august Col. Higginson (That’s when she put the flowers in his hands), the use of Victorian Flower Language seems evident in some of her poems.

[Margaret fetches her volume of A Victorian Flower Dictionary: The Language of Flowers Companion, by Mandy Kirkby, which circulates among those present.]

Margaret F. I think I should point out that the language of flowers is actually much older. Shakespeare, right?

Harrison: “Rosemary for rememberance.”

Greg: You’re on page 14 now, Harrison. I’ve got that very quote there. We need a reader now.

Sandy.
Essential Oils - are wrung -

The Attar from the Rose

Be not expressed by Suns - alone -

It is the gift of Screws -

The General Rose - decay -

But this - in Lady's Drawer

Make Summer - When the Lady lie

In Ceaseless Rosemary -        

                                - J675/Fr772/M358

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/u7cH1maM5j8
See also "Emily Dickinson as a Second Language: Demystifying the Poetry," by
Greg Mattingly, p 28 ]

Unknown. Rosemary is for remembrance.

Greg.

“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember!”

-Hamlet, Act 4 Scene 5

"Dry up your tears, and stick your Rosemary on this fair corse."
            -Romeo and Juliet,  Act 4 Scene 5

They actually threw the rosemary into the coffin.

Sandy. The rose and the rosemary are different.

Greg. The rose is passion and love. That’s the red rose. Other colors have different meanings.

Polly. There’s the carnation, too.

Alice. The general rose is the one that we see every day, out there in the sunshine.

Polly. This will be a great poem to hang on the front fence at the cape. I’m going to try it next summer.

Alice. What do you expect it to accomplish?

Polly. I don’t know, we’ll see. They’re all on their way to the beach.

Unkown: I’m wondering about the gift of Screws. There’s some other context she’s hinting at.

Margaret. It’s a press.

Unkown. I know it’s a press. Does that mean that there’s a torture that happens.

Alice. Yes, you only get the essential oil when the pressure is put on. It doesn’t come easy.

Greg. “Power is only pain/ Stranded through discipline/ Til weights will hang." She’s got a lot of admiration for what poets have to go through to “reach the Asphodel.” She knows you have to go through that pain. The word express is to press or squeeze, but also to utter, to declare in words, to speak. So, to get the poetry you’ve got to turn the screws on….and then you will be remembered

.

Margaret F. Yes, and she also has the poem, A single Screw of Flesh. It’s 263 in Johnson.

Greg. Well, that’s an interesting use of the word screw, because a screw could also be a small package. You could by a screw of tea or a screw of salt. So what could a screw of Flesh be? A child, a small child the pins the soul of the speaker to someone who has gone.

Margaret F. I think that’s pushing it.

Greg. I know, I know, but it fits the whole poem

Alice. It’s like the scents that we had at our ceremony, remember? She had them wrapped up in those tiny bits of paper that you unfold and fold up again so carefully. That would be a screw

.

Greg. So if we press a rose, for example, we get the concentrated attar – fragrance. . In the coldness of winter, this essence remains to remind us of summer. The fragrance in a lady’s drawer brings her back to us in memory after she is gone.  In ancient times, it was believed that rosemary aided the memory and was good for the brain in general. In Shakespeare’s time, it was also associated with the faculty of memory.

Nick. Any of you biographers, do you know if this is in reference to somebody in particular?

Polly. No. When was it written, does it say?

Several: 1863

Nick. OK

Margaret F. I think it’s more of a general reference to the practice of doing it, and always having scented things in your drawer – to freshen the clothes.

Alice. I would think the poem might be about herself thinking about the difficulty of the poet in finding the right word.

Margaret F. I hate to bring this up, but it’s a good example of why I think Greg’s work is so important. [Name Withheld] has a reading of this poem where she speaks of drawers being a pair of drawers.

Alice. Oh Dear. Oh Dear.

Margaret F. More than pushing it.

Alice. The singular would pretty well forbid it. I don’t know anyone who wears a drawer. [laughter]

Margaret M. a one-legged lady. [more laughter]

Greg. Shall we go on? [More laughter and general hilarity] At the museum, people come from all over the world, they don’t know Indian Summer, they don’t know what our seasons are like – the farming communities in which the poems are so set – in those elements. So I try to describe, and I use Ora White’s watercolor of old Amherst, if you’re familiar with that. This sample poem [First verse only],

I’m sorry for the Dead—Today—
It’s such congenial times

Old Neighbors have at fences—

It’s time o’ year for Hay.

