EDIS Amherst Chapter, September 2018

Emily Dickinson International Society, Amherst Chapter, September 2018

Fascicle 6 Sheet 3

Facilitated by Lois Kackley

Lois. The Gothic element in Dickinson is extremely pervasive. Has anyone read Ann Radcliffe's "The Mysteries of Udolpho?"

Melba. Oh Yeah!

Lois. She wrote in the eighteenth century but she captured the Gothic theme in a way better than anyone before her.

Melba. Every trope of Gothic literature is rolled into this book. lf you want to know the whole palette, just read this one book.

Someone. That's the one that Jane Austen refers to in Northanger Abbey.

Lois. I read it years ago in hard copy that I got here at the library. I was going to get a copy and bring it just to have it here as a sort of show-and-tell. [laughs] Well, Daneen Wardrop - some of you may have met Daneen when she was here a few years ago - she has since written a book about fashion - "Emily Dickinson and the Labor of Clothing." She places Dickinson between Ann Radcliffe and Carson McCuller's "Ballad of the Sad Cafe." Dickinson has 13 poems with the word Goblin in them. And of course there's always "One need not be a chamber to be haunted," which always makes me think of Washington Erving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

Melba. I know that at least one of the Goblin poems was published after - who wrote "Goblin Market?"

Greg M. Christina Rossetti.

Melba. Yeah. I've always wondered if there was an influence ...

Greg M. That's been speculated on by others.

Lois. Well, it's a fun concept, but, as Daneen points out, Gothic is not a genre, so it can't really be categorized, but the characteristics of it, which we talk about for our reading, always has that issue of - well, "ghost stories, tales of terror, narratives of the supernatural"  ... "only the Gothic claims the primacy of entrapment." And I just think that that is a theme that we so often remark on in Dickinson without actually discussing the aspect of Gothic. And in a sense, Dickinson kind of lived out this Gothic theme, with her white dress and her sequestering herself, keeping all of her work in a drawer; there's a kind of Gothicism to her whole life.

Margaret. Well, in a way, that's how the Gothics got it - from women like her. I think there are a lot of women like that. Think of the Bronte sisters.

Melba. There's a typical Gothic woman who is on the verge of marriage - on the verge of moving from her father's house to her husband's, but usually having not a lot of say who she married, and so this is like the fears of a young woman writ large, and it attracted a huge readership among many women.

Margaret. Yeah, it's because the way things were then.

Melba. I had a professor once that I respected, and she thought that the Gothic was a reaction to the extreme emphasis on reason and rationality of the Enlightenment.

Lois. In fact, I think that's in that Paris Review article. She traces it back to - talking about the sack of Rome by the Goths. [From the Paris Review, October 2018.]

"Pope Innocent I, hedging his bets, has consented to a little pagan worship that is being undertaken in private. Over in Bethlehem, Saint Jerome hears that Rome has fallen. “The city which had taken the whole world,” he writes, “was itself taken. The old order—of decency and law meted out with repressive colonial cruelty—has gone. The Goths have taken the Forum."

And, the reason I am just fascinated with this in connection with Dickinson, is that she aligns it with an anarchic impulse to overthrow, or to blast, the conventional norms. I think that's where we see threaded, subtly, in Dickinson's entire work. To put a more graphic element to it, she puts, in the last paragraph:

"The gothic persists, and adapts, too silly to be taken seriously, but too full of sublime terror to leave feathers unruffled. It finds fresh political horrors to satirize and condemn, and new desires to conceal and reveal. It is always available, on the fringe of our society and its fears. In the end, the wan, coal-eyed teen dressed in black who watches gothic horror movies at noon has something of the spirit of the tribes that sacked Rome: barbarous, possibly, but throwing off all that is constraining and polite. "

That's our girl. [laughter] OK, who would like to read?

Victoria reads.

These are the days when Birds come back --

A very few -- a Bird or two --

To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies resume

The old -- old sophistries of June --

A blue and gold mistake.

Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee --

Almost thy plausibility

Induces my belief.

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear --

And softly thro' the altered air

Hurries a timid leaf.

Oh Sacrament of summer days,

Oh Last Communion in the Haze --

Permit a child to join.

