Emily Dickinson Reading Circle 11 November 2016

Emily Dickinson Reading Circle

11 November 2016

Facilitated by Margaret Freeman

Fascicle 40 Continued

Alice reads.

The Admirations—and Contempts—of time—

Show justest—through an Open Tomb—

The Dying—as it were a Height

Reorganizes Estimate

And what We saw not

We distinguish clear—

And mostly—see not

What We saw before—

'Tis Compound Vision—

Light—enabling Light—

The Finite—furnished

With the Infinite—

Convex—and Concave Witness—

Back—toward Time—

And forward—

Toward the God of Him—
                     -J906/Fr830/M409

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/BVehGEyKPr0  ]

I’m reminded of a session we had a couple of years ago, talking about compound, concave, and convex vision – very interesting. A poem we read last year, Behind me dips Eternity.

Margaret. It’s 721 in Johnson, Franklin 906.

Polly. It comes later than this poem.

Alice. But it’s dealing with the same kind of thing; you separate time into eternity, which is before, and then immortality.

Alice reads.

Behind Me—dips Eternity—

Before Me—Immortality—

Myself—the Term between—

Death but the Drift of Eastern Gray,

Dissolving into Dawn away,

Before the West begin—

'Tis Kingdoms—afterward—they say—

In perfect—pauseless Monarchy—

Whose Prince—is Son of None—

Himself—His Dateless Dynasty—

Himself—Himself diversify—

In Duplicate divine—

'Tis Miracle before Me—then—

'Tis Miracle behind—between—

A Crescent in the Sea—

With Midnight to the North of Her—

And Midnight to the South of Her—

And Maelstrom—in the Sky— 

[ To hear Alice read this poem, go to https://youtu.be/FdUNq5mieRw ]

Polly. Could I just insert a note of biography at this point? When John Brown was in jail and awaiting execution, he wrote a letter to the governor of Virginia, in which he said, “I am not important, I am just a short pause between the eternity behind and the eternity ahead. The letter was published, and I am almost convinced that Emily saw it. This poem may very well have been inspired by the letter he wrote.

Connie. What was the date of the poem?

Margaret. It’s 1863 according to the handwriting.

Polly. It’s after John Brown died. It could have put an image in Emily’s mind. [general agreement]

Margaret. I think she often did that. She’d [crosstalk] something, or a little phrase ….

Connie. When was it that John Brown was hanged?

Harrison. Wasn’t that actually just a little before the Civil War?

Jeff. Yes.

Harrison. Higginson raised some money to support him, I think.

Jeff. Higginson was one of– “The Secret Six” a group of men, most of whom had money to give him. And, after Harper’s Ferry they were, “Oh no, not me. I had nothing to do with it.” Higginson was the only one who said, “Yes, absolutely, I supported him.”

Margaret. It certainly explains the final part of that poem, With Midnight to the North of Her/ And Midnight to the South of Her/ And Maelstrom—in the Sky. The Civil War? … But how about the admirations and contempts of time? It is a valid point, as Alice points out – That pivot between life and death.

Alice. Yes, I’ve always been interested that she puts time behind, and before you, you can’t measure by time because there isn’t any measure.

Esther. Estimate stood out to me, because I think we have that word in another poem in the fascicle.

[crosstalk]

Polly. What I was thinking, too, as we were going around the table hearing , poem after poem after poem, I think that if anyone ever doubts that Emily found faith in God, you should give them this fascicle to read, because she’s talking – I don’t know who she’s talking to, whether it’s Jesus or someone else, called “Sweet” in several poems – someone she loves, someone she’s given her life to. It’s all there.

Margaret. What do you think of the Open Tomb?

Alice. Death is staring us in the face. [inaudible]. It’s only when we come face to face with it that we begin to think. But, then we think with Compound Vision.

Margaret M. I see it as a lens that we look at people through who have died, and we see them differently from when they were alive.

Margaret. Ah, so you’re seeing the We then, not as the dying, but those who have experienced a person dying.