That poem gives a nice feeling for what the farming community was like. You’ll see here – I go through the cycles of the seasons, and have others here in the outline, among others, that I chose, and the poem that I thought it would be interesting to read is Conjecturing the Climate

Margaret F. It’s interesting, the poems that you chose to illustrate …

Greg. Yeah, almost random. [because of the wealth of poems available] This may be an example of what Cristanne Miller calls her “cryptically elusive” ones.

Conjecturing a Climate
Of unsuspended Suns -
Adds poignancy to Winter -
The Shivering Fancy turns

To a fictitious Country
To palliate a Cold -
Not obviated of Degree -
Nor eased - of Latitude –

- J562/Fr551/M281

[ To hear this poem read aloud, to go to https://youtu.be/xSepMU0dYMM 
See also "Emily Dickinson as a Second Language: Demystifying the Poetry," by 
Greg Mattingly, pp 50, 204]

Margart F. Would you like the alternatives? Adds poignancy/ Gives poignancy, The Shivering Fancy, The freezing fancy, To a fictitious Country/ To a fictitious Summer, or To a fictitious Season. Again, I like the first choices. Country is much more specific than summer or season, right? Country is place, while summer and seasons are times of year. And I think of her thinking of the tropics in the winter, like how snowbirds go to Florida.

Harrison. Our lives are Swiss, talks about the curtain that lies between our present cold Swiss lives and the life on the other side.

Unknown: What does obviated mean?

Harrison: Made unnecessary

Margaret F: But its etymology is interesting. Via comes from way, and ob is against, against the way. So it’s turning away, it’s not being turned away from degree – the degree of cold [or warmth]

Margaret M. This poem reminds me of the prairie poem. “and reveries will do if bees are few?” she’s talking about where your imagination can go without moving.

Greg. The definition of obviated in her dictionary – I don’t have it in front of me – it’s more like “blocked from” or “prevented from.”

Margaret F. And unsuspended suns. What do you make of that?

Greg. The sun hasn’t been suspended as in winter when it’s not there any more. Suspended in time.

Alice: Unsuspended means there’s plenty of sun, much sun.

Polly: Sun without stop. Warmth without stop.

Greg. Ease of latitude. Ease was an especially interesting word to me. “To ease off; To ease away in seaman’s language, is to slacken a rope gradually to ease a ship, also, we would say, “ease off, pal.” It’s that kind of ease.

Margaret F. I like that. The idea of degrees and latitude that she has in other poems – The Martyrs even trod/ Their feet upon temptation/ Teir faces upon God, and that the compass point is wavering to the pole, to the nth degree. She has a lot of sea poetry, and the fact that she’s choosing the words degree and latitude, and of course country as well, you’ve got the geographical idea.

Sandy. Why is it that she does use so many sailing terms in these poems?

Margaret F. Well, that’s my air as sea metaphor. Her conceptual universe is that air is sea. It’s a very productive metaphor so that anything that flies is a sailor.

Alice. That was the main means of transportation, and from biblical times sea language is rich.

Unknown. Yeah but she’s in Amherst, but she did go to Boston so maybe she saw the ocean.

Margaret F. But people have used this language for hundreds of years – the voyage of life.

Sandy. But I’m talking about the terms of things used that a layman wouldn’t ordinarily know unless they were around …

Polly. Well, they had the rivers, they had the canals.

Margaret F. You have to think also that these are very very old metaphors that just invade our culture. We talk about “space ships.”

Mary Clare. But maybe in chapter seven Greg takes that on in “Secrets of the Temple: Specialized Vocabularies."

Nick. The other thing that I would add is that the first word in here is conjecturing, and that is what she’s involved in, and that is what Nafisi called the republic of the imagination, which is a world that runs parallel to our world, and according to Nafisi is attached to our world at four corners like a spider web. She wrote Reading Lolita in Tehran. And she’s written a book called The Republic of the Imagination.

Margaret F. What I notice is all the multi-syllabic words.

Alice. Conjecturing, and then adds poignancy, so the conjecturing is only the first two lines. You’re lodged in winter and the poignancy comes when you’re imagining the sun not ceasing to shine.

Greg. I like the way everyone reconstructed that – deconstructed might be the right word – put it together into a cogent train of thought. That poignancy that Alice mentioned is something that not everyone is going to understand exists around here, if they don’t have the seasons that we do.

   Well, we can move on, I guess.

Polly. I love that word, overtakelessness.

