Emily Dickinson Reading Circle 14 October 2016

Emily Dickinson Reading Circle

14 October 2016

Facilitated by Margaret Freeman

Fascicle 40 Continued

Connie reads.

Denial—is the only fact
Perceived by the Denied—
Whose Will—a numb significance—
The Day the Heaven died—

And all the Earth strove common round—
Without Delight, or Beam—
What Comfort was it Wisdom—was—
The spoiler of Our Home?
                          -J965/Fr826/M407

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/6Aw5Jp6p16g ]

It’s about divorce. [laughter]

Margaret. Remember what we said about the Reading Circle. We don’t talk about interpretation or meaning, right? “What does this poem mean?” We don’t do that, right? That’s the kind of thing you got in school that really killed poetry for a lot of people. What we do is explore our experiences and feelings are from the poem. Eventually we could come to interpretation, but we don’t have to. It’s a question of, “What is the poem doing to us? – and, how are we responding to this particular poem.

Ann. What does Delight or Beam mean?

Margaret. Light. A beam of light. There is an alternate for Beam in the fascicle, which is “Aim.”

Connie. When you smile, you beam.

Margaret. Without Delight, it’s interesting if you look at the word. Delight has the word light in  it.

Margaret M. Maybe it’s about the kind of divorce that we call death.

Margaret. Well, Denial is the only fact/ Perceived by the denied. I really like that contrast. Denial is what you do to somebody else, right? You deny something, and the denied is the person being denied. So there are two beings, whatever those beings are. It strikes me that this is a very strong opening. When you experience denial – when somebody denies you something, that’s the only fact. You’ve been denied. There’s a kind of resistance, isn’t there?

Mary Clare. The Day the Heaven died.

Margaret. Right.

Margaret M. And your will is of no significance. There’s nothing you can do about it.

Mary Clarre That is very significant. It’s your whole world.

Margaret. And note that the alternate for numb significance is “blank intelligence.” Everything goes blank, right? What can you do.

Connie. I was reading it as “I am in a state of denial,” because I’ve been denied. It kind of rolls around on itself.

Margaret. Oh, that’s nice Connie. I think you can read it that way; and it also fits with Whose Will. But, if you look at The Day the Heaven died; what is heaven?

Mary Clare. The highest

Margaret. Right. You have a concept of heaven. Where is it? Up. Hell is down, and we’re in the middle. So, you’ve got a vertical view of existence, which if the traditional Christian way of thinking about the world. So, in the old days, when people thought that the earth was flat, you had that view. Now The Day the Heaven died could result in what? - the Earth strove common round – Don’t you have here a spatial contrast? What do we know scientifically about the earth? It rotates on it’s axis as it is moving around the sun. That’s how we get or days and nights, so that not only do we have the day/night contrast, but we also have the seasonal contrast. So, if heaven has died, and the earth is revolving without delight or beam, it could mean that the earth has no meaning. Light is also a metaphor for knowledge and understanding. What Comfort was it Wisdom—was—/ The spoiler of Our Home? What have we learned in this poem?

Mary Clare. I think of a child that’s been denied, then knowing later, gaining some wisdom, that it wasn’t the end of the earth. It wasn’t that heaven died. It was spoiled. It was less than it was; one is less than one was – or thought one was; but she’s saying, what comfort is it, even if it’s wisdom that does this, how does that soothe us? … I don’t know – there’s something wonderful about wisdom and denial.

Margaret. And it spoiled our home. What is our home? It’s the earth, right?

Mary Clarre. Ourselves. It’s ourselves.

Margaret. To me, it’s a description of an emotional state. You’re denied something, and you’re really so sad about that. It hurts you so much that heaven dies; the earth goes around and you don’t care It doesn’t have any meaning, and what good is it to know that that was the right thing, though?

Margaret. Now consider this. They have dated this as early 1864. So, you’re in the middle of the nineteenth century. Remember when Charles Darwin published The Origin of  Species? 1859. And The Origin of Species shook up religion, and the earth wasn’t four thousand years old.

[Interlude]

That’s why I say that this can be about the new wisdom of the nineteenth century that upturned the old ideas about heaven and Christianity and religion at the same time that it’s affecting us emotionally. What is being denied is that faith – that trust that we had – that we knew what the world was like, we knew where we were going after death. All of that surety religion gave was being denied. And it does affect us emotionally, so we can read it the Mary Clare and Margaret were reading it.

Greg. I like what Margaret [M] said about it’s describing an emotional state. That state could result from the conditions that you just outlined, but it could result from other kinds of circumstances as well, so she doesn’t tie it to a particular.

Margaret. Exactly. Which is why poetry can be read on so many different levels. There’s no one reading, one meaning, one interpretation, which is why I avoid trying to do that. Any final thoughts?

