Emily Dickinson International Society, Amherst Chapter, 06 November 2015

Emily Dickinson International Society, Amherst Chapter, 06 November 2015

Investigating Dickinson’s adopted voices, child, bride, queen.

Jeff Reads
Who is it seeks my Pillow Nights -
With plain inspecting face -
"Did you" or "Did you not," to ask -
'Tis "Conscience" - Childhood's Nurse -

With Martial Hand she strokes the Hair
Upon my wincing Head -
"All" Rogues "shall have their part in" what -
The Phosphorous of God –
                                - F1640/J1598/M732

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/ZXixCTw49UM ]

Lois: It’s interesting to me that this late poem attempts to convey this child’s experience. I’d like to point out that this poem deals with the timelessness of the child’s perspective, and opposes that  with the rules of the adult, which sets up rules within a framework of time, this adult voice intruding, if you will, on the child speaker.

Greg: Does anybody know from where she’s quoting "All" Rogues "shall have their part in"?

Robert: Revelation 21:8. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

Lois. Oh, so those are all rogues.

JoAnn: So, is this supposed to be about marriage?

Lois: No

JoAnn: Oh, OK. So that helps.

Lois. I chose this as an example of a poem generating, or giving a perspective of a voice of a child. A child is intruded on by the voice of an adult, and she puts conscience, which is how a child would internalize the voices of the adults, right? And this little picture I see … “With Martial Hand she strokes the Hair,” she being the conscience, or the voice of the adult.

JoAnn: She did say “childhood’s nurse, so I was wondering about that.”

Lois: Conscience is childhood’s nurse.

JoAnn. Is it a person?

Robert: A metaphor for conscience.

Lois: And conscience being the voice of the adult that the child internalizes

JoAnn. Would you say it’s the contemporary rule system?

Lois: Well, the idea that I was trying to introduce into our discussion is that the child has a kind of timelessness, right? Until it’s taught by the adults in its life to measure experience in terms of time, that a child up to a certain point, an infant really has no concept of time, and I think that the idea of rules and conscience – I think it’s easy enough to relate those two – is based on an adult’s rules, and rules are based on time. You get up at a certain time, you go to bed at a certain time. You stop crying now. So this idea of time is introduced over time, but it’s an intrusion, is it not, on a child’s innocence?

JoAnn: Well, she certainly seems to think so.

Lois: Would you argue?

JoAnn: I wouldn’t argue with anything she says. [laughter]. She says "Did you" or "Did you not," so it sounds like she got into some trouble during the day.

Lois: Well, the trouble is what’s introduced by the adult voice. It’s up to interpretation whether or not you want to view it as a discreet event, or whether it’s a general description

Ellen: So, do you see this as she’s grown up and she’s looking back on this in the past?

Lois: No, I’m trying to put it always in the present. This poem is an expression of a childhood voice. That’s why we’re reading it. But this voice of the child is responding to what it feels like to be intruded on by the adult world and its rules. So, how does the child react to this?

Robert: I am personally experiencing it as a poem about a child, more as childhood’s conscience – childhood’s nurse – present in this adult mind, forever, and a delightful part of this is this blending of sexuality – some lover seeking her pillow nights perhaps, and stroking her hair – this lover conscience is someone who is parading  as someone who is seeking her pillow nights and stroking her hair, so there’s this blend.

Lois: So you argue that this is written in the child’s voice.

Robert: I see it as the childhood voice dominating the person forever. Conscience, childhood’s nurse,  just right up there at age 70 as well as age 7.

Lois: Where do you get the “dominating?”

Robert: Well, conscience is pillow-talking and the martial hand is stroking the hair, so the authority established by the childhood nurse  - it’s presence is ….