Thy sacred emblems to partake --

They consecrated bread to take

And thine immortal wine!

                             - J130/Fr122/M81

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

Greg M. Indian Summer.

Lois. Indian Summer. Is it sentimental?

Greg M. Sentimental isn't a complimentary word, so I wouldn't use it here.

Lois. Yeah, I think that Dickinson is probably the least sentimental poet that anybody could encounter, but it connects you with that sense - for the reader it essentially connects you with that sense of what it's like to experience a day full of warm breezes and non-threatening temperatures at a time when we're about to brace ourselves for the onslaught, and I think that's part of why it's so poignant. The blonde assassin - what Dickinson calls frost - has appeared at least twice.

Robert. To your question, "Is this sentimental?" I think the stanza I react to as slightly sentimental is the second [third?] to last, where she anthropomorphizes seeds and leaf. It's kind of hard to go there. I can connect with the ide of Indian Summer, and the shifts in consciousness, but it's challenging in that fourth stanza.

Greg M. I once read a criticism of this poem - he didn't like it - he pointed out that anthropomorphizing the timid leaf was just too much. [some laughter] Doesn't hit me that way at all. It's just very interesting the way people hear things.

Victoria. God, that guy ought to go out and take a few more walks in the autumn.

Margaret. Along those lines, I kind of like the digs at the Christian church. She's always referring to the fact that God is not in the church - this is her religion - I love that.

Melba. The only thing that struck me as sentimental was casting the speaker as a child.

Lois. Yeah, what's up with that?

Melba. I thought this was actually a very adult perspective to say, you know, "This looks like summer, this feels like summer, but it would be a mistake; this isn't summer, it's gone by; this is just a brief recollection of it. That's not a child's perspective.

Margaret. Well, I throw the child thing into the Christian reference, that you have to grow into being a good Catholic - the white dress and confirmation - the whole thing.

Melba. Oh. Right. That's better.

Lois. So why do you think she pulls that image in?

Margaret. There is a brief feeling of spirituality in the church. It's there, and I think she just brings it outside, where it can be experienced in a much more positive way. But, spirituality for her and me and all of us little good Christian girls was always supposed to be in church.

Lois. Well, it all stems from the history, of particularly the Catholic church, it was supposed that they controlled everything. The idea of experiencing anything sacramental without the dictates of the church fathers was, depending on where you were I suppose, sacrilegious. And yet, like you said, she pulls from her experience of something important that the church introduced her to. ... Well, what's the strongest aspect of this poem, do you think?

Buleigh. Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee (?)

Robert. I think the second stanza is the one I love the best. I love the oo sounds and the softness of the invitation, and also that sense that it's our mistake - that summer is back again - and she projects that onto the skies - the blue and gold mistake of the skies.

Victoria. I think that's where the poem shifts. She's saying how beautiful it is, and the birds and the sky, and then a blue and gold mistake! There's a shift, and she says, "Don't be fooled by the blue sky and the birds. I mean, I just heard a mockingbird a couple of days ago, and I thought of this poem, saying, "OK, I thought you were gone south!" [laughter] So, a few birds that come back, or to get a little warm; it's that kind of observation. She would just hear - she would just see so many things, and she felt it at such a deep, deep level. But then she said, "but it's a fraud ... you're being duped into thinking that it's June again. ... I think when she said Permit a child to join, she's probably putting herself in that same place - maybe a place of humility - "Can I be part of this greater thing?" - this great sacrament that occurs every year, which is autumn - and, we have to give up the summer, and then winter comes, and it's that whole part of the resurrection. ... When she uses the word sacred, she's not just saying that as a way to defy. I think she really means that, feels that this whole cycle thing that we experience every year is something so profound, and we can partake of it. I love that word, partake. And thine immortal wine - She's not talking about the blood of Jesus, she's talking about that we're just mortals, but this is immortal; it's never ending cycle; it happens again and again, and we get to be part of it.

Lois. And in some people it almost induces a sense of religious feeling. For me, as so often in Dickinson, the strongest part of the poem is how she - I read this poem and I think, "Yeah, that's how to say it." [laughter] You know, she captures a feeling that I may feel trapped with because I don't know how to express. You read Dickinson and you somehow or other have been given the ability to personify a feeling that you thought you couldn't share.