Greg. Some have seen the Open Tomb as a glance at Jesus’ tomb, and the rock being rolled away  after the resurrection, how that Reorganizes Estimate. That’s one reading of this.

Margaret. It’s kind of interesting, because I’ve always read it the other way. I’ve always read The Dying—as it were a Height/ Reorganizes Estimate and thought We saw not, we in the open tomb as the dying. Mostly see not/ What We saw before—. I’ve never thought about it the other way.

Greg. One of her themes is How by the dead we love to sit/ Become so wondrous fair. It’s the same theme.

Alice. I resist attempts to pin it down to one particular experience, place, or person.

Polly. How about that word Sweet, though? We must have read it four times, I swear. What does it mean? O I mean, she had plenty of other words…[crosstalk.]

Margaret M. Three or four times, in this fascicle, she calls somebody sweet. It’s an endearment.

Margaret. Sweet she’ll often put with marks on either side of it to set it off.

Polly. She does it on the third page of the fascicle. The first – Sweet – proved/ I ere I saw thee -. She’s talking to someone.

Jeff. The someone does seem to be Jesus, all through the fascicle. And, at the end of this fascicle, Toward the God of Him.

Margaret. I read that as the God that we become when we die. Jeff is saying it’s Jesus, and I’m saying it’s making the person who died Godlike.

Greg. In Victorian times they would easily conflate the savior, Christ, with the romantic interest. I think it was that Austin wrote to Mabel Todd, “You are my Christ. Through you I see God.” That wasn’t atypical language back then. So, this could easily be someone, or an imaginary person, whom she’s elevating to this stature.

Margaret. Or the God that is in oneself, which is what Margaret was suggesting.

Greg. I think Sue destroyed some of Emily’s letters to her, because they smacked too much “of idolatry.”

Margaret. There is a book by Christine something-or-other about women’s romantic behavior toward each other in the nineteenth century. It was very common language to have this kind of intimate connection, in that kind of way

Greg. She seems to have marked witness for a variant, but left none There was no variant

Esther. Well, I may be completely off, but when I read Compound Vision, I immediately thought of compound eyes of insects. She was so aware of [crosstalk]

Margaret. I’m [inaudible] to look at Franklin, because, she has other crosses in that poem, and if Greg is right, then none of them are given alternatives.

Greg. I have Miller’s book here. It doesn’t give any.

Margaret. [Consulting Variorum] Yes, it says, “marked for alternative, none given.” – for any of the three. And, it’s the only copy that there is. That’s kind of interesting.

Margaret M. But the connection – those two lines together, Tis Compound Vision—/

Light—enabling Light, That’s a very fascinating kind of [crosstalk] We’re given light when we’re given light to see the light by.

Connie. In a way, you’re enlightened a little bit and suddenly you get the bigger picture.

Alice. That’s exactly right. You get it in 3-D.

Margaret. That’s reflected in the poem The Poets light but Lamps/ Themselves go out.

Alice. She’s dealing with dualities all the way through here…admiration and contempt

Margaret. If vital Ligh/t inhere as to the Suns, right?

Polly. Each Age a Lens/ Disseminating their/ Circumference —

Alice. Time and finity is the duality that I wanted, because infinity is about space and time is about time, but you can’t write about time when you move into infinity. She’s balancing herself right on the edge.

Margaret. Although, is he balancing herself because what she’s balancing herself between is a traditional idea of those two terms?

Alice. I don’t think so …

Margaret. Because she says, you know, that Forever is composed of Nows/‘Tis not a different time. Infinity and eternity are with us now. It supersedes time.

Margaret M. But I really think, in this poem it’s a different situation. She’s saying the way we see a person changes after they die. [general agreement] So, she’s not really talking about time. She’s talking about that passage, and what people mean to us after they die. We see them in a better light. That’s psychologically true, I think. “Don’t speak ill of the dead.”

Greg. Doesn’t Back—toward Time refer to when the person was alive?

Margaret M. Yes

Alice. I keep seeing her on that hinge. “Myself the term between.” And before is before you were in the world, and after is after you die.