Jeff: “Conscience does make cowards of us all.” I understand what you’re saying about using a child’s metaphor, a situation of childhood as a way of presenting the poem, but I also read it as very much what we as adults face. Conscience kills us. Guilt! People feel guilty about all kinds of things they’re not responsible for. Your parents died, and you feel guilt; it’s a very common reaction. You get into that wonderful graduate school that you dreamed about, and suddenly , Jesus! It’s a mistake, I don’t’ belong here, they’re too good for me. And it’s in childhood that all this idea of conscience is drilled into us, as Robert says, just haunts us the rest of our lives.

JoAnn: That’s why there are therapists. 

Barbara: In the last two lines, I think the images there are just wonderful. And there’s also that inexplicable -you don’t see too many quotations  with one word in the quotations and the filling in your own word, and then have the rest of the quotation. That in itself opens up a panoply of possibilities. It seems to me that she is not speaking so much in “forked tongue,” but in forked time, both in the present and in the past, and they’re all interweaving in her own timeline, perhaps.

Lois: The task I thought I had set ourselves was that certain poems were better than others for expressing Dickinson’s task of balancing their voices within her work. Now, maybe that’s something that you all don’t want to entertain. I thought it was interesting, and that’s why I introduced the whole idea, and to me it supports that thesis, if you will, because it starts out with “Who is it seeks my Pillow Nights?" It - she doesn’t say  “I remember when…” and the syntax is ruptured with quotes and dashes, and words that emphasize the child’s omniscience, if you will, and the adult’s intrusion. Let your imagination take this poem as the voice of a child, and even down into the second stanza, when you think about Emily Dickinson’s claiming the word “rogue,” for herself, we know that she loved to make that kind of assumption. So it emphasizes this conflict. If she sees herself a rogue, and wants to be a rogue in terms of conventional thought - Then, the wincing, I can so feel that as a child, where I’m sent to bed without my desert, and, and I’m just pissed as Holy Hell. And that stroking on the hair just intensifies that awful, awful war that goes on within the child. To me that’s some of the value of looking at this poem as the voice of the child, because it lets us remember that childhood is just a war between impulse and restriction, so, that’s my little diatribe.

Ellen: Even if it’s not in the past, to me there are too many words in the first stanza that come with an adult’s awareness, like, well, “who seeks my pillow nights – you don’t’ first think about obedience, you think of some relationship. Then, with plain inspecting face, the idea that it’s plain – it’s not something a child would say.

Lois: Exactly. It comes with adult language. That’s part of the war of the child – that doesn’t have a language, yet we’re looking at a poem that does indeed have a language. And we might say that that’s part of the magic of Dickinson, that she can so purely evoke this childhood experience while using language that we all … The poem is attempting to relate a condition of childhood. To me it’s fascinating that Emily Dickinson set for herself this challenge of doing work and conveying the voice of a child, or a bride, or an emerging adult, or the voice of a queen without giving any pre-eminence to one or the other. In our language, we do. We say “She’s asserting her independence.” But I’m saying that to say that about this poem is to miss the significance of what she has created as the voice of a child.

Greg: A good way to approach this might be to ask ourselves, who is the speaker of this poem? Who’s speaking it. Never mind Emily Dickinson. A poet can become anyone he or she wants to; they can speak in any voice. Poets have that power. Who’s speaking this poem? Is it a child or is it an adult? I think it’s a child’s voice.

Robert: I think it’s an adult.

JoAnn: It’s an adult remembering her child’s voice. She never lost her childhood.

Lois: If you sat down to write a book, and you wrote, “Mommy and Daddy are coming home, la la la” you’re writing as an adult but that’s the voice of a child.

JoAnn: OK, then I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.

Ellen: Do you think this is a child’s language?

Lois: No I don’t, but the experience is a child’s.

Robert: This poem, for me, is about the grip of the Calvinist conscience, and it’s the grip of the Calvinist conscience on an adult. The childhood language is used as a vehicle for expressing that grip.

Lois: But it’s not childhood language.

Robert: "Did you" or "Did you not," I read that as a child.