Greg. Franklin 400, Johnson 525. This is under the heading North, South, East, and West. The chapter is called The Private Poet, and this is her private vocabulary, if you want to put it that way, that we learn about by applying Cristanne Miller’s third way of approaching the poems, that is, by looking at the entire body of Dickinson's work. There are a few pages on the word circumference, and I learned a lot in writing that. It was a lot of research into a lot of commentary, and then how she uses the cardinal points of the compass which Rebecca Patterson has done so much work on. The poem that I chose to delve into that was I think the Hemlock likes to stand/ Upon a Marge of Snow. Here’s the introduction

In a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, she apologizes for herself, assigning responsibility for some possible fault to “the North.” We don’t know what the fault was, but she imputes a “bleak simplicity” to herself – an austerity – associated with the North.

             “Dear friend, I trust as you ask - If I exceed permission, excuse the bleak simplicity that knew no tutor but the North,"[i]

            The “Errand into the Wilderness”[ii] of Emily Dickinson’s Puritan forebears demanded the utmost in resolution and self-reliance. Dickinsons were among the earliest settlers of the New England colonies, and in the pursuit of religious ends, they endured privation in the harsh northern winters of a new and often hostile land which they called a “howling wilderness.”  It took strength, courage and fierce determination just to survive. The virtues of self-denial, endurance, simplicity and courage were most valued. These qualities belong to the North in the next poem.

Polly reads.

I think the Hemlock likes to stand

Upon a Marge of Snow --

It suits his own Austerity --

And satisfies an awe

That men, must slake in Wilderness --

And in the Desert -- cloy --

An instinct for the Hoar, the Bald --

Lapland's -- necessity --

The Hemlock's nature thrives -- on cold --

The Gnash of Northern winds

Is sweetest nutriment -- to him --

His best Norwegian Wines --

To satin Races -- he is nought --

But Children on the Don,

Beneath his Tabernacles, play,

And Dnieper Wrestlers, run.
                          - J525/Fr400/M213

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/_S25gLuWSj8 ]

Unknown: The Dnieper, what is that?

Margaret F. It’s a river. The Don and the Dnieper are rivers in Russia.

Greg. Where it’s cold – cold – cold.

Unknown. Is Marge a variation of margin?

Greg. Yes, or a border. I put that definition in because I thought people might not know.

Margaret F. It’s old.

Alice. As marge is to margin, verge is to virgin. [much laughter]

Harrison. There was a review in Time Magazine of a movie back in the seventies that was “about a virgin on the verge.” [more laughter]

Greg. We learn all kinds of things in these meetings.

Polly. I like this line, That men must slake in wilderness. Craving.

Alice. There’s something in the Puritan marrow of my bones – that Elinor Wylie wrote. She has the richness of the Chesapeake and the fall in the Chesapeake, everything is there – too wonderful, brightly colored and abundant lavish things and then the third that rejects all this richness and wants the cold austerity of New England

                   There’s something in this richness that I hate. 

                   I love the look, austere, immaculate,

                   Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.

                   There’s something in my very blood that owns

                   Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,

                   A thread of water, churned to milky Spate Freshet or flood

                   Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.

Margaret F. Well, it’s considered poetic in the OED now. It does mean margin, it goes back to the 1600’s. It can also mean immaterial things

Nick. I really like those first two lines, because it describes so much what happens with the hemlocks. It’s often true because the hemlocks are known as snow-eaters. As a result the snow doesn’t make it to the ground and so they are always standing on bare ground next to the snow. She gets all that in two lines.

Margaret F. To come back to Greg’s thesis here in his book, when people read a Dickinson poem, who are not familiar with Dickinson, depending on where they’re coming from, their culture, the second definition of marge is margarine, and I remembered from my childhood that often margarine was often referred to as marge. So, I’m thinking of a certain group of English people coming upon a marge … [laughter]. It shows you how much you can read into words, vocabulary, if you’re not sensitive to what the poet’s own time and culture is. That’s a nice example.

Jeff. There’s a wonderful example of this – Emily’s famous statement about how men talk and they embarrass my dog. If you look up embarrass in her original Webster’s it means to perplex or confuse. No such meaning as we understand it. It also makes me wonder if people may not have understood some of these ways in senses that Webster was not putting down in his page. Maybe they were not accepted yet. Maybe that would be an example. Maybe embarrass was already in her time being understood in the way that we understand it, but not to the extent that Webster would have dignified it.

Nick. But that’s a way to embarrass someone, isn’t it – to confuse them, so that you can see the natural …

Margaret F. What about the gnash?

Nick. To a tuned ear, you can also hear the word gash. I spent a year in a summer cabin in Maine, and boy, it really strikes to me.

Greg. Among a couple of things that I pointer out here is how important that word awe is. I have the Lexicon definition of it here, and also here in nineteenth-century Massachusetts anyone hearing the word wilderness would have had to think of Moses leading his people out of Egypt, in the wilderness. It would probably have had that power to it. And the word cloy is a transitive verb! To fill, to glut, to satiate the appetite.