Margaret. I can see the other reading, and I don’t know why we can’t have both, in a way. The fact that it’s in this moment that.- We distinguish clear—/ And mostly—see not/ What We saw before. That’s how I like to read it.

Polly. Does this have anything to do with the last poem [in the fascicle] – Unto us the Suns/ extinguish/ To our Opposite? New Horizons – they/ Embellish -/ Fronting us with Night. She’s playing with that whole idea of the shift between life and death.

Margaret. And the very first stanza of that poem, Polly. Unfulfilled to Observation. It’s not yet. It’s incomplete. But to Faith\ - a Revolution/ In Locality.

Margaret M. In the other poem it’s illocality

Alice. Because it’s the opposite.

Margaret M. Affliction. It’s location is illocality. Here, Faith is a Locality.

Harrison. Location, location, location. [laughter]

Margaret. “It rents immensity” is a variant.

[interlude]

Polly reads.

'Tis Sunrise — Little Maid — Hast Thou
No Station in the Day?
'Twas not thy wont, to hinder so —
Retrieve thine industry —

'Tis Noon — My little Maid —
Alas — and art thou sleeping yet?
The Lily — waiting to be Wed —
The Bee — Hast thou forgot?

My little Maid — 'Tis Night — Alas
That Night should be to thee
Instead of Morning — Had'st thou broached
Thy little Plan to Die —
Dissuade thee, if I could not, Sweet,
I might have aided — thee —
                                 -J908/Fr832/M410

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/LYYCHqEaAu4 ]

Margaret. You know, I have to say this: Just today I think it was, in the Recorder, the young woman is going up to trial for having aided her boyfriend to commit suicide, do you remember that? And, the end of this poem, if you had broached that little Plan to Die, if you had told me that you wanted to die, if I couldn’t dissuade you, I was going to help you. … And that’s exactly what this poem [crosstalk]. I mean, it’s scary.

Connie. Send a copy of it to the jail. Send it to the judge. [laughter]

Margaret. What does that say about the voice in this poem? Obviously, why isn’t this maid up and doing it’s life work? It’s a bit like the chapter in Hawthorne that we talked about several years ago, “Governor Pyncheon.” The death of Governor Pyncheon and the observer on the death of Governor Pyncheon is pretending that he isn’t dead, and he’s calling him to life. Why aren’t you getting up and going about your business and the rest of it, and all the time the reader of that chapter knows that the governor is dead . And why doesn’t this stupid narrator in that chapter pick that up? That’s my reaction when I’m reading that chapter, and yet, in the whole point of it, in being able to stay at that point at not recognizing that Governor Pyncheon is in fact dead, enables the narrator to talk about things in life that Governor Pyncheon was doing.

Connie. It’s about denial.

Polly. But, this is what Emily would have heard all of her life in Sunday school and Church, that is, little children, make your deal with God, because we never know when we’re going to die, and that happened to children that she knew.

The Little Maid, does that mean a young girl or does it mean maid?

Greg. A flower, which she found dying in the evening and which she could have picked in the morning, had she known.

Alice. Goodness, where do you get that from?

Greg. That’s how I’ve always read it.

Margaret M. You know, there is a tone in here that made me think that it was not a person.

Greg. She addresses flowers as little maids.

Polly. The Lily too, and the Bee, waiting to be wed.

Margaret M. And, your little Plan to Die, too light for the death of a child. Not necessarily that that is the interpretation, but hat is one way of reading it, I think, that isn’t quite so macabre [laughs]

Greg. At the same time it calls to mind the kind of world that Emily lived in that Polly was describing.

Connie. But, But, Thy little Plan to Die sounds so condescending.

Margaret. But, if you think of the flowers that she was expecting to come up, but didn’t, then you could read it in that way, as a metaphor for the idea that we could die and not come up when we were supposed to.

……………….

Margaret M reads.

