Emily Dickinson Museum Poetry Discussion Group August 2017

Facilitated by Greg Mattingly

Emily Dickinson as a Second Language

[The discussion was preceded by a brief tutorial on the online Emily Dickinson Lexicon, which includes the Webster’s dictionary that Dickinson used, and which was the source of word definitions presented, not given here]

Greg. A good example of the value of the Webster’s is evident in this first poem. I’d like to have a horticulturist read this one.

Victoria reads:

Pink - small - and punctual -

Aromatic - low -

Covert - in April -

Candid - in May -

Dear to the Moss -

Known by the Knoll -

Next to the Robin

In every Human Soul.

Bold little Beauty -

Bedecked with thee -

Nature forswears

Antiquity -

                        - J1332/Fr1357/M587
[To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/e1XvCYuF6UY]

Greg. And what is this poem describing?

Polly. Arbutus, I think.

Greg. Yes, arbutus. She signed one of three copies “arbutus,” and it was printed in Poems 1890 under the title “May Flower,” which is another name for the arbutus. So, I think the word candid in here is kind of interesting. What might that imply? How can a flower be candid?

Julie. Shining with dew, maybe? I mean, that’s the Latin root of it. It gives the idea of shining, glowing. So, is it glowing with dew in the burst of spring and so forth …

Greg. Anything elser?

Adrianna. Would it be white?

Greg. Yes, the definitions in her dictionary is as follows.

CAN'DID, a

1. White. –  [But in this sense rarely used.]

2. Fair; open; frank; ingenuous; free from undue bias; disposed to think and judge according to truth and justice, or without partiality or prejudice; applied to persons.

3. Fair; just; impartial; applied to things; as, a candid view, or construction.

How does “white” apply to the trailing arbutus? So, Victoria, can you explain about the colors of the May Flower? [A color painting of the May Flower is circulated.]

Victoria. It starts out as pink, then fades to white.

Greg. Covert in April/ Candid in May.

Victoria. And, it’s so low growing that you really have to get your nose right down in there to find it.

Greg. Yes, that’s the covert part, I guess.

Elizabeth. It also has other definitions. The underside of a birds feather is also called a covert, and it can be a thicket, as well as something that’s hidden.

Greg. Something that can hide as well as something hidden. … So, I put this together having written a book entitles Emily Dickinson as a Second Language. The publishers have changed the title to Decoding Emily Dickinson: An Introduction to the Poetry. It’s not out yet, but I worked it out by coming to so many of these discussions and observing what we do when we get together and work on these poems. I broke it down to these three things, avoiding the biographical detours we often take, because we like to talk about the person too. But if we’re not doing that, we’re usually doing one of these things, I think. [1] We’re examining the language practices that were available to her, in her time and place, and one way of finding out about that is through her Webster’s. “What does this word mean to her?” [2] Where else does she use the word? Might that give us a clue about what she’s implying? Now we had a discussion just recently where we read the poem Wild Nights.

Polly reads.

Wild nights! Wild nights!

Were I with thee,

Wild nights should be

Our luxury!

Futile the winds

To a heart in port, -

Done with the compass,

Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden!

Ah! the sea!

Might I but moor

To-night in thee!

                        - J249/Fr269/M133

Greg. And would someone read Whether my bark went down at sea …

Elena reads.

Whether my bark went down at sea --

Whether she met with gales --

Whether to isles enchanted

She bent her docile sails --

By what mystic mooring

She is held today --

This is the errand of the eye

Out upon the Bay.

                        -J52/Fr33/M59

Greg. So, these two poems came up in recent discussions in this group. In Whether my bark went down at sea, someone focused on the word errand. Does that word seem a little bland?

Unknown. Function.

Greg. Webster’s gives us a definition that we might expect. Here’s what the EDEL gives:

A. Goal; quest; destination; [fig.] gaze; glance; visual searching; [word play on "errant"] wandering; straying; roaming.

B. Request; verbal message; attempt to communicate with someone far away; [fig.] petition; supplication; entreaty; [metaphor] poem; composition; written verse.