Greg: I can read it that way too. Yeah, that works too. I love what you said, Robert, about the imagery of the lover. It made me think of the poem The Soul has bandaged Moments,

Helen Vendler compares this poem with Fr284

The Zeroes — taught us — Phosphorous —
We learned to like the Fire
By playing Glaciers — when a Boy —
And Tinder — guessed — by power
Of Opposite — to balance Odd —
If White — a Red — must be!
Paralysis — our Primer — dumb —
Unto Vitality!
                                    -
[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/tycspSIRPf8 ]

Vendler writes: 
In The Zeroes, Dickinson utters a gnomic first line, intending not a lasting riddle, (since the next two lines immediately explain the first), but rather a strikingly deviant use of language. ‘The Zeroes’ can be thought of as a climate, like ‘the tropics”: such an Arctic zone, with its repeated inflictions of ‘zero at the bone (see 1096, ‘A Narrow Fellow’) creates a desire not merely for heat, but for self-ignition, a flare of glowing inner explosion. And in what element could that be found? Phosphorus. Dickinson’s 1844 Webster’s says of phosphorus, ‘It burns in common air with great rapidity and in oxygen gas with great vehemence’. In ‘Who is it seeks my Pillow Nights’ ‘Phosphorous’ signifies the fire and brimstone of hell; ascribing sinfulness – in a Christian view – to the passionate desire represented by ‘Phosphorous’ in the ‘Zeroes.’

David Porter writes:
Franklin prints the version of this poem contained in packet 22, whereas Johnson
prints the copy of this poem which Emily sent to Samuel Bowles. In line 3 Franklin
has ‘handling’ for ‘playing,’ in line 5 ‘to equal Ought’ for ‘to balance Odd,’ and in
line 6 ‘Eclipses _ Suns _ imply’ for ‘If White _ a Red _ must be.’ These changes
hardly affect the meaning of the poem.
    On the back of the copy sent to Samuel Bowles Emily added the words, ‘Icouldn’t let Austin’s note go _ without a word _ Emily.’ Jane Donahue Eberwein helpfully explains that Bowles had started referring to Emily as ‘the Queen Recluse’and that in a letter to Austin he had jokingly inquired about the musical entertainments his sister enjoyed in heaven and expressing sympathy for her achievement in overcoming the world. Emily responds by sending Bowles this poem, adding that she couldn’t let Bowles’ note to Austin go without a reply.
   In the poem itself she reminds him of an often expressed view of hers that experiences are known from their opposites: highly inflammable phosphorus from zero temperatures, fire from ice, dry tinder from its power when ignited, red from white and vitality from paralysis. The sting of this is in the tail, for by the claim that vitality is learnt from paralysis, she is presumably implying that her reclusiveness and her present paralysis from socializing is in fact teaching her about vitality and the
things that matter in life.

[ ,,,  ]

Robert and Greg:
When too appalled to stir -

She feels some ghastly Fright come up

And stop to look at her -

Salute her - with long fingers -

Caress her freezing hair -

Sip, Goblin, from the very lips

The Lover - hovered - o'er –

Greg: That’s in there, isn’t it?!

[  The above verses are from "The Soul has bandaged moments"  ]

Lois: I see why, syntactically, you would jump to that poem, but to me, that poem is very different.

Greg: But she’s got the lover in there with this very unpleasant, objectionable situation, together.

Lois: I just feel like the wincing is the child. It just dramatizes that childhood experience of being intruded on by the adult.  They just don’t talk the same language.

Robert: Adult experience intruded on by the childhood conscience.

Greg: But the child’s voice is still there, though, right? But it’s in the mind of an adult.

Lois: So you throw out the idea that this is the experience of a child.

Robert: No, I say that this poem resonates with my experience as a seventy year old man. [laughter]

Barbara: It’s more thoughtful if it’s both, because it’s the adult saying “Damn it, it’s still there. It happened when I was a child, it’s happening now. Why the hell is it still there?”

Greg: That’s great, yeah.

Lois: See, I don’t. If that were in the poem, the adult would be, like, maybe I do, fearing that the child’s words still dominated my life, and I don’t think that’s in the poem.