Till Death—is narrow Loving—
The scantest Heart extant
Will hold you till your privilege
Of Finiteness—be spent—

But He whose loss procures you
Such Destitution that
Your Life too abject for itself
Thenceforward imitate—

Until—Resemblance perfect—
Yourself, for His pursuit
Delight of Nature—abdicate—
Exhibit Love—somewhat— [laughter]
                              -J907/Fr831/M409

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to  https://youtu.be/JdQ8ecJxzaw  ]

Like, if you’d die, because he did, yeah, that’s kind of like love. [laughter] Wow! Kind of like the real thing. That can’t be the meaning of the poem, right?

Margaret F. But, look at the language of this poem: narrow, scantest, spent, loss, finiteness, abject,, abdicate. What’s going on there?

Margaret M. It does seem to be saying you’re just so struck with grief that all you can do is imitate the dying one, and give up the pursuit of delight in nature; abdicate it. Go. Die too. Resemblance perfect

Alice. I can read it almost totally opposite. I start by reading that first line as what’s going on is exactly what I learned when my husband died. I would have thought that I loved him as big as I could love. Then I realized afterwards, as the years went by, that I was reading everything that I read totally differently from how I read before because I had never come that close to death. Never. Never really understood it. So, narrow Loving is what you have before; The scantest Heart, the smallest possibility of love existing will hold you, ‘til you die, because you don’t know anything more. But He whose loss procures you – when someone dies, makes you die in a way, because of that death. You just can’t do anything. Then you imitate – you strive to imitate that which you hadn’t even perceived before that larger vision. And because of that larger vision – I’m switching over somewhat here to theology – love is the big answer, the big reality. What you learn is to Exhibit Love – somewhat, because divine love is so huge we can’t comprehend it. We are “but a filament” of it.

Margaret. I can read that that way, Alice. If I look at the syntax of that last sentence. Until—Resemblance perfect, that picks up the imitate in the previous line. So, until resemblance perfect yourself – that that’s what you’re trying to do, but, for His pursuit Delight of Nature—abdicate – we’ve been reading it as us pursuing and abdicating the delight of nature. But what if it’s the person, for his pursuit of perfection, that he or she abdicated delight in nature.

Alice. You’re moving beyond that. You’re willing to say goodbye to the world.

Margaret. That’s right. So that line, for His pursuit Delight of Nature—abdicate, is almost like a parenthetical. That’s the way Alice is reading it, right?

Alice. Right.

Margaret. That’s interesting. I’ve been noticing more and more in my reading of Dickinson’s poems that I’m doing that more and more. I’m taking out things. You read it straightforward in the syntax and it seems as though it’s reading this way, but when you start seeing her markings and everything else you start seeing that she’s putting whole sentences inside other sentences, embedding them in such a way that you could read it –

Alice. She’s always working dualities. His pursuit. Is that again, Jesus, or God? Resemblance perfect. Are you ever completely into - going back to nature – into nature’s plan, that you understand it so completely that you lose your finite nature totally, and you are part of the divine love.

Margaret. That goes back to something I think Polly said earlier. It always seems that Dickinson is torn, all the way through the poetry, about what she really believes and what she doesn’t believe. These old questions – is she really a Christian; is she not? Does she really believe in God; does she not? In these kinds of readings, it’s not so much that she’s torn, but that she’s balancing the two - so that one can read Dickinson with the faith that she really believed in God, against the other side, where you say, well, she never could bring herself to believe totally, to give up and say “I believe.”

Polly. She thought heaven was right here on earth. Yeah, I think that somewhat is at the heart of the poem.

Jeff. I think if all of us knew our bibles, we’d read Emily Dickinson with much more belief that she definitely was a Christian. Every time we see explained the references that are in the poem it sets[?] that.

Margaret. She’s steeped in the bible, and Shakespeare.

[Inerlude]

Margaret. The poem is Just so Jesus raps.

Polly. Isn’t there another poem where she’s waiting for Jesus and in stead, Dolly comes?

Greg. There’s a famous image, or painting, that was reproduced a lot, showing Jesus knocking on your door; it was like a symbol. “He’s knocking on your door. Open your door to him." [William Holman Huntm "The Light of the World" ]

Margaret. Oh, it’s Dying! Dying in the night!, She says Death won't hurt—now Dollie's here!

Margaret M. Who’s Dollie?