C. Undertaking; task; duty; obligation; responsibility; mission; journey for a specific purpose.

Nathaniel Dickinson crossed the Atlantic Ocean with John Winthrop in 1630. He was an English lawyer, a Puritan, and he came to the New World to help found a “City on a Hill,” to be looked up to by the rest of the world as the model for true Christian worship and community.[i] These early settlers left comfortable lives in England to begin anew in the wilderness that was then North America. They were met with scarcity, harsh, bitter winters, and the ever-present threat of attack by hostile natives. The Puritans who so ventured were unwilling to compromise with the church practices then prevalent in England. Their sole motive was to live a Godly life and practice their form of Christianity as they deemed necessary. They came to call their mission their “Errand into the Wilderness”[ii] So, that’s a word with a lot of weight, and by examining the personal and historical context of where the word sits, we get something out of the poem that we might otherwise miss. So, I think that when we go through these poems that this is what we’re going to be doing. Probably.

The poem that Polly read was read in a discussion earlier this year, and one of the images in that poem is of Rowing in Eden. One or two people imagined a distraught relationship involving work and effort. Rowing is hard work, right? That’s what some people got out of reading that. Now, when I read it, I’m on a placid lake in a Jane Austen novel, there’s a lady with a parasol seated across from me and petals from blown roses are drifting down through the aromatic air. So, we had a very different reading. So what you can do in that case is number 2 here; where else does she use that image?

Could I but ride indefinite

As doth the Meadow Bee …
(To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLQnK7YDkyc

4^th stanza:

I said "But just to be a Bee"

Upon a Raft of Air

And row in Nowhere all Day long

And anchor "off the Bar"

A Bird came down the Walk – …

4^th and 5^th stanzas

Like one in danger, Cautious,

I offered him a Crumb,

And he unrolled his feathers

And rowed him softer home -

Than oars divide the ocean,

Too silver for a seam -

Or butterflies, off Banks of Noon

Leap, plashless - as they swim.

A chilly Peace infests the Grass

Last verse:

But all mankind deliver here – cruise softly here, row softly here, sail softly here, do anchor here

From whatsoever sea —

Now, I don’t think there’s any way, looking at this poem – ontologically – to say for certain that she’s not using it differently here. But when we see where she’s using it in other places, at least it points to another possibility. So that’s kind of the structure of the discourse here, and how we’ll try to get through some of these poems and see what we discover. Dare I ask for a reader for Remorse is cureless? … I’ll start picking on people. Burleigh?

Burleigh. OK.

Remorse is cureless - the Disease

Not even God - can heal –

For 'tis His institution - and

The Adequate …  no … and the adequate …  of Hell –

- J744/Fr781/M383

Greg. That’s a funny word, isn’t it?

Burleigh. Yeah …

Greg. So what’s this poem … any comments on this? – what she’s trying to get across? … It’s a discussion!

Unknown. The word adequate just jumps out. It seems like “equivalent.”

Greg. Yes. ad equate; equal to. So there’s a word that’s lost some of its punch, for us, today. The definition in her dictionary is “Equal; proportionate; correspondent to; fully sufficient.” So that word’s devolved. She’s saying that it’s the same as hell, not that it’s good enough. … Well, we disposed of that one quickly. [General Amusement] ….

There’s a sound recording of Gerda Lerner – she’s an historian of feminism – she wrote a fat tome titled The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, and, I’ve got to tell you this story. On the recording she talks about writing this tome, this prodigious research, and she talks about various women in history, and she says [paraphrasing]  “ I wasn’t going to use Emily Dickinson. She never participated in the activities around her, she just staid home, so, I wasn’t going to include her. But, when I was finished at night, with work, to relax, I’d read at night some Emily Dickinson for pleasure, and I started reading the poems and I said, “Hey … wait a minute.”  [laughter]. Jay, could you read?

Jay reads:

Dickinson created a feminine universe, with metaphors that derive from the domestic life of women. She employs her homely images in the most ambitious way to address the great questions of humankind – death, God, the human condition, and immortality. In so doing, she claimed for herself the authority to take on topics [from which women were largely proscribed in a still quite patriarchal society]. … she opened the path to the future and won the immortality she so boldly claimed by speaking as a free soul, a free mind, and a woman. In this sense, Dickinson appears as the perfection and culmination of centuries of women’s struggles for self-definition.      -Gerda Lerner

Greg. Quite a statement. Quite a statement.