Margaret. Yeah, will you ever go outside in the fall again and not think blue and gold mistake.

Melba. There are poems also that walk right up to the threshold of making an anthropological argument, and saying that this is the origin of our notion of God, that the whole notion of the death of Jesus and the resurrection are actually a recapitulation of the death and resurrection in the seasons. I also get that sense with "I reckon - when I count at all/ First Poets - then the Sun." If it were Emerson I'd say definitely. Emerson would argue that our whole notion of Christianity can be traces back to the movement of the seasons and our experience of nature.

Greg M. It's the opposite of what she was being taught, too.

Melba. It's like she just opens the door and then says, "Maybe you might want to take a look through there." [laughter]

Burleigh. You made me think, Melba, that prior to Christianity there were all the Pagan religions, which totally worked off of the seasons, and then that made me think of this little poem, written in 1883.

Witchcraft was hung, in History,

But History and I

Find all the Witchcraft that we need

Around us, Every Day--         - J1583/Fr1612/M644

Victoria. Oooh, that's so good!

Burleigh. A late poem - 1883. There're a couple of references to witchcraft in her poetry.

Greg M. Oh, yeah!

Lois. Are we ready to go to the next one?

Greg M reads.

Besides the Autumn poets sing

A few prosaic days

A little this side of the snow

And that side of the Haze—

A few incisive Mornings—

A few Ascetic Eves—

Gone—Mr. Bryant's "Golden Rod"—

And Mr. Thomson's "sheaves."

Still, is the bustle in the Brook—

Sealed are the spicy valves—

Mesmeric fingers softly touch

The Eyes of many Elves—

Perhaps a squirrel may remain—

My sentiments to share—

Grant me, Oh Lord, a sunny mind—

Thy windy will to bear!

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/v2I0pI1Pwmw ]

Lois. It tickles me that she so easily incorporates figures of speech like Oh Lord, in order to what?

Greg M. Doesn't it make it more like someone's talking to you?

Lois. More conversational.

Victoria. I pulled out a copy of Mr. Bryant's poem, in which she refers to the goldenrod. That poem is called "The Death of Flowers," and it's a big, long, very flowery ... I didn't print out Mr. Thompson's because it was that long, but when you read these dudes and then you read her, it's like they were so verbose. They were saying so much more than they ever needed to.

Lois. Right. They're just so, like, everybody's going to be hanging on every million words.

Victoria. So, let's see - the third stanza:

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago,

And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;

But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,

And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,

Lois. So, the emphasis - look at the difference in the emphasis in that poem. I mean, I'm sure it's a nice poem, but the emphasis is on what's observed. Dickinson's emphasis seems to be more on what's an internal response.

Greg M. And invokes the response in the reader. [General Agreement]

Lois. Uh-huh. Even when you're writing gloriously about observation, sometimes it can get tedious, whereas Dickinson knew that everyone's main theme was themself [laughs], and to pull you into the experience was one of her masterstrokes.

Burleigh. Who was Mr. Thompson?

Victoria. James Thompson was a Scottish poet, and this poem was written in 1730 and was required reading at Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke, so everyone would have been familiar with it. It's a poem called "The Seasons."

Lois. Well, what's her comment on these poets? Is she revering them, dismissing them? What is she doing by bringing them in.

Greg M. These were very familiar poems, The way I've been reading it is that it's just a reference that the reader can easily register. She captures the whole poem just by mentioning it, in a way.

Robert. It's a way of saying "It's November now! No more goldenrod!

Greg M. Yeah! I don't read it as a comment on the poets. I don't think she would make a negative comment on any poet.

Lois. No, I agree.

Adrianna. So, everything's shutting down. Summer's gone, now fall is here.

Lois. What did she say? "November is the Norway of the year."

Robert. Those lines, Mesmeric fingers softly touch/ The Eyes of many Elves

Adrianna. Does she mean closing the eyes of the elves?