Alice. And I love this satisfies an awe, just to put together satisfied, which is kind of a pedestrian word, and then awe. Who knew that awe cold be satisfied? It’s just fabulous.

Polly. I like the poems you chose, Greg. They’re different.

Greg. Glad to hear that.

Jeff. There’s a word that has changed so much. You hear it changed into awful.

Alice. Well it’s all throughout the bible 

..

Greg. God is awful.

Alice. He deserves awe, but he is in himself awe.

Sandy. She does use that word a lot.

Greg. And in her letters, too.

Unknown. What do you see that she saw in that word, since she uses it a lot?

Greg. Well, I like what they have in the lexicon, “Reverence, sublimity, veneration, respectful fear, terror, fright, trepidation, feeling of apprehension, admiration”

Margaret F. I think the use of that word so much as you point out, Sandy, also contributes to scholars who think of the sublime, and see her as a poet of the sublime, because awe is part of the terror of the sublime, and see her as a poet of the sublime, because awe is part of the terror of the sublime.

Sandy. We tend to negate it now because kids use “awesome” so much.

Margaret F. It’s leached of its meaning.

Alice. You just have to wait for that to pass, then the word will be restored.

Greg. She wrote once that when troubled as a child she always ran home to awe.

Alice. I think that part of its fascination is that it’s by nature undefinable.

Margaret F. Yes, which is part of the sublime.

Greg. So, there are other whole areas of her private vocabulary that you see here in the outline.

Unknown. What does film mean?

Greg. “The film upon the eye/ Mortality’s old custom just/ Locking up to die.

Unknown. What about the italics?

Margaret F. Well, the poem with “the italic face.” The Hollows round his eager eyes, and it’s 955 in Johnson. 1071 in Franklin

Unknown. I’ll read.

The Hollows round His eager Eyes
Were Pages where to read
Pathetic Histories - although
Himself had not complained.
Biography to All who passed
Of Unobtrusive Pain
Except for the italic Face
Endured, unhelped - unknown.
                        - J955/Fr1071/M481

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/z7n3CQtsai8
See also "Emily Dickinson as a Second Language: Demystifying the Poetry," by 
Greg Mattingly, p 79]

Nick. So Greg, how are you saying italic is being used?

Greg. The pain is written on his face.

Alice. Not only written, but underlined.

Greg. Yes

Jeff. You also get maybe the sense of what she saw in Italy – the passionate expression. It’s not as removed as we of the North are. Emotions are visible. There’s also a period half-way through that poem.

Margaret. Well, I have to look at the manuscript

Alice. Yes, I wonder about her handwriting, if you can tell something is italic, given that script.

Several. Underlined. It’s usually underlined.

Nick. I like that reading about it being expressive …

Unknown. Do you have any ideas who “he” is – whose eyes we’re talking about?

Greg. I think it’s just someone she saw in town.

Margaret. I find the word eager in the first line rather interesting considering the rest of the poem. What’s going on there?

Greg. He’s looking for relief from his pain.

Alice. He’s looking for recognition because he’s unhelped and unknown. Is someone going to notice …

Harrison. That last line has three stages that you go through “After great pain … First Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go." Endured. First of all you endure the pain, without any relief from anyone else – no one else can take any action to help you, and then finally, no one even knows that you had that suffering. You run right into oblivion at the end there.

Alice. I like the opposition of the hollows to the eyes. The hollows around the eyes are the pages – the life is still strong, still, the rest of the face shows that life is ebbing.

Margaret. [reading from manuscript book] The line breaks are interesting. Eager Eyes is on a single line; read is on a single line;….. Pathetic histories is on a line by itself; Although is on a line by itself. Himself had not complained is on a line by itself. Now this is what’s interesting. Notice she spaced out to and put read on another line, but she insisted on putting complained in the same line. She needed it on that line. And, there is a variant for that; himself had resigned…..

Polly. That’s the first good argument that I’ve heard that she purposefully spaced her words.

[A discussion of line breaks, overruns and Whitman omitted]

Nick. One thing I can say about this poem, coming from a long line of New Englanders reaching back into Puritan time, is that the description of this New England face, which I also was instructed in, is absolutely amazing, and how we are not supposed to be expressing pain. That’s what I was taught. Whenever anything happened, you certainly don’t show it.

Sandy. Look how we admired Jackie Kennedy, because she did not grieve outwardly at all.