Julia. Greg, what year is this? Is she still alive?

Greg. No, she died just a couple of years ago. She’s written several books … So, in this vein, “The Language of Home,” let’s take I felt a cleaving in my Mind.

Elaine reads:

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 them 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

 It sounds too familiar. [laughter]
[To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVnGS7EfQjM

Polly. What does she mean by them in the fourth line? I thought Mind and Brain – is she separating them?

Jule. The Seams.

Burleigh. That’s what I thought, too.

Greg. Could not make the seams fit. She’s using a sewing metaphor. Some domestic imagery there.

Burleigh. I don’t think she’s talking about sewing. She’s talking about the thinking [inaudible].

Greg. Agreed. The seam is a metaphor for that taken from the home.

Elaine. It seems that way. [laughter].

Greg. Yes, and it fits, too, doesn’t it? What’s she describing here?

Unknown. A breakdown.

Greg. I think so, yes. The mood is kind of – desperate, isn’t it? I heard a poet read, many, many years ago. He wasn’t a very enjoyable poet, but he used an image of ball bearings rattling around in a cigar box, and when I read this poem, that image popped into my brain. Ugh. Somebody who’s really having a tough time. But, is that what she’s saying here?

Jule. No, I think she’s talking about knitting balls. They’re silent, but they roll.

Greg. Yeah, I even gave a little hint – there’s a skein of yarn there to the right. I’ve learned that in the nineteenth century, yarn would come into the home in these skeins, a kind of a tangle. They’d have to roll it by hand into a ball.

Unknown. It still does. Mostly, it comes in a skein.

Burleigh. But, there is a machine you can put the skein on, and crank it, and the it will wind it. [ general discussion of yarn skeins ensues.]

Robert. I find myself resisting the skein of yarn, because [inaudible] silence. I resonate with the idea of an actual ball, a steel ball. That would ravel out of sound.

Greg. Sound. Out of sound …

Ella. Yeah, out of sound is silence.

Maura. Why bring up sound at all?

Greg. Is it going out of sound, or is it outside of sound?

Ella. It’s all internal.

Elizabeth. Whenever I read it, I think of Athena. She was born through the head of Zeus. She’s the goddess of Wisdom, but also of knitting and tapestry. I think that might be reaching a bit too far, but I just had to share it as a possible meaning of creation, or production, as well as something just unravelling.

Greg. I like that. Maybe not so bad after all. .. I understand these balls unraveled more easily than machine-rolled balls?

Burleigh. Especially if there’s a cat around. [laughter]

Jule. Actually, the tighter they’re rolled, the farther they’ll go.

Greg. All right, we can stretch this a little further with the next one.

Adrianna reads:

How the old Mountains drip with Sunset

How the Hemlocks burn --

How the Dun Brake is draped in Cinder

By the Wizard Sun --

How the old Steeples hand the Scarlet

Till the Ball is full --

Have I the lip of the Flamingo

That I dare to tell?

Then, how the Fire ebbs like Billows --

Touching all the Grass

With a departing -- Sapphire -- feature --

As a Duchess passed --

How a small Dusk crawls on the Village

Till the Houses blot

And the odd Flambeau, no men carry

Glimmer on the Street --

How it is Night -- in Nest and Kennel --

And where was the Wood --

Just a Dome of Abyss is Bowing

Into Solitude --

These are the Visions flitted Guido --

Titian -- never told --

Domenichino dropped his pencil --

Paralyzed, with Gold --
                             -J291/327/M156

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUxA5_9ipQo ]

Polly. Boy, are Amherst sunsets still … [laughter]

Greg. She’s up on Mount Tom, maybe. Anything stand out on this one? Beautiful imagery, hm? [general agreement]

Adrianna. All the color words.

Maura. And, she doesn’t say “red,” or “blue,” or “brown.”

Greg. Dun, sapphire.

Susan. It’s amazing to me – she could have ended the poem in the second-to-last stanza, and then, here come the Italian painters, and they march into the poem, in order to be dismissed.

Julie. I love the image of Domenichino dropping his pencil.

Elaine. Can you talk about that? I don’t know that painter.