Greg M. In Mesmerism - they used to call it "animal magnetism" - one of the ways that the hypnotist, or Mesmerist, would work was to touch the eyelids with his fingers. That was supposed to be a way of getting the trance into the subject - with Mesmeric fingers.

Lois. Those two lines are very Gothic, to me. [general agreement]. It conjures that sense of equal and opposite attraction and revulsion.

Robert. This is a testament also to the power of that time of year that Mesmeric fingers can put to sleep, can close the eyes of beings in Nature.

Victoria. Yeah, the brook stops bustling around, the little valves in the flowers stop producing their seeds, and then the little elves start going to sleep for the winter.

Lois. Well, let's move on to what may be one of her consummate - everything is there in this poem - all the Gothic elements. [reading from article] "Potent conflation of terror and excitement helps account for one of the most obscure and dangerous aspects of the Gothic."  - which comes to mind when I read this poem.

Robert. I'll read it. Do I have my choice of second stanza?

Greg. Ha! "Grand go the Years." [crosstalk]

Greg. There are four versions of this poem.

Robert. Is there somewhere where she has "lie" in stead of "sleep?"

Greg. Yes. Variant.

Robert. OK, then I'll just use my imagination.

Lois. Read it as Miller has it, and then just add that "Grand go the Years."

Robert reads.

Safe in their alabaster chambers,
Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,
Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,
Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.

Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine;
Babbles the bee in a stolid ear;
Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence, —
Ah, what sagacity perished here!

Grand go the years in the crescent above them; [alternate second verse]

Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,
Diadems drop and Doges surrender,
Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.

Lois. Wasn't she just ecstatic when she finished this? [laughter]

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

Victoria. There's more.

Springs - shake the sills -

But - the Echoes - stiffen -

Hoar - is the window -

And numb the door -

Tribes - of Eclipse - in Tents - of Marble -

Staples - of Ages - have buckled - there -

And there's another one.

Melba. Rock on!

Victoria reads.

Springs - shake the Seals -

But the silence - stiffens -

Frosts unhook - in the Northern Zones -

Icicles - crawl from Polar Caverns -

Midnight in Marble - Refutes - the Suns -

Lois. Yeah, she worked on it a long time.

Greg M. Does everyone know the story of the correspondence between Sue and Emily on this particular poem?

Victoria. Yeah, and you do a nice job in your book on this poem.

Robert. Look on 196 in Mattingly. [laughter] 
["Emily Dickinson as a Second Language: Demystifying the poetry," by Greg Mattingly ]

Victoria. The last one that I read - when we get to fascicle 10, sheet four, this poem appears again, and we get "Grand go the Years," "Spring shakes the sills," and "Spring shakes the Seal," and she copied all of those, except they aren't continuous verses, but she has a line between to indicate that each one of them is to be read as a second verse with the first one. But, she copied them all into fascicle 10. According to Cristanne [Miller], that's how it was laid out. So, she wanted all of these in that fascicle, but she didn't do, like, separate fascicles. So, wouldn't it go back and forth between her and Sue, and Sue would say things?

Greg M. Exactly. When we guides went to the Houghton library a few years ago, the curator took out the whole correspondence for us to view. I believe the first version that Emily sent Susan was this one.

Burleigh. Light laughs the Breeze?

Greg M. Yeah. It's little confusing in Franklin. And then Susan wrote back, " You never made a peer for that [first] verse, and I guess you[r] kingdom doesn't hold one - I always go to the fire and get warm after thinking of it, but I never can again." So, Emily tries another one, the one with the Frost in it, and writes, "Is this frostier?" She send her four different versions of it. And Margaret Freeman thinks that in the version with the Polar Caverns she was just having some hyperbolic fun. And, I will confess that when I first read this [Light laughs the Breeze], I'd been used to "Grand go the Years," and when I first read this I thought it was Mabel Todd. I thought, Oh God, that's not her. I was wrong, it is her.

Victoria. Well, she sent a version to the Springfield Republican, or somebody did, in 1862. That version used the word "sleep." They re-doubled the effect of the Christian word in a Christian title, "The Sleeping," which implies a resurrection. So, it was a published poem. Do you have Helen Vendler's book. She goes into some great detail about some of the things that Greg was saying, describing all of these different versions and their Biblical referents.

