Emily Dickinson International Society, Amherst Chapter, September 2018

Emily Dickinson International Society, Amherst Chapter, September 2018

Fascicle 6 Sheet 4

Facilitated by Lois Kackley

Robert reads.

I bring an unaccustomed wine

To lips long parching

Next to mine,

And summon them to drink;

Crackling with fever, they Essay,

I turn my brimming eyes away,

And come next hour to look.

The hands still hug the tardy glass —

The lips I would have cooled, alas —

Are so superfluous Cold —

I would as soon attempt to warm

The bosoms where the frost has lain

Ages beneath the mould —

Some other thirsty there may be

To whom this would have pointed me

Had it remained to speak —

And so I always bear the cup

If, haply, mine may be the drop

Some pilgrim thirst to slake —

If, haply, any say to me

"Unto the little, unto me,"

When I at last awake.

                - J132/Fr126/M83

Adrianna reads.

He ate and drank the precious Words —

His Spirit grew robust —

He knew no more that he was poor,

Nor that his frame was Dust —

He danced along the dingy Days

And this Bequest of Wings

Was but a Book — What Liberty

A loosened spirit brings —

                  - J1587/Fr1593/M641

Lois. OK, does anyone, off the top of your head, see anything connecting these two poems?

Greg M. Well - there's a draft of something being drunk in each one.

Lois. OK. So, for Dickinson, lovers, gods, faith, death, alot of objects in Dickinson's world of object relationships - I think of "Dear March - come in!" - that conversation with nothing less than than the wind - in her world, all these things come up short except the book, and we'll go so far as to say literature, so that we can include poetry. On the face of it this poem is a little difficult to get, but I would like to throw out to you the possibility that in this first poem, even though it's blatant in the second poem, in the first poem my sense is - like Greg picked up - the drink connection. The person - the being - to whom she s bringing this unacustomed wine may be the unread, or the illiterate. The contrast I'm drawing here is the one who's unacustomed to literature, and poetry, and her effort to introduce it as she experiences. Because, unlike other objects in her world, [inaudible] achieve all and more of what she expects. What do you think about that?

Victoria. I like the second-to-last stanza in that first poem; If, haply, mine may be the drop/ Some pilgrim thirst to slake — So, it's that person. When she uses the word pilgrim, this person you're talking about is someone who's seeking. And, her words, her poetry, could be a vehicle for finding what this person is seeking, needing. A pilgrim is someone who goes on a path, and there's a spiritual need which her poetry seems to fill for a lot of people. I'm not talking religious at all.

Lois. All humans have a metaphysical hunger.

Judith. Those last few lines sort of project her immortality - in a way, that we become the pilgrims.

Lois. Yeah - what else do pilgrims connotate?

Greg D. Pilgrim's Progress. Allegory. You're saying spiritual journey, but also, in Pilgrim's Progress it's a journey to some previously existing high moral goodness of some kind. I don't think that's what Dickinson's about at all. She's doing it ironically, or secretly.

Lois. Right -but the pilgrim is seeking here, right?

Margaret. She's quoting from the Bible here, isn't she? Unto the little, unto me. What is the whole quote from the Bible?

Victoria. Matthew 25:40. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Greg D. Well, this is from 1859, so it's still considered early Dickinson, isn't it? Whereas the other one is definitely late - 1882. So, if she was already talking about something more literary, which she certainly seems to be in the later poem, early on, that kind of changes one's thinking alot about her poetic process and her maturity at that level.

Lois. In what way?

Greg D. If she was writing more about just someone dying and some of her thoughts about this side or that side of death, which seems to be what's going on in this poem, something else, she hasn't really - to me - succeeded, because we can read it that way, but there's no real clues for doing that. Whereas later on it's pretty clear - and I'm not saying a poem has to be clear; in fact, some of Dickinson's most interest ing ones are the ones that are totally mysterious. I guess I'm saying one can read this in different ways, but what is there in here that makes one want to read it differently? - read it differently than - maybe I'm the only one that sees this poem as pretty much about a dying person. So, if it's about something else - symbolic or allegorical or metaphor - then I would look for some clue that that's what's going on here. I can only do that speculatively - which is OK, but I'm not sure what you're seeing.