Jeff. It’s very hard to read, isn’t it? [general agreement] I mean, even understanding it now.

Sandy. It’s not flowing, the way some of it does.

Margaret. I can read it “What comfort was it? Wisdom was the spoiler of our Home.”

[A mixed discussion follows concerning the dashes and how they influence the way the poem is read aloud. Margaret points out that, on the manuscripts, what we call dashes are irregular marks that vary in length and orientation on the page]

Margaret M. I see them as her conducting the way you read, and determining the rhythm, so that you put the right glumph together and pause in between.

Lynn. That one word Wisdom that’s what I keep coming back to because it reminds me of a great personal loss, but then that word wisdom makes me think of it as being something [crosstalk] larger scale.

Mary Clare Could it be the religious area, and because they denied these new findings – the religious community – because of what it was like around her time?

Margaret. Well you know, there’s a saying that it’s important to be wiser today than you were yesterday. That’s the gist of it. It’s a kind of a humility thing – that you can be wrong, and the next day might show that you’re wiser. It’s based on the idea that knowledge is progressive. We progress in our knowledge over the centuries. We know more than they did twenty years ago, even.

Sandy. And they keep disproving what they learned twenty years ago, then they disprove it again by some other discovery. It keeps changing.

Jeff. But building.

Sandy. Building onto what we know?

Jeff. There’s more there all the time. Even if we disprove things, there’s a broader base.

Sandy. I’m thinking of that period, when things were kind of falling apart in the religious quarters, because it wasn’t as the bible said.

Margaret. But, to come back to Lynn’s point, there’s a distinction between wisdom and knowledge. You can have knowledge without wisdom, but you can’t have wisdom without knowledge. So, what is it that knowledge doesn’t have that wisdom has?

Jeff. Understanding.

Margaret. Yes, taking it inside.

Jeff. That’s what being human is all about. You can have a PhD in chemistry and have zero wisdom.

Margaret. OK, let’s move on. I think we could get bogged down.

Greg. Oh no. [laughter]

Margaret reads.

All forgot for recollecting
Just a paltry One —
All forsook, for just a Stranger's
New Accompanying —

Grace of Wealth, and Grace of Station
Less accounted than
An unknown Esteem possessing —
Estimate — Who can —

Home effaced — Her faces dwindled —
Nature — altered small —
Sun — if shone — or Storm — if shattered —
Overlooked I all —

Dropped — my fate — a timid Pebble —
In thy bolder Sea —
Prove — me — Sweet — if I regret it —
Prove Myself — of Thee —
                         - J966/Fr827/M408

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

[crosstalk]

Margaret M. There’s also an echo in that third poem. [Wert Thou but ill — that I might show thee, actually the second poem in the fascicle.]

No Service hast Thou, I would not achieve it —
To die — or live —
The first — Sweet, proved I, ere I saw thee —
For Life — be Love —

So, Prove — me — Sweet and Sweet, proved. There’s an echo

Lynn. I don’t understand the first stanza at all.

Margaret. The way I read it, syntactically – she often reverses the structure of her sentences – so that if you recollect Just a paltry One [vocal stress on “paltry”], you forget everything. If you have just a stranger accompanying you, which is a New Accompanying because it’s a stranger – it’s the first time that it’s happening, you’ll forsake everything,

Margaret M It’s all about giving up everything for this one thing. It’s given up, just to drop my pebble in your bold …

Mary Clare. It sounds like wisdom to me.

Margaret M. Or art.

Margaret. And the second stanza does that, and the alternates are “grace of rank” and “grace of fortune.” They’re less accounted than An unknown Esteem. Who cans estimate that? That is actually an echo of something that comes up later.

Margaret M. I think we did say last time that there was a commitment to poetry running through this fascicle. That might help to get us going here.

Connie. How do you interpret An unknown Esteem? How do you interpret Esteem?

Margaret. Esteem has a variant, “content;” [accent on the second syllable] an unknown content possessing. Esteem has an idea of value being placed on it, and content is the result of that value.

Sandy. Content [accent on the first syllable] I would say. Meaning, it’s contained.

Margaret. If you look at the rhythmic structure of the line, it’s an iambic line, and con’tent wouldn’t work, I don’t think.

Ann. In nineteenth-century world, an impression is easily made by wealth and station. In society we may look down on the unknown person already has rank and wealth, we [inaudible]. She’s sort of reversed the sentence, here. So, who can estimate what esteem you possess – for the unknown.

Margaret. I think that’s right, Ann. Notice the alternate: “Grace of Rank and Grace of Fortune.” Rank is scalar. Wealth can be not scalar. We can have wealth or not have wealth, but rank automatically brings in the idea that something could be ranked higher or lower than somebody else. [crosstalk]

Greg. It has to scan the same.