Polly. Sue. That was her nickname.

Margaret. Let’s do Just so, Jesus raps.

Leslie reads.
Just so, Jesus raps—He does not weary—
Last at the knocker and first at the bell,
Then on divinest tiptoe standing
Might He but-spy the lady’s soul.
When He retires, chilled and weary—
It will be ample time for me
Patient, upon the steps, until then—
Heart, I am knocking low at Thee!
                              -J317/Fr263/M130

[ To hear this poem read aloud, and view the Holman painting referred to above, go to https://youtu.be/dXAZzbSDDes  ]

Greg. Heart was a way of addressing a person, right? How is it, Hearts, with thee? A term of endearment.

[Interlude]

Margaret reads.
Pain—expands the Time—
Ages coil within
The minute Circumference
Of a single Brain—

Pain contracts—the Time—
Occupied with Shot
Gamuts of Eternities
Are as they were not—
                    - J967/Fr83/M410

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/Opl4OkiwAaY  ]

Someone. What are gamuts?

Greg. It was originally the musical scale. Then it came to mean a range of anything after a while.

Margaret. Note, there’s a variant, “triplets.”

Lynn. And what does shot mean?

Greg. That’s what you got hit with in the Civil War.

Margaret. It’s like time’s standing still when you’re in an accident.

Greg. You’ve got time and eternity again. Another time and eternity poem.

Someone. Flit as they were not, that’s interesting.

Greg. They go by just [snap] like that. They’re gone.

Margaret. I love that The minute Circumference/ Of a single Brain, and of course she was very interested in the brain. Jed Deppman does that very nicely in “Trying to think with Emily Dickinson.” He talks about the science that she knew, the philosophy she knew in the nineteenth century, and how interested she was in the Scottish philosophers, for example.

Greg. Coil is two syllables, lurk is one. You don’t see that often, with her variants.

Margaret. Well, coil actually occupies one position metrically. When you have two vowels together you can make them [crosstalk]

Greg. You have three Iambs. If it’s two syllables you have three iambs in the second line. That would be hymn meter. If coil is one syllable, then you have five syllables.

Margaret. Yes, that’s what I have.

Greg. Right, OK

Alice. It’s five, five, seven, five.

Polly. What would Triplets of eternities [variant] mean?

Greg. She played the piano. She’d know what a triplet was. It’s a musical term. Da-da-da.

Alice. But I don’t think she’s arriving at it through thinking of these, I think she’s making a very common hymn meter, which is six, six, eight, six; It’s called short meter. And, she’s just contracting it, the way some people contract the sonnet into twelve lines in stead of fourteen. So you have exactly a hymn-style reading.

Margaret M. This is an interesting poem to me because it goes back to that belief that as you die you see your whole life; Ages coil within. Pain—expands the Time, so that, at the time of dying you can see your whole life. The second stanza is exactly the opposite. As you get shot, time contracts and you don’t see anything. It’s like everything that ever happened – eternity – doesn’t exist in that moment.

Margaret. What interests me about this poem is her use of the word Circumference, because that’s a word that just resonates throughout her poetry, and here it’s a minute Circumference.

Margaret M. But that minute circumference holds the whole circumference.

Margaret. Yes, The Brain is wider than the Sky

Margaret M. Right, yes. Yet, in that second stanza, she’s saying that if you die by getting shot, it’s exactly the opposite experience.

Margaret. But the Shot isn’t being shot, is it? I think it means the shot of the pain. [crosstalk] Two different kinds of pain.

Margaret M. The difference in the structure is that second line in the second stanza, Occupied with Shot. She’s making more of a situation there. She’s describing a situation. It might be kind of ambiguous, but, a situation isn’t described in the first stanza. …. The next poem is a long one.