Julie. OK. I have a book – a sometime useful book – called The Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists, and I looked him up. He painted frescos and small landscapes and altar pieces in Rome. He was very well known in Rome for those pieces. He was active in the first part of the seventeenth century. His frescoes are foremost examples of early baroque style. So, I found it fascinating that we’ve never heard of him.

Polly. She probably read about him in an article in Harper’s or something.

Greg. Or in an art book in the library.

Susan. Well it’s interesting that she has Titian.

Maura. Well, she had “Titian” hair. The color of her hair. Red hair. So maybe she thought, “I really belong in that.”

Greg. I like that she got the sun on the hemlocks without actually naming a color; Hemlocks burn. How about the odd Flambeau? What might they be?

Jule. Is this about the time her brother was building his house?

Polly. Maybe it’s when he started wearing the red wig. [laughter]

Ellen. And what are the flambeaux, torches?

Greg. I don’t know. I always thought it was fireflies. A literal flambeau is something like a torch.

Elaine. Is it just the way the light’s reflecting on the street?

Greg. That’s the way others have read it, yes.

Victoria. I was thinking of the edges of branches. They look like they’re on fire.

Greg. I’m interested in the expression, How the old Steeples hand the Scarlet.

Maria. The sun is scarlet. It’s a ball of fire.

George. The sun is setting, isn’t it? Hiding behind the steeple?

Greg. I think that’s what that is, yes. I’m interested in the steeple handing the scarlet, because a steeple looks like a spindle, doesn’t it?

George. Some of them, not all. It could be square, stone, and the sun hiding from us.

Greg. I’m suggesting that the image might be drawn from hand-spinning; that’s why I have the image here. Hand the yarn – it’s kind of wound around the spindle.

Burleigh. If you were in the right spot, the steeple might appear to just touch the sun. [crosstalk]

Polly. She couldn’t otherwise, just from her bedroom window, have seen the sunset.

Nathan. Perhaps she’s saying that poetry has as much trouble trying to describe the complexity of a sunset as paintings do.

Greg. Yes, thank you.

George. So, do you think if she had the lip of the flamingo that she could adequately express ….?

Greg. Flamingoes are known to be very noisy, clattery birds. They make a big squawk. Even if I were a gabby chatterbox, would I dare to tell? That’s how I’m reading it – or could I, even?

Jule.  That’s a good idea – “That I dare to tell” question mark.

Maura. What strikes me about this poem is that there’s almost a childish wonder about it. How the old Mountains …. How it is Night… The way she expresses that – she’s almost overcome. It’s an odd diction, to put it that way. She’s just overwhelmed.

Greg. I often get the impression, when I read poems like this, that alright, I’ve never actually felt this myself. It’s more sensitivity that I’m even capable of.

Susan. One of the amazing things about this poem – I was reflecting on this - just last night, everybody, if you live in Amherst, what a perfect John Kensett it was, I swear, just exactly like that John Kensett painting that we have in the evergreens – the way the clouds were formed across the sky – the pink  …  what is amazing is that she goes everywhere. She goes up in the mountains and the steeple. She goes into the sunset, fire touching all the grass, brings in a duchess just for fun. She sees the small dusk crawl on the village like a drunk going down the sidewalk, and then this odd flambeaux, this sort random light almost like a willow-the-wisp comes in, and the dome of abyss. You can see that from the Dickinson property. There really is a kind of dome of abyss – a bottomless grey that moves in on the background. Then, she just hands the poem over to the Italians. [laughter]

Polly. But, isn’t she exaggerating here? Even comic. It’s way too much sunset than anyone’s ever seen.

Greg. That’s two different readings, one comic and one awe-struck. [crosstalk]

Julie. The painters couldn’t capture it.

Jule. You take a painting, and it’s small. The sunset is overwhelming. It’s everywhere. You can’t paint that 360-degre dimension. [crosstalk]

Greg. Of course, Dickinson also coined her own words. Most of the words that she made up, though, are composed of real English words. She just adds –less or –ness onto them. They’re not all in the dictionary, some of them are. “Stopless” you can find in our dictionary. “Overtakelessness” … No. [laughter]. Let’s take a quick look at one of the words that she created. There aren’t too many of these. Anyone in a really exultant mood want to read this next one?