Greg M. That's the only evidence that we have of anyone ever seeing any of the sheets with the variants on them.

Robert. Which second stanza did Sue support, if any?

Greg M. None.

Melba. She said, "Your kingdom contains no peer for the first stanza."

Burleigh. I love that line, Midnight in Marble - Refutes - the Suns. I'd never heard that version before.

Robert. I love the last line in "Grand go the Years." Soundless as dots-on a Disc of Snow. And, I believe I have a special understanding with Emily about what that means'

Greg M. Oh, please, Share.

Melba. Please.

Robert. I remember the first time I saw black sand fleas in late winter snow, and they're little black dots in the snow. Quite remarkable. Bend all the way down with a magnifying glass, you can see they're moving. And I imagine she saw these black dots in the snow.

Melba. Woah! That's consistent with these first three lines, too. She's giving you this macro view,, then all of a sudden she says from this distance, individual humans from this distance look like a sand flea in an infinite snow bank.

Burleigh. Wow, now I'll never read it again without thinking about that.

Victoria. I thought she meant just one little snowflake. That's about as important as any of these Doges.

Burleigh. I think you're right, because she was so observant - you can almost see her thinking, "What's that?" And getting closer and closer and then realizing, Oh my God, it's something alive.

Lois. One of our early participants saw this poem as an illustration of how the dead were lying in the tomb and the resurrection never came. All these other things were going on and if creates just a comic counterpoint to the idea of a resurrection, with this poem illustrating the infinity of those in their alabaster chambers. Grand go the Years - where's the resurrection.

Greg M. They're stiiilll sleeping, they're stiiilll wai-ting.

Burleigh. Meek. That kind of gives it away.

Lois. Yes, "The meek shall inherit the earth." But she turns it on its head by making it ironic.

Victoria. Vendler says it's her way of refuting Paul's assurances of resurrection.

Robert. I experience an edge of tragedy to it. Safe in their Alabaster Chambers, the meek members have somehow missed life in having their eyes focused on this afterlife that ain't occurring.

Lois. OK, we have time for the next one.

Melba reads.

A poor — torn heart — a tattered heart —
That sat it down to rest —
Nor noticed that the Ebbing Day
Flowed silver to the West —
Nor noticed Night did soft descend —
Nor Constellation burn —
Intent upon the vision
Of latitudes unknown.

The angels — happening that way
This dusty heart espied —
Tenderly took it up from toil
And carried it to God —
There — sandals for the Barefoot —
There — gathered from the gales —
Do the blue havens by the hand
Lead the wandering Sails.

                                 - J78/Fr175/M83

Lois. You think this someone who's gone to their reward?

Victoria. I don't see anything else.

Melba. It's like the inverse of Safe in their Alabaster Chambers. The meek member of the resurrection is taken to heaven - is gathered in.

Lois. Yeah, and she put it right with Alabaster Chambers, too.

Greg M. It sounds very compassionate to me. It could almost be one of those sentimantal, sacharrine 19th-century poems, but I don't think it is.

Lois. What saves it from that?

Robert. In The Prowling Bee commentary this poem was sent to Sue with a picture of Little Nell, from The Old Curiosity Shop, who died when she was fourteen or fifteen.

Victoria. She sent it with two pictures cut from her father's copy of Curiosity Shop tied to the page. Maybe that takes it out of the realm of sentimentality.

Greg M. Well, another thing I think does for me, anyway, is vocabulary like Flowed silver to the West. That doesn't sound like anybody else. Nor Constellation burn. That's real, original poetry.

Melba. Yeah, and Intent upon the vision/ Of latitudes unknown - not a conventional piety.

Robert. The metaphors aren't too engaging. I'm not sure what it means for the blue havens by the hand to Lead the wandering Sails,

Melba. Somehow the sails are connected to a tattered Heart, but, they aren't images that just fit together easily for me.

Robert. Yeah, sandals and Sails.

Victoria. Sail - soul, the wandering soul. The blue haven, the blue heaven. Wandering souls going to heaven?

Melba. Yeah, it does sound almost like a deliberate deviation. We would expect heaven and soul, and we get haven and sail.