Esther reads.
Fitter to see Him, I may be
For the long Hindrance—Grace—to Me—
With Summers, and with Winters, grow,
Some passing Year—A trait bestow

To make Me fairest of the Earth—
The Waiting—then—will seem so worth
I shall impute with half a pain
The blame that I was chosen—then—

Time to anticipate His Gaze—
It's first—Delight—and then—Surprise—
The turning o'er and o'er my face
For Evidence it be the Grace—

He left behind One Day—So less
He seek Conviction, That—be This—

I only must not grow so new
That He'll mistake—and ask for me
Of me—when first unto the Door
I go—to Elsewhere go no more—

I only must not change so fair
He'll sigh—"The Other—She—is Where?"
The Love, tho', will array me right
I shall be perfect—in His sight—

If He perceive the other Truth—
Upon an Excellenter Youth—

How sweet I shall not lack in Vain—
But gain—thro' loss—Through Grief—obtain—
The Beauty that reward Him best—
The Beauty of Demand—at Rest—
                             - J968/Fr834/M411

Leslie. She cold be addressing Jesus there.

Alice. She could be, yes, Jesus or God

Margaret M. Or could not be, too

Margaret. Especially If He perceive the other Truth/ Upon an Excellenter Youth.

Leslie. It’s such a funny concept, that she would not want to change so much, to be too perfect?

Alice. She’s saying Fitter to see Him. I want to be ready to die. I want to be ready.

Leslie. But, she wanted to make sure that she knows her.

Alice. Yes, but she wants to be fitter to be there, so she hopes she will grow more beautiful, will get these other traits, but not too far so he wouldn’t recognize her.

Margaret. Why did he leave her behind One Day?

Alice. Because she didn’t die, she wasn’t chosen when she thought she had been - half a pain
The blame that I was chosen. Oh! I have to die so young? And then she gets passed over, so she says then I have Time to anticipate His Gaze.

Margaret. Well what about the lover?

Barbara. That’s what I thought, but I didn’t know anything else about her life. I thought it was about a lover.

Margaret. I think it is.

Alice. Oh, I don’t think so.

Margaret. You can believe it is Christ as well, because Christ is the lover. I think the poem is written in terms of a physical lover.

Margaret M. Yes, especially when you look at the last stanza. She’s back to that theme of hers about enjoying not having things. [laughter]
How sweet I shall not lack in Vain—
But gain—thro' loss—Through Grief—obtain—
The Beauty that reward Him best—
The Beauty of Demand—at Rest
I love that. That’s very Bhuddistic to me.

Margaret. I had to look up the variant in Franklin on this one, because it didn’t work out when I was trying to work out what the variant was for chosen. For trait, Franklin gives the variant, “charm.” Then, when you get to the next cross, which is chosen, the variant is “common.” The blame that I was common—then. Then, Time to anticipate His Gaze – the variant is “Time’s”

Alice. She often puts apostrophes where they don’t belong. They wander, her apostrophes.

Connie. The emphasis on Grace would make it quite religious.

Alice. Yes.

Margaret. I don’t see that, necessarily. Grace doesn’t have to be religious.

[crosstalk]

Greg. In A something in a summer’s day, she describes the summer night as such a subtle—shimmering grace.

Connie. They used the word grace a lot.

Unknown. The more I think about it the more it reminds me of how, when you want something really badly, and it takes forever and you’re hoping that you’re worthy. It almost doesn’t matter what it is.

Greg. Yeah, I think that’s the best way to read most of her poems. It’s more an experience. What caused the experience doesn’t matter so much. [crosstalk]

[interlude]

Margaret M. I was saying that the passions that she could imagine through her stories that she made up, or even the correspondence that she had, were her muse. That was how she generated the lightning strikes in her head, that we felt it in her poetry. She felt intensely even though she wasn’t doing anything [laughs] in her father’s house. And, she had to arouse her passion somehow, and I think she did it with the fantasy romances with married men – every one of her “masters” were married men – or with Jesus. She was trying to feel all the passions of the human condition, even though she was a recluse -

Margaret. - in order to be able to create her poetry.

Margaret M. Exactly. I can’t say – it’s not the whole story, it’s just a slant on it, because … why can’t we all do that [laughs]. We can’t all do that, and she did it so brilliantly. What her experience encompassed, her circumference, was huge; it was as big as anyone, ever I think, has gotten to. And, she had to get that out of her