Robert reads.

We - Bee and I - live by the quaffing –

'Tisn't all Hock - with us –

Life has its Ale –

But it's many a lay of the Dim Burgundy –

We chant - for cheer - when the Wines - fail –

Do we "get drunk"?

Ask the jolly Clovers!

Do we "beat" our "Wife"?

I - never wed –

Bee - pledges his - in minute flagons –

Dainty - as the trees – on her deft Head –

While runs the Rhine –

He and I - revel –

First - at the vat - and latest at the Vine -
Noon - our last Cup –

"Found dead" - "of Nectar" –

By a humming Coroner –

In a By-Thyme!

                        -  J230/Fr244/M116

To hear this poem read aloud, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3xqlI2-npA

Greg. What’s the created word?

Several. By-Thyme.

Greg. I’d love to hear what that says to people.

[inaudible]

George. After life.

Greg. After life. … Found dead of nectar.

Maria. It’s a very sensual poem, too. The thyme, the clover, ale. The Burgundy wine.

George. What’s the “beat our wife” about, do you think? Is that what drunkards talk about or something?

Greg. Well, alcoholism was a problem, and there were plenty of drunks and sots in Amherst, and some pretty sordid incidents took place. She saw a lot of that looking right out on Main Street.

George. Is there any significance in her putting the word “beat” in quotation marks and the word “Wife” in quotation marks in stead of the whole three-word phrase?

Greg. I think it’s because she would have seen the words beat and Wife in the newspapers in accounts of these incidents, and the word our would not have been there in those accounts.

George. Oh, OK.

Maura. Do you think this would have come from newspaper reports?

Greg. Yes, I think the words, “found dead of drink” was not an unknown phrase to read in a paper.

Maura. Nectar is in quotes, too, so that probably didn’t appear in the paper. [laughter]

Buleigh. I like the humming coroner.

Greg. That’s a bee, right.

Polly. Or a hummingbird. [ahas of recognition]

Question. What does Hock mean.

Greg. A German white wine. The English used to like it to get old. We wouldn’t like to drink it that way. It was highly prized in 18th,19^th-centuy England. It comes from Hochheim, town in Germany.

Maura. Byron uses that word. He writes about it.

Greg. “Old Hock.” It gets yellow. We’d spit it out.

Unknown. Does this seem like a really exuberant poem?

Greg. It makes me feel like running barefoot through the tulips. I really love it. … There’s a book by Brita Lyndberg-Seyerstad, The Voice of the Poet. She’s done research on words that Dickinson made up, and she wrote that the only words that she totally made up are this one and “Optizan,” someone who’s a wizard at seeing things. But the others she just twists on words that we already know. That could really throw someone who’s not an English speaker.

Susan. A Drunkard cannot meet a cork/ Without a reverie.

Sheila. Where did she get the authority to write that? [laughter]

Greg. So, a lot of her vocabulary is kind of private. She makes words mean things that are special to her. I think the most well-known one is circumference, and we could spend at least one full workshop on that one for sure. There are others, like meridian, the four cardinal points of the compass, north, south, east, west, the she makes mean something of her own – film. I thought an interesting one to look at would be physiognomy.

Julie reads:

A Spider sewed at Night

Without a Light

Upon an Arc of White.

If Ruff it was of Dame

Or Shroud of Gnome

Himself himself inform

Of Immortality

His Strategy

Was Physiognomy.

- J1138/Fr1163/M705

(To hear this poem read aloud go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijd9f_K-Irs

Greg. Dickinson seems to have admired spiders.

George. Why not?

Greg. Because they crawl upon her reticence in a circumstance reluctant to be told.

Jule. They kill two of the most deadly insects known to man, flies and mosquitoes, because of the diseases they carry.

Greg. What’s she saying in the last stanza?

George. Physiognomy means face, doesn’t it? – the appearance of a face, does it not?

Greg. It means more than that, but it does mean that.

Julie. You can determine your character from your outward appearance.

Greg. Right. Physiognomy is considered a pseudo-science today, but it goes back to the ancient Greeks. It enjoyed a revival in the middle ages. It lasted until the nineteenth century via Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. One of its offshoots was phrenology. The idea was that you could determine a person’s character by examining their physical traits. It had a wider application in that you could determine the nature of anything in the natural world that way. There’s a quote on the other side by Sir Thomas Browne Dickinson identified as important to her in an early letter. The words in brackets are mine.