Margaret. It reminds me of the graveyard at Haworth – the Brontes, you know – that was from the

North which was protestant and Puritan. The gravestones are just incredible because when you read all the stones, the impression you get is, Goddamnit I deserve salvation! I suffered. [laughter].

Barbara. I’m thinking too about the eyes being the windows of the soul. In our culture we don’t revere age the way we used to. If I see someone with an old face that’s lined, it’s very interesting to me, more so than someone who is twenty and has perfect skin and no lines, it’s like an unwritten page.

Alice. And even looking at a newborn. The eyes are so deep, they come knowing so much.

Harrison. Training clouds of glory.

Polly. The only problem with this language of flowers is that you have to have everyone in on the same volume because the definitions differ depending on what book you pick up.

[Omitted discussion of the etymology of the word eager]

Jeff. I think part of the pleasure of reading Emily Dickinson is that you feel that she encompasses the etymology of words – the original meanings as well as what they have come to mean. It’s sort of all there. It’s part of her love of language.

Harrison. And somewhere between that past and that future lies her own meaning, which is her special meaning.

Greg.

We noticed smallest things --

Things overlooked before

By this great light Opon our Minds

Italicized -- as 'twere.
                                                - J1100/Fr1100/M491

Yeah, that poem follows the section on physiognomy which is what Margaret was talking about, that reading in the face. That’s a nice connection. So the next chapter is the Second Great Awakening, Chapter 4. I’ve got about four pages on the history of that, so readers will understand just how fervent it was. Early Struggles are excerpts from her letters, where she struggles with the Great Awakening and the revivals going on. Then in The Language of the Church I thought a real good poem to do would be Further in Summer than the Birds.

Margaret. She has five copies of that.

Greg. I’ll just read this little intro.

There is always a danger in imputing biographical references in Emily Dickinson’s poetry – in assuming that she is necessarily describing her own personal experience or point of view. On the subject of religious faith the poems express quite conflicting and contradictory points of view. Nevertheless, religious referents permeate all of her writing, and familiarity with the vocabulary of biblical scripture, Calvinist theology, and revivalism gives us a much fuller appreciation of the poems and letters. An end-of-summer poem, a copy of which ED called “My Cricket,” offers a fine example.

Jeff. [reads]
Further in Summer than the Birds -
Pathetic from the Grass -
A minor Nation celebrates
Its unobtrusive Mass.

No Ordinance be seen -
So gradual the Grace
A pensive Custom it becomes -
Enlarging Loneliness. -

Antiquest felt at Noon -
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify -

Remit as yet no Grace -
No Furrow on the Glow
Yet a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now -
                                    -  J1068/Fr895/M534

[ To hear this poem read aloud, to to https://youtu.be/r5jb9x5GLSM 
See also "Emily Dickinson as a Second Language: Demystifying the Poetry," by 
Greg Mattingly, p 202]

See also, Emily Dickinson as a Second Language: Demystifying the Poetry, by 
Greg Mattingly, page 202

Nick. Greg, a question about her use of words. Does she carefully make a distinction between further and farther, do you know?

Greg. No, I don’t.

Nick. Because typically farther is a concept of space and further is a concept of time – and emotion.

Margaret. It’s an interesting question Nick, because it seems to me that she does both, We look farther on in Our Lives are Swiss; Farther are you than Moon and Star, which is the distance. Then she has When farther parted than the common Woe, which is the poem beginning One Year ago – Jots what? Which implies time, although it could also be distance, if it’s death. But then she has in the poem The Wind didn’t come from the Orchard today, she has further, and then she has a variant, farther than that. [a chorus of surprise] Oh, and she uses further a lot more than she does farther. …. But where are you seeing the Second Great Awakening in this poem, Greg?

Greg. Here’s a definition of typify.
“To represent by an image, form, model or resemblance, The washing of baptism typifies the cleansing of the soul from sin by the blood of Christ. Our Savior was typified by the goat that was slain.”

Definition of Type
“The mark of something; an emblem; that which represents something else.

A sign; a symbol; figure of something to come; as, Abraham's sacrifice and the paschal lamb, were types of Christ. To this word is opposed antitype. Christ, in this case, is the antitype. “

It’s Christian typology

Margaret F. The Puritans said that material, natural things that happen are types of the immaterial, of the spiritual. Jonathan Edwards has that wonderful essay that he wrote when he was what – thirteen years old? It’s all about the spider, and its flight on its web is typifying something that’s spiritual, immaterial.

Greg. These crickets are typifying the repose of winter. The word ordinance means sacrament.

Margaret. And a Mass. This is all Catholic.

Greg. Yes, which is why it’s a different nation. She has a line in a letter, that , “The cricket sings in the morning, now, a most pathetic conduct.”