Jeff: Oh, I do. I agree with this idea that it’s a childhood thing that we never lose, and it’s a very effective way to get at us emotionally to say “Remember what it was like when you were four years old, and your conscience was challenged by the martial hand of your parent?” It still has that power over us. I like the last line, the Phosphorous of God, because there are two implications there. One is that phosphorous is the chemical that was demonstrated to you in chem class. It’s fireworks, and it’s glory, and that’s part of what God is – it gives off light and all that. Phosphorous is this nasty, nasty, horrible chemical - fire and brimstone is what it is. So, it’s these two sides. It’s this Calvinists thing, He’s all the good things, He’s all the really -

Lois: Wasn’t that the description you gave of Hell? In Revelation.

Greg: Usually she uses the word phosphorous with a more positive connotation. This is the only poem that I know where she uses it in this way.

Melba: You know, I’m looking at this King James, and she subsumes these “whore mongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars” under “rogues.”

Lois: Well, she’s claiming those personalities for herself – which I think is way cool. So, shall we say that the poem is at least understandable?

All: Oh yes.

Lois. OK, next poem.

Barbara reads:
A Wife—at daybreak I shall be—
Sunrise—Hast thou a Flag for me?
At Midnight, I am but a Maid,
How short it takes to make a Bride—
Then—Midnight, I have passed from thee
Unto the East, and Victory—

Midnight—Good Night! I hear them call,
The Angels bustle in the Hall—
Softly my Future climbs the Stair,
I fumble at my Childhood's prayer
So soon to be a Child no more—
Eternity, I'm coming—Sire,
Savior—I've seen the face—before!
                                 -J461/Fr186/M338

Lois: Well, the poem is a link to these powerful social conventions, are they not? It assumes that the reader knows at least as much as the speaker about what it means to be a wife. There’s nothing explained; it’s all taken for granted that we can picture and understand the idea. I wonder if there isn’t also a link between the speaker and social convention almost in a back and forth way with the dashes separating the two. Like social convention says “A Wife.” The speaker says, “At Daybreak?”

Ellen: What’s this flag?

JoAnn: Going into battle? [laughter]

Barbara: In the morning she’ll be a bride, so maybe it’s surrender.

Greg: In another poem, about a sunrise, she writes, “Still rears the east her amber flag/ Guides still the sun along the crag his caravan of red.” So it could be just a metonym for the sunrise.

Lois: She uses the stair image, and there’s a build-up, isn’t there? It’s almost like there’s an inner dialogue between the self saying, “I’m yet a maid,” and the world saying “How short it takes to make it bride.” And “then midnight” she’s back into herself.

Robert; There’s a Cinderella motif here.

Lois: Yes, very good. That is the voice.

Barbara: You can almost hear the angels who are guests fussing around at the wedding. “Softly my Future climbs the Stair,” there’s real threat there, I think.

Lois: Yes, I think you’re right. We begin to feel that in the second stanza. And, “So soon to be a Child no more,” what a beautiful description of someone who believed, “One day I am maid, the next day I have this expanded consciousness. I have this new spirituality just because I got married. That’s the belief that women bought into.”

Robert: “She rose to His Requirement—dropt/ The Playthings of Her Life/ To take the honorable Work/ Of Woman, and of Wife”

Barbara: Let’s suppose we’re not talking about marriage; we’re talking about death. “Eternity, I'm coming—Sire,/ Master—I've seen the face—before!” One moment I am here, another moment I am in eternity, makes sense of the angels. I mean, it could be both. And, the Bride of Christ, the marriage stuff could equally apply.

Lois: I suppose it could, but it kind of loses its charm if you make it about that. [laughter]

JoAnn: Johnson has “Savior” instead of “Master.”

Melba: With daybreak and midnight we may have an implicit notion that the cycle is going to be repeated – either reincarnation, or this life will return. I have to admit, I’m gravitating toward this reading – I’m much more comfortable thinking of this as about a sexual assault.