Maura reads.

“And truly I have observed that those professed Eleemosynaries [anyone having to do with charitable giving, including those receiving the charity], though in a crowd or multitude, do yet direct and place their petitions on a few and selected persons: there is surely a Physiognomy, which those experienced and Master Mendicants [beggars] observe, whereby they instantly discover a merciful aspect, and will single out a face wherein they spy the signatures and marks of Mercy. For there are mystically in our faces certain Characters which carry in them the motto of our Souls, wherein he that cannot read a, b, c, may read our natures. I hold moreover that there is a Phytognomy, or Physiognomy, not only of Men, but of Plants and Vegetables; and in every one of them some outward figures which hang as signs or bushes [Bushes were hung out as signs before tavern doors] of their inward forms. The Finger of GOD hath left an Inscription upon all His works, not graphical or composed of Letters, but of their several forms, constitutions, parts, and operations, which, aptly joined together, do make one word that doth express their natures.”[1]

Greg. So, I think that it’s in this larger sense that the word physiognomy that Dickinson’s applying in this poem. She took that word and made something more out of it than what we just read.

Brooke. Hey Greg. Do you make anything of her reading something like Hitchcock, who was musing on the sacred nature or spiritual nature of the natural world as a scientist?

Greg. I hope we get to that.

Brooke. I feel a lot of that when I look at this poem.

Greg. Yes. Dickinson was trained to see signs of God’s benevolence all throughout nature. They looked for it everywhere, and Edward Hitchcock, the leading intellectual force in Amherst during her youth was right in there. He looked at the autumn leaves and he said, we’re heading into the death of winter. Why would God grace this transition in such glory? But then, if we think of the resurrection … and this was a leading scientist, and that’s how he wrote.

Susan. Can you explain why bushes were hung outside of taverns?

Greg. I cannot.

Jule. Well, not everybody could read.

Greg. That’s a good point, yes. One things that strikes me is that the spider seems certain of his strategy for attaining immortality, his web-work. This is his immortality, and, Dickinson was never so sure. I know I could start an argument by saying that.

Polly. How did she know it was a male spider? Most people who sew were not males at that time.

Greg. I wonder if she did know. But the word sew is another from the language of the home, and I think it tends to anthropomorphize the spider a little bit. You’d normally say the web was woven, wouldn’t your, or spun? But she say sew, which, again, suggests that domestic activity that gives us a more sympathetic view of the spider at work. Why did she choose “him?” She could have said “Herself herself inform.

Jay.

Why the repetition? Himself himself.

George. Well, one’s a subject and one’s an object.

Greg. She uses these inflexive pronouns in ways that we wouldn’t. We would say “He informs himself.” I’ve never found a satisfying, or cogent explanation of why she does that. I know I like it. Margaret Freeman has written a very abstruse treatment of this topic, but l’ve been unable to follow it, unfortunately.

Robert. The last stanza – I’m just wondering whether it’s the spider who’s using physiognomy to [inaudible} to insects that are falling into the web and is reading the insect’s physiognomy as it decides to pounce upon it.

Greg. I think we’re considering the physiognomy of the web itself. It testifies to his great art.

Jay. Immortality?

Greg. Yeah, art can make you immortal.

Susan. The spider is sewing. He’d sewing funeral garments. The ruff of the dame. The shroud of the gnome. He’s sewing at night, without a light. He’s obviously very used to doing it. That may be a clue as to why it’s a he. A he spider. Not that there weren’t he spiders who did the same thing. And then there’s the word immortality which suggests that he’s providing the means for people to clothe themselves in immortality, or be clothed.

Polly. Does the spider become God? Immortality. He’s killing other bugs. [laughter]

Elizabeth. Maybe he’s one of the three fates. [continued laughter]

Maura. Maybe it’s Lucifer.

Greg. Lucifer or God. Now there’s two different readings.

Julie. Greg, I like the Lucifer idea, because that means “light bearer.”

Nathan. Does Dickinson compare herself to the spider, writing poetry at night?