Margaret. May I read the very first version of this poem? It was sent to Gertrude Vanderbilt, who was seriously injured in1854 when shot by a suitor her maid had rejected. During her recovery, Dickinson sent several poems, including this one, signed Emily.

Further in Summer than the Birds -
Pathetic from the Grass -
A minor Nation celebrates
Its unobtrusive Mass.

No Ordinance be seen -
So gradual the Grace
A pensive Custom it becomes -
Enlarging Loneliness. -

‘Tis audiblest at Dusk -
When Day’s attempt is done
And Nature nothing waits to do
But terminate in Tune -

Nor Difference it knows -
Of Cadence or Of Pause
But simultaneous as Same
It’s Service emphasize –

Nor know I when it cease

At Candles, it is here –

When Sunrise is – that it is not –

Than this, I know no more –

The Earth has many keys –

Where Melody is not

Is the Unknown Penninsula

Beauty is Nature’s Fact –

But Witness for Her Land –

And Witness for Her Sea –

The Cricket is Her Utmost

Of Elegy, to Me – 

Greg. Grace is another significant word, too. It’s a divine process, and it’s so gradual that there’s no ordinance – no sacrament seen. The sacraments recognized by her church are baptism and The Lord’s Supper (Communion). And they were ordained by Christ in the New Testament.

Margaret O. Doesn’t she pull the rug out of all that with her Druidic difference. [laughter]

Barbara. Greg, I’m not sure how to read this word. Jeff read it as an-TIQUE-est. What if you read it as anti-QUEST?

Greg. Hurts the meter. … I have this on the Druidic difference. “How much Emily Dickinson knew about the Druids, an ancient Celtic religious class in England, is not certain, but she would have read of their fierce practices such as human sacrifice in her Latin texts. (Romans encountered Druids in England and wrote about them). It may be that Dickinson is engaging in one of her signature poetic devices, purposefully combining contradictory terms.[1] Otherwise, how could a Druidic difference enhance nature in the familiar sense of that word? The Druids, like Emily herself, were close to nature in practice and belief. Possibly she was taking the fourth definition of that word in her dictionary, no longer heard, shown below.

EN-HANCE, v.t

1.      To raise; to lift; applied to material things by Spenser, but this application is entirely obsolete.

2.      To raise; to advance; to highten; applied to price or value.

3.      To raise; applied to qualities, quantity, pleasures, enjoyments, &c.

4.      To increase; to aggravate.

Nick. Plus Greg, the Druids were a religion very close to Nature, much like the American Indians, and their rituals were set up with the four corners of the universe, and so on, and so in that sense Druidism does enhance nature, in contrast to this concept that we have control over it, in contrast to the Christian one.

Margaret O. Or that the body has to be renounced.

Margaret F. And in that other poem she has that wonderful line, “Beauty is Nature’s Fact.”

Alice. Also that the Druids were far away and long ago, and now it’s suddenly casting a light on our experience, as we live through them.

Greg. Crickets in central Massachusetts chirp mostly at night. If the night is cold however, some species will chirp instead during the day, and this would most probably be late in the season as winter approaches. Hearing the sound at noon, then, the poet feels most keenly the antiquity of this ancient custom of nature, signaling impending winter.

Well we can move on to Chapter Five, The King James Version. I have a quote at each chapter heading. Here’s this one. “...my knowledge of housekeeping is of about as much use as faith without works, which you know we are told is dead. Excuse my quoting from the scripture dear Abiah, for it was so handy in this case that I couldn't get along very well without it.”
- L8, 25 September 1845

So, Biblical Allusion, Christian Typology, and a Pagan Goddess is the first heading; you’ll probably want to know what that is …that’s from the poem These saw Visions. She’s viewing a body. In it are the lines, These – we held among our own/ Fingers of the Slim Aurora/ Not so arrogant – this Noon. I was always puzzled by that, because Aurora to me was always the Aurora Borealis, or the morning twilight. So I looked it up and there’s a Goddess, Aurora. “The rising light of the morning; the dawn of day, or morning twilight.” And “The goddess of the morning, or twilight deified by fancy. The poets represented her as rising out of the ocean, in a chariot, with rosy fingers dropping gentle dew” Fingers of the fair Aurora

Nick. That’s why in the old Greek in Homer and in poetry your always seeing dawn described as having rosy fingers. Rosy-fingered dawn.

Jeff. Over and over and …. [laughter]

Greg. That poem is followed by I should have been too glad I see. In the next poem of separation it is not death, but lost love, that has caused the pain. Dickinson does not specify that cause, but rather leaves us with an experience of unspecified, but concentrated regret.