Joann: Where’d that come from?

Melba: “Softly my Future climbs the Stair?” To consummate the relationship.

Ellen : Not necessarily an assault.

Melba: Not necessarily an assault, but there’s a sense of a threat there,

Lois: It’s in the second stanza that you get the image of a consciousness becoming aware of being drawn into this house of doom, but being drawn into it nevertheless until, as several of you have pointed out, in the last line, there’s the recognition that there’s nothing really new here. …. The poems are about truth. The ones that really hit me are the ones that articulate what I’m unable to articulate on my own. But sometimes we read a poem and we think “What the hell?” After we grapple with it and come to an understanding, my feeling is that our own experience of truth has expanded. I feel that I’ve been enlarged. What do you think? I was trying to get some of your thoughts on this poem, kind of playing off the speaker’s experience vs. conventional phrases and conventional concepts of marriage. Does anybody else see any of that in there?

Barbara: I like the locution “To make it Bride.” You’d think it would be “To make a Bride.” But, “To make it Bride,” almost as if that was a verb.

JoAnn: Well, I have “To make a Bride.”

Greg: Oh, that’s interesting. So there’s a variant.

[In fact, it's "it" in all three copies of this poem, with no variant in any of them, according to Franklin]

Lois: Well I did notice that all of the poems that we’re looking at today we have in manuscript. There are some that have several versions, and they do have a lot of variants. ……

Jeff: It’s very opposite to “I’m Wife! I’m Czar!” That’s the view of the woman who goes along with society and says, “Oh great. I’m married now, I’m self-realized now.

Barbara: Well, whether you consider it as conventional social bride language, or as something more spiritual, as co-opting conventional language, or making it her own, she does all these things at once. She’s so good that way. That’s where the brilliance is. You often don’t have to choose.

Lois: Well, let’s move onto the next poem. Talk about waving a flag! This poem has everything but the flag, doesn’t it!

Ellen reads
Mine - by the Right of the White Election!

Mine - by the Royal Seal!

Mine - by the Sign in the Scarlet prison -

Bars - cannot conceal!

Mine - here - in Vision - and in Veto!

Mine - by the Grave's Repeal -

Titled - Confirmed -

Delirious Charter!

Mine - long as Ages steal!

                          -J528/Fr411/M219
[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/XVrCQxm9S84 ]

Lois: What is the tone of the poem?

Barbara, Greg: Triumphant.

Robert. Power. Celebratory.

Lois: Empowered? Assertive? Unapologetic?

JoAnn: What is it celebrating?

Lois: It’s almost manic, isn’t it? “Delirious charter!

Greg: It’s rich in Calvinist elements. “White Election,” that’s the white robes from the book of Revelation, the Royal seal that the saved saints have in their foreheads, the sign in the scarlet prison, you’re looking for signs in nature and within yourself for signs of God’s intent, the grave’s repeal, that’s the resurrection of the dead. Confirmed, another church word.

Lois: They’re all declarations of status that we recognize, whether we’re a bible reader or not.

JoAnn: What does the last line mean?

Barbara, Greg: Forever

JoAnn: Oh, so it’s time.

Barbara: As in “steal away”, not “steal” like a thief.

Lois: The tone could also be one of irony. I think I could read it that way.

Ellen: Could she be mocking what a church sermon sounded like?

Lois: She could be just co-opting the language of Christian religion. But it’s very intimidating, right?

Greg: It’s powerful imagery.

Lois: But I think she’s taking that imagery, that language, and making it her own.

Greg: Yes, as we might say, “Oh man, I’m in Heaven.”

Lois: Yeah. And she’s saying, “I don’t have to play your game. It’s mine!”

Greg: I think that’s what the veto is. You would have your conversion experience and declare yourself and apply for church membership. Then the deacons and the minister would get together and you’d either be admitted or you’d be vetoed. More church language..

Lois: Yeah, that’s good. And she’s saying that her veto is the only one that matters to her.