Greg. Yeah. She’s not so sure, but her is.

Elaine. There’s so much more here. Let’s go on.

Greg. There is. The language of the church. This is an area where I didn’t know anything until I started reading Emily Dickinson. This is all new to me, and I understand from previous discussions that it’s not so new to everybody here. We’ll see what we can turn up with Further in Summer than the Birds. It’s a poem of Indian Summer, and one reason I included these in my work is that, people come from the world, Brazil, or Texas even, and they haven’t experienced our Indian Summers, and they read something like this, and they’re going to miss what it’s talking about.

Nathan 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, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5jb9x5GLSM]

George, Is anti-quest a new word?

Greg. Antique-est. Most antique. It’s an invented word. What’s she describing in that first stanza?

Polly. Crickets.

Greg. Yes. At least one copy of this was sent with the comment in the accompanying letter, identifying the poem as “my cricket.” That’s the minor nation.

Maura. Why is it pathetic?

Greg. If you turn to page 6, dictionary definitions. Dickinson seems to have been moved by the sound of the cricket. That’s why there’s this quote from the letter on page 5:

“The cricket sings in the morning, now, a most pathetic conduct.”[iii]

And, why that would be is that most species of crickets in Massachusetts chirp at night. But, if it gets really cold, sometime they’ll chirp early in the day, and that’s a sign of coming winter. So, they’re singing in the morning. That’s what she’s saying in the letter – a most pathetic conduct.

Penelope. She also says they’re celebrating.

Greg. Yes. The Mass is a celebration, and I think we’re going to see, as this poem progresses, that it goes from the celebratory life in the grass, and it moves toward winter both in what it’s describing and in mood. I think it’s a real masterpiece. And, I think maybe – Masses weren’t celebrated in her church - no masses in a Reformed Protestant Church – that would be the Catholics, the “Papists,” who weren’t in the majority here, in Emily Dickinson’s time; that’s the way I’m reading that minor nation.

Elizabeth. One thing – if the crickets are celebrating Mass, Catholics believe grace is given through sacrament, but Protestants believe that grace is freely given from God. The crickets are engaging in a ritual. They’re saying that no ordinance be given, communion or baptism. They are engaging in ritual by chanting, asking for grace, maybe perhaps to be saved, come the winter. And, there is a sadness about it, because their song – that is not a way to seek grace from the Protestant perspective, but there is, perhaps, an element of enchanting paganism about it.

Greg. I was hoping someone would speak, and give a little sermon on grace, because that’s such a heavy word for her and for her time. It was, as Elizabeth said, freely given of God, and there’s nothing that you could do to get it. God decides whether to give it or not. Your whole salvation depends on grace.

Jay. Greg, why are you so sure it’s a cricket?

Greg. Because, she actually wrote, “I offer you my cricket.” She sent the poem to a number of people, and she called it her cricket. No particular insight on my part. .. So, no ordinance be seen, no sacrament, as Elizabeth said. “I don’t see anything, but the grace that’s transforming my world is so slowly that I don’t even see any outward sign of it. Sacraments, ordinances, were outward signs of an inner relationship with God. She sees no outward signs, but something’s happening.

George. She does exploit the resonance between grace and grass.

Burleigh. Nice catch.

Greg. Then she tells us it’s a pensive custom enlarging loneliness. Aren’t we moving away from the celebratory life in the grass in the first stanza, changing mood a little bit? Because, we’re moving toward winter? …. Antiquest. Let’s look at her definition of this from her dictionary on page six of the handout. This is a good one. Because, that’s a strange word, isn’t it, in this context? Does it mean old, or ancient? Those are the first two definitions, but the third one is “odd, wild, fanciful, more generally written antic.” So, I went to my dictionary of word origins and looked up antic, and it says, “see antique.” And, part of that definition is, “In Italian, antico, from Latin antiquus, was often applied to grotesque carvings found in ancient remains. So there’s the tie-in. It was borrowed into English in the sixteenth century, as an adjective, antic, meaning bizarre. Also used as a noun to mean absurd behavior. So there’s a lost meaning for that word.

Jay. Antic means funny, too.

Greg. Yes, talking about antics, that’s odd behavior.