Lois. Which is one of the reasons that when I began to see this poem this way, I selected this poem because it's much more obvious. In fact, in this poem books can make you forget that you're poor; I mean, it cures everything but the common cold.

Greg D. I'd like to see it also literarily, as you're doing, but also imagine that she's talking about per poetry writing and that her poetry isn't really accepted or understood by anybody.

Lois. Absolutely. She didn however draw enormous inspiration from books like Shakespeare, the Brontes.

Margaret. And what about the the use of haply, because I hear something regarding Shakespeare, because that's one of the lines that I remember so well from Shakespeare, "Haply, my friend, I think on thee." And, I'm wondering if haply means happily, or it just have happen.

Greg M. It just may happen.

Victoria. That's a great word, isn't it?

Greg M. We should incorporate that in our daily speach. "Haply I shall see thee anon." [laughter]

Greg D. That would be great. It probably wasn't used in Amherst so it probably does come out of Shakespeare or something like that.

Judith. I think that for me the clue that this is not about a dying person is that last stanza.

Lois. Or, dying perhaps spiritually. Because Dickinson would have viewed someone who lacked access to books and poetry as dying spiritually, would she not?

Judith. Yeah, she pretty much says that in here, doesn't she?

Adrianna. And she the person - He knew no more that he was poor - that terminology, and here, Unto the little - the little being the least, because that person didn't have the spirituality from the book for inspiration.

Margaret. And also the last lines, When I at last awake, 'cause here she is that she's actually asleep in life, right? Is she? I mean what is she saying?

Lois. [laughing] Right, what is she saying?

Greg M. I was reading that as subjunctive; in other words, if I ever come to this point. If, when my time comes, if any say to me -

Greg D. In the sense maybe that - it could mean that when I at last that I could wake up, or something like that. [general agreement]

Lois. Very nice. Yeah, because I think early readers, whether they're children or discover the power of books as an adult, there's that sense of awakening. My God! They realize all of a sudden they're being nurtured in a way that they hadn't before. And, the second thought is, God, there are more of these! [laughs]

Victoria. A loosened spirit seems to me what awake is.

Lois. Very nice, yes.

Margaret. But it's also, I think, the afterlife - the Second Awakening that was going on.

Lois. It forms her thinking.

Margaret. Yes, and they were thinking of, I guess, an awakening in mortal life, but in some religious sense. In Catholicism we believe that that's the true awakening, when you die. That is when you're fully alive.

Greg D. Well, that idea of the liberty of a loosened spirit is a major theme, I think, in Dickinson, in many different ways.

Judith. Well, I also think of that When I at last awake as she is awakening to her own power. This is 1859 - she hadn't contacted Higginson yet, but as she's making these fascicle, she's awakenining to something - in her own life.

Los. Well, I've always loved that phrase about Browning, that she "made the dark look beautiful." I think that's the darkness that she felt when no one shared her passion, and on a certain level she thought for a long time that she had to accept this darkness of feeling isolated with no one to share, or feel that anyone else had this passion, and one of the reasons I love it is that it not only testifies to her own awakening, but it also links us to her predecessors as writers, and her realization of her debt to them.

Victoria. Dingy Days. She had dingy days. [laughter] It's like dark days, when she - or He - whoever this other person is.

Judith. It's interesting she uses the male pronoun there. She often writes about her soul in the masculine.

Victoria. Mmhmm. Or it doesn't matter.

Judith. Or, that's part of her.

Victoria. I mean, the sexual identity doesn't matter.