Ellen : The repetition gives it a kind of teachery, preachery sound. I could almost laugh at it. Melodramatic.

Lois: I just really like the tone of it. It wouldn’t much matter to me if she just went “blah-blahblah-blahblah” [laughter] “Mine! Mine! Mine!” It’s a good poem to read if you’re depressed, or if life knocks you around a little bit. It just kind of gets the blood pumping.

Melba: I’m wondering about the last line. “Long as ages steal.” I’m trying to understand it. One of the ideas I was thinking about is that maybe she’s saying, “Look, the future wants us to be future oriented, and maybe at the end of time all of these good things will happen., but until then it’s all mine – as long as the ages are unfolding. She’s going to live in the here and the now.

Greg: I think that’s good, Melba, because as long as the ages are stealing, we’re still in time.

Melba: Yes, as long as time is making its progress, she’s going to seize her heaven right here and right now. It dovetails nicely with “the phosphorous of God,” because, “Boy, if I’m gonna burn I’m gonna burn brightly!” [laughter]

[ From "Emily Dickinson as a Second Language: Demystifying the Poetry," by Greg Mattingly, page 118

Although in Mine - by the Right of the White Election! “white” has been read as alluding to a bridal dress, brides did not customarily wear white in the United States until the late 1870s, and the poem is dated by editors to 1862. White was the color of a northern European background associated with purity and excellence, but Dickinson does not appear to have applied it in that sense. However, in the 1850's and 60's, white was the color of royalty, of order and tradition against the red of republicanism, and there is perhaps a glance at that meaning here. ]

Lois: Well, we won’t be able to do justice to this last poem. Would somebody like to read? This to me is one of the most complicated and fruitful poems.

Greg:
Some -Work for Immortality —
The Chiefer part, for Time —
He -Compensates -immediately —
The former -Checks -on Fame —

Slow Gold -but Everlasting —
The Bullion of Today —
Contrasted with the Currency
Of Immortality —

A Beggar -Here and There —
Is gifted to discern
Beyond the Broker's insight —
One's -Money -One's -the Mine –
                       -J406/Fr536/M294

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/r0R17Jt_Yrk ]

Lois: OK, I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that this is the voice of the mature adult/Queen.

Barbara: That’s no limb.

Lois: There are some obvious alternatives to reading the poem. In the first stanza the speaker wrestles with the concept of time/work/reward.

Greg: It’s all in the vocabulary of commerce, too. [general agreement]

Lois: But if “He” is time, and “Former” is Immortality,” then what?

Greg: In the first stanza she’s saying that some people work for immediate gain, while others work for a more long-term goal.

Lois: That reward is withheld in this life in exchange for reward after death.

Greg: Yes, and also the work that you might have to do to produce great art. The fruits of your labor could be art – could be immortality..

Barbara: So which one’s the money and which one’s the mine?

Greg: The money is immediate, the mine is immortality, or if you develop an art it’s always there and you can always get more gold out of there. It’s learning how to fish instead of having a fish.

Lois: That’s the Christian message, isn’t it? I think the whole thing is a joke.

Barbara: Currency of immortality – it’s very tongue-in-cheek.

Lois: You’ve got two choices. If you buy into this you can get your reward now, or you can get it after death.

Jeff: I think the idea of it being a joke is bolstered by the last line. “Broker’s insight,” would you have trust in a broker’s insight?

Greg: I would in matters of everyday commerce. I’ve been reading it as a statement of what is. It’s true that most of us work for immediate gain, our survival, our position. Not many of us work for immortality, and remember immortality can be through poetry, or other art – something that’s lasting that you leave behind. Not many people work for that. I think this is a description of how things are, done cleverly in this language of commerce.

Lois: And Christianity.

Greg: Yeah, if you interpret “immortality” that way. I think it’s both and that it’s meant to work both ways.

Melba: Yes, if the beggar is the one who has been gifted to discern, then he-she-it has gone beyond the broker’s insight.

”