Victoria. It’s out of sequence. You would expect to hear that at night. It’s odd to feel that at noon.

Greg. Antiquest felt at Noon/ When August burning low' Arise this spectral Canticle A canticle can be any song, but to Dickinson’s parishioners it would have probably suggested the Biblical Song of Solomon; and then/ Repose to typify. I want to know what that means.

Maura. Isn’t she just saying that song typifies repose – it makes you feel a repose, moving toward death. It typifies repose. The definition of repose is that sound.

Greg. OK, if we turn back to page six and look at the definitions of type and typify – again these are from her dictionary. This is Webster.

TYPI-FY, v.t.

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.

It’s a sign of something to come. I remember being in these groups before, and I understood that some of the participants were quite familiar with Christian typology. I was not, so this is kind of new stuff to me..

TYPE, n.

1.      The mark of something; an emblem; that which represents something else.

2.      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.

So, I’m suggesting that Repose to typify suggests that what’s happening right now, in the grass, is a sign of winter to come. This language of the church, as I said, is new to me, and I find that it yields great riches when we start looking into the poems.

            What’s happening now? Remit as yet no Grace. Payback? Return? You don’t have to give it up …yet. And a Druidic difference. We’ve gone from a mass to the savage, barbaric practices of the Druids, as we go from a lovely Indian summer heading toward winter.

Ellen. I see a connection to the [inaudible] poem, Remorse is cureless – Not even God can heal. Sort of a death, but in the first one God can’t heal, but then the cleansing of baptism.

Greg. The Druids were close to nature, too. [general agreement]

Jay. I don’t think we’ve gone from heaven to hell. I think we’ve gone from one kind of grace to another kind of grace.

Greg. Yeah, I don’t see hell in here, but I see wild …

Jay. Druidic difference suggests that it’s now enhancing nature, too. Nature can be enhanced in other ways, at other times.

Greg. Well, as if that wasn’t enough, let’s move on to the Book of Revelation. The real title of the book, that last book in the Bible, is The Revelation of Saint John the Divine. Emily Dickinson herself refers to it as the Revelations, in the plural. And she does that for reasons unknown, but it’s Revelation singular, and John the Divine, on the isle of Patmos, receives a vision from God, and Jesus Christ talks to him, and give him the words to write down. And even thought we start with Mathew, we are going to draw on the book of Revelation.

Susan reads.

There came a Day at Summer's full,

Entirely for me -

I thought that such were for the Saints,

Where Resurrections - be –

The Sun, as common, went abroad,

The flowers, accustomed, blew,

As if no soul the solstice passed

That maketh all things new -

The time was scarce profaned, by speech -

The symbol of a word

Was needless, as at Sacrament,

The Wardrobe - of our Lord -

Each was to each The Sealed Church,

Permitted to commune this - time -

Lest we too awkward show

At Supper of the Lamb.

The Hours slid fast - as Hours will,

Clutched tight, by greedy hands -

So faces on two Decks, look back,

Bound to opposing lands -

And so when all the time had leaked,

Without external sound

Each bound the Other's Crucifix -

We gave no other Bond -

Sufficient troth, that we shall rise -

Deposed - at length, the Grave -

To that new Marriage,

Justified - through Calvaries of Love –

- J322/Fr325/M155

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

Greg. You’d better know your Bible, to read this one. Could you add, Susan, the quote from Matthew there on the page?

Susan reads.

“Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.” – Matthew 27:50 – 54

Greg. This particular description is after the resurrection of Christ; He’s risen from the dead – glorious event, which Paul called “the first fruits of the resurrection,” meaning that we’re all going to rise again from the dead someday, and Jesus is just the first. That’s the context, I think, of this first stanza, that she’s comparing this glorious day to this other glorious day or days, the resurrection.

Susan. In Emily’s time, “Saints” meant those who belonged to the church – professed believers, and it’s often capitalized.

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[1] Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici Part 2 (Cambridge, Great Britain: The University Press 1963), 73 – 74.

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[i]  “… for we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our god in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.” – Winthrop speaking to the pilgrims aboard the Arbella (spelling modernized).

[ii] Perry Miller, Error into the Wilderness, 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 (New York, Evanston, and London: Harper Row 1956), 1.