Lois. Well, one final thought that occurred to me when I was looking at these two poems together. even though He ate and drank the precious Words is more blatant, I want to say this early poem almost better illustrates Dickinson's aggressive re-definitionof cultural orthodoxy, which we come in contact with throughout the poetry, if we read it that way, and Greg, I think, is in some doubt, but if you read it that way - whereas in that other poem it's just a flat-out statement, in the first poem she's really playing with religious terms and supplanting them with the gifts of literature.

Judith. This was two years before she died - she's sort of saying "Whatcha got to lose?" [laughter].

Lois. Yeah, to take your point, she's kind of gotten over her argument with traditional religion. More confident there. But, in the first poem she's really kind of being more subtle, and maybe not as confident, but she's also more willing to redefine what is spiritually meaningful - which would have been frowned upon, which is a good reason to make it a little more opaque.

Greg D. She's certainly putting herself in that stance in this poem, but I don't think she comes to any conclusions by any means. What would be unorthodox about it is that she's questioning.

Robert. From the point of view of appreciation, I just love He ate and drank the precious Words. I say to myself, "joyous poem, that poetically captures that sense of freedom as you read - as you bring in the poetry. And that first one - I hear what people are saying - but I can't see myself ever reading it again. It just doesn't grab me as a poem.

Lois. It makes you work, doesn't it?

Robert. From an historical point of view, I see how it helps toward understanding.

Judith. When I read this poem I thought about the unaccustomed wine as being some kind of medicine at first, and then I think, OK, what's she really talking about? [laughter]. If she writes in metaphor, what am I missing here, and I actually appreciate the process that she goes through in this poem, of reaching that awakening. You can almost go with her through that process.

Greg D. It's also been looked at as being about physical love - sexuality and so on - with lips long parching next to mine -

Judith. Kiss me, honey! [laughter]

Greg D. I turn my brimming eyes away, And come next hour to look - Ah, now things have cooled off. [laughter]

Victoria. I was wondering if the wine was part of the communion. That crackling with fever, that longing that the people who were part of the religious revivals that came through town - they really got people whipped up to a fever about finding Christ and being born again.

Greg D. So, you're saying that it might be a commentary on her dealing with the Second Great Awakening, and so the unacustomed wine would be whatever she's bringing to the thing.

Margaret. I loved your comment about the process, and there is that regret, right? that she didn't do what she should have done; it's a process that she's reforming herself, right? in the whole story.

Lois. I was curious about that, because it didn't just jump out at me.

Victoria. Where do you see regret?

Margaret. The lips I would have cooled, alas - She should have gotten there earlier, she says.

Lois. So, she's engaging herself, she's not just delivering a message. She's really engaged with his suffer, if you will.

Greg M. And so I always bear the cup.

Margaret. And so, she's really learned something that she wants to tell us about.

Judith. It's really good bringing these two poems together. It's really fascinating.

Lois. Well, we've said all along that part of the interest of these early poems is seeing themes - precursors to later, more complex, poems, and I thought it would be helpful to just lay 'em out there.

Victoria. I think that's very useful, because - we will never get through all of these [laughter]. So, to fold in these later poems and make the comparison ...

Lois. Alright, who would like to read "As Children?"

Victoria reads.

As Children bid the Guest "Good Night"
And then reluctant turn—
My flowers raise their pretty lips—
Then put their nightgowns on.

As children caper when they wake
Merry that it is Morn—
My flowers from a hundred cribs
Will peep, and prance again.

                              - J133/Fr127/M84

            ******

Delight becomes pictorial
When viewed through pain,--
More fair, because impossible
That any gain.

The mountaln at a given distance
In amber lies;
Approached, the amber flits a little,--
And that's the skies! 

                    - J572/Fr539/M295

Lois. OK, why are these two together. Well, they're both a species of definition poems. Dickinson has a number of types of poems that give us definitions. Jed Deppman calls her "that other Amherst lexicographer," comparing her to Webster. And, these two poems