I should have been too glad, I see-

Too lifted-for the scant degree

Of Life's penurious Round-

My little Circuit would have shamed

This new Circumference-have blamed-

The homelier time behind.

I should have been too saved-I see-

Too rescued-Fear too dim to me

That I could spell the Prayer

I knew so perfect-yesterday-

That Scalding One-Sabachthani-

Recited fluent-here-

Earth would have been too much-I see-

And Heaven-not enough for me-

I should have had the Joy

Without the Fear-to justify-

The Palm-without the Calvary-

So Savior-Crucify-

Defeat-whets Victory-they say-

The Reefs-in old Gethsemane-

Endear the Coast-beyond!

'Tis Beggars-Banquets-can define-

'Tis Thirsting -vitalizes Wine-

Faith bleats-to understand!

                       - J313/Fr283/M346

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/18GHSVVz2YA ]

Margaret. It’s interesting, it’s best define in Franklin. That verse was sent separately to Sue where it’s can define.

Greg. I like best define.

Margaret F. It’s a little too much Bs [laughter]

Barre. Why bleats in the last line. I have a note that it says faints. Is that an alternative?

Margaret F. Yes.

Alice. Bleats implies Lamb, which gets you into the whole Christian 
…

Margaret O. And sacrificial. This poem seems to be about sacrifice.

Greg. I have, “Ships are wrecked on reefs, though, often in site of the coast and safety, a coast looking so much more precious now. Banquets seem most sumptuous to Beggars – those who have long been deprived of sustenance. Wine is most appreciated by those suffering from a parching thirst. These observations would suggest that her suffering may have a purpose and a value. It is this hopeful notion that Faith bleats to understand. Bleating is the sounds that sheep make, that follow unquestioningly to wherever they are lead, and, in a second copy of this final verse, sent to ED’s sister-in-law, the word faith is in quotation marks, indicating that it is from an external source and is not her own. “Faith is Doubt,”[iii] she once wrote, and on this note of doubt the poem ends.

Margaret F. You know, I think that is one of the most critical essences of Dickinson, in that poem, because of all of those counter-factuals. I should have been, but I’m not. And yet, she’s so steeped in that Christian Puritan tradition, and the bible, and yet she can’t quite just accept it on it’s face.

Greg. And who is she addressing as Savior?

Margaret F. Jesus

Greg., I think it’s the lost love.

Margaret F. I don’t. She identified with the suffering of Christ.

Alice. She did. She couldn’t do it in church.

Margaret F. Yeah, exactly.

Nick. It’s an extremely unusual rhyme scheme for Emily. Couplets – see, degree, shamed, blamed, then around and behind.

Alice. They’re hymns. They’re hymn forms.

Margaret. OK Greg

Greg. OK – next on our adventure, The Poem in Context. So, these are poems that, if you know something about them, you’ll get something that you’ll miss otherwise. And a quick one that we could do would be Drab Habitation of whom? This is under the sub-heading My Friends are my Estate, so that gives you a little clue. If you know the secret of this poem, don’t tell … [laughter’

Margaret M.,
Drab Habitation of Whom?

Tabernacle or Tomb -

Or Dome of Worm -

Or Porch of Gnome -

Or some Elf's Catacomb?
                                - J893/Fr916/M431

[To hear this poem read, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7MUR805V2Y

Greg. So What’s this about?

Margaret F. What could it be. That’s the question you have to ask.

Margaret M. Is it a cocoon?

Margaret F. Yes!

Sandy. [reads] “Sent to her little nephew Ned, with a cocoon.”

Greg. And Margaret is leading a whole session on just such a poem next month.

Polly. It points to her sense of play and her enjoyment of puzzles and of riddles.

Margaret F. Well, Greg, I think your inspiration for writing this book was to give people some clues so they’re not baffled and turned off.

Greg. That’s basically it.

Margaret M. And I don’t think she would mind if people knew that she sent a cocoon with it.

Barbara. What I like about this poem – I’m glad you chose it, because having the rhyme scheme that is so sing-songy, like a log of children’s poems, and knowing the back story that she gave it to her nephew – it’s just really darling to know the back story. And also the questioning thing – “I’ve got something in my hand,” guessing what it is as you would play with a child.

Margaret. Let’s do chapter seven

Greg. Yes. I mention that she grew up in a family of lawyers, and that she heard the language the law, and science as well, being very well educated in the sciences, and that these terms appear in her work. The second poem is the outhouse poem, which has a lot of legalese in it. … I think a really great poem, with so much in it, is The Rat is the conscicest Tenant.