Margaret. And apart from the scanning, the whole emotional value that is being placed on the words in this stanza doesn’t fit with con’tent. Con’tent is something that is valueless, and this whole stanza is dealing with value.

Sandy. I would beg to differ. When a person has con’tent, and a name, the means he’s got worth.

Jeff. No, no. Con’tent is analogous to wealth, as content’ is analogous to rank. As she said, there’s an emotional value to it. You see, your contentment in life – your happiness – that’s worth much more than your content [crosstalk]

Greg. That’s good.

Connie. Wealth and station are not very valuable in themselves; they’re just like people who are stars of some sort. They don’t necessarily have these other things going on with them, this unknown Esteem makes a person really valuable. Wealth and Station are just things that –

if you’re a movie star you have.

Margaret. Well, this is what puzzled me, because I thought Ann’s reading of that second stanza was right on target. Then, she said she wanted con’tent, which completely threw me, because everything she said pointed to the other. And, you also have to remember not to take this out of context. We have just had a first stanza about forgetting all – forsaking all – but what is the all that is being forgotten and forsaken? Just a PAltry One? [for the expression “paltry One”, Margaret places the accent on the first syllable, ‘pa’] just a Stranger's New Accompanying ? and then, you account less the all that you’ve forsaken and forgotten, right? To possess this unknown value – who can estimate that? Then you get to the next two stanzas which bring it down  much more to what you have lost, right? You’ve lost your friends, your family, your relationships; nature is altered – I overlooked it all, and for what? I forsook all, for something – something unknown, too.

Greg. She wrote once to her Norcross cousins, “It is true that the unknown is the largest need of the intellect, yet for it, no one thinks to thank God ...” [L471] No, this is a good unknown.

Mary Clare. What does she mean by just a paltry one?

Margaret. Insignificant.

Margaret M. Sometimes, I think she’s just referring to herself there.

Greg. I thought it might read as “just a paltry ONE’ “ [Accent on the word One]. As you might say “just a mere one.”

Mary Clare. One rather than a lot of people.

Margaret M. But, if this is about her committing her whole being to her poetry, she might think “Who am I? What talent do I have? What worth do I have? But, I’m gonna do it anyway!”

Margaret. Regarding Greg’s point, that fits with the One  and the Stranger, and what I find interesting is the switch in that final stanza to direct address. Prove Myself  - In thy bolder Sea – who, or what, is she talking about?

Mary Clare. Well, that ‘s what we don’t know.

Margaret M. That’s the unknown – the one she has forsaken all others for. It’s something bigger than she is, isn’t it. You have a lot accumulated in the first two stanzas, and then a stranger comes in and you change. One tiny thing can do that. One thing can come in and reshuffle the whole load. In the end she takes that leap. She says, I’m taking my tiny little pebble and putting into that unknown – endeavor it may be, or some God figure of some kind, and I’m just putting it in there. I’m going to be the tiny little thing. The tiny little thing, then, is reversed from the first two.

Margaret. Yes. Very Nice.

Connie. … in the bolder see – I’m really going to risk something… [general agreement]

Jeff. Prove Myself — of Thee is the exact opposite of denial – being the denied.

Greg. Wow. Hm

Sandy. And they’re one right after the other. One poem right after the other. Prove Me – That’s an interesting word.

Margaret. Well, she has a variant – line 15 – “Ask me Sweet – if I regret it” Prove Myself — of Thee.

Jeff. Isn’t that, maybe, a scientific term?

Margaret. “Proving,” yes, that’s right.

Margaret M. But when you practice an art, you are putting yourself in competition with all the other artists.

Margaret. You know, if you take Margaret’s suggestion, this also is a poem about poetry, and the creative act, you could also read that final stanza as being addressed to Sue. “Sweet” is a term of address.”

Greg. That works for me.

Margaret. She’s laid all this out about what is important in her life and what isn’t. And her attachment to Sue is an example of that.

Greg. Who here has read her letters to Sue? [few hands raised] Passionate, gorgeous prose.

Margaret. The next poem is I hide myself within my flower. There are three copies of this poem extant. The first one is in fascicle 3, a very early poem, and it goes like this:

I hide myself within my flower,

That wearing on your breast,

You, unsuspecting, wear me too—

And angels know the rest.
                      -J903/Fr80/M56, 408

[ To hear this verse and its alternate read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/qhWeQwPjptQ ]

Connie. It’s too cute. [laughter] The other one is so much more subtle.

Margaret. The interesting thing about this poem is that it’s one of her flower poems. She often sent poems with flowers, as flowers, and she has an interesting connection between poem, flower, and self. Judith Farr also makes this point in her book about those relationships. … [reads from the Franklin Variorum] “the second copy was prepared on a leaf of embossed note paper, as if for sending with a flower. The manuscript, which has pinholes at the top, has not been folded or addressed.”