Harrison
The Rat is the concisest Tenant.

He pays no Rent. 

Repudiates the Obligation —

On Schemes intent

Balking our Wit

To sound or circumvent —

Hate cannot harm

A Foe so reticent —

Neither Decree prohibit him —

Lawful as Equilibrium..

                                                - J1332/Fr1357/M587

[To hear this poem read, go to https://youtu.be/z7MUR805V2Y 
See also "Emily Dickinson as a Second Language: Demystifying the Poetry," by 
Greg Mattingly, p 15]

Margaret. It’s interesting. You put this poem under Specialized Vocabulary, right? Some of these poems could fit in more than one category.

Greg. Oh, absolutely, yes.

Harrison. What does Balking mean here?

Polly. Balking our Wit is resisting it – stopping it in its tracks.

Harrison. The rat is intent on schemes that will thwart our wit.

Unknown. And he’s so reticent that not even hate can harm him.

Margaret F. Nor decree prohibit him. I love that he’s a he.

Harrison. What is lawful, the rat?

Jeff. Lawful as Equilibrium, he’s like a law of physics. [laughter]

Greg. Not a law of man.The legal terms in here are rent, obligation, decree, prohibit, tenant …

Jeff. Too bad her father was already deceased; he probably would have enjoyed this one.

Greg. If he ever saw any of them.

Margaret. Yeah, I don’t think he ever saw any, did he?

Greg. Don’t know. … I start out with the word concise. “Cut Out.” The rat is cut out of our society.

Margaret F. And it’s funny – with concise, you think of incisors, the rat teeth.

Greg. OB-LI-GA'TION.

The binding power of a vow, promise, oath or contract, or of law, civil, political or moral, independent of a promise;
In law, a bond with a condition annexed and a penalty for non-fulfillment

The Rat is intent on Schemes which, because he is separate from the rest of us in the house, we are unable to sound or circumvent them.

The wily Rat seems to have the best of us. Hate him though we may, it cannot harm/ A Foe so reticent as he. Reticent simply means silent, but by extension it here implies unprovoked and therefore beyond our influence. The rat does not respond to our hatred of him.
Neither Decree prohibit him. In the legal context, a decree is “Judicial decision, or determination of a litigated cause.” The Rat is beyond the reach of this kind of decree, just as Emily’s unwelcome outhouse invaders were beyond the reach of any statute. In another kind of decree, however, the Rat is perhaps confirmed and validated. A decree may also be, “In theology, predetermined purpose of God; the purpose or determination of an immutable Being, whose plan of operations is, like himself, unchangeable.” The Divine Decrees were and are central to Calvinism, and would have been utterly familiar to the parishioners of Amherst. God’s decree to redeem the elect and not others,  His decree to create man, His decree to allow for the fall of Man in Adam and Eve, and His decree to send Christ as the redeemer are all established tenets of Calvinism. Although it is certainly within His power to do so, God makes no decree that prohibits the Rat from going about his business. On the contrary, the Rat obeys natural law, the laws of God’s creation. There seems to exist, in the balance of power between the Rat and the household, an Equilibrium which is itself an expression of natural law.

Dickinson’s almost proprietary interest in nature prompted her to sympathize with her nonhuman protagonists, despite their occasional repulsiveness. … who lives according to an idiosyncratic set of rules as consistent as the laws of physics. While he abides by them, he remains immune to criticism. He, like the spiders, enjoys a legitimate claim to the premises that laws and decrees cannot erode.       

-James Guthrie[iv]

Margaret F. You know the word wit here is interesting, too, because it doesn’t mean what we think it means – it means more knowledge, right? Ability – Capacity. Rather than humor.

Greg. As in having your wits about you.

Several. Yes.

Margaret F. And why to sound?

Greg. To try to examine. To endeavor to discover that which lies concealed.

Unknown. Like you try to sound the depths. Unbelievably, we got through all the stuff!

---

[1] For example, revolting bliss, J1749/Fr1766, or,  sumptuous despair, J505/Fr348

[2] Dickinson’s coined word for “most concise.”

---

[i] L368, Early 1871

[ii] From the title of a sermon given by Samuel Danforth (1626-1674) in 1670, A Brief Recognition of New-England’s Errand into the Wilderness, and the title of an influential 1952 essay by Perry Miller (1905 – 1963)

[iii] L912, About 1884, to Susan Dickinson

[iv] James Guthrie, Law, Property, and Provincialism in Dickinson’s Poems and Lettrers to Judge Otis Phillips Lord, The Emily Dickinson Journal Volume 5, Number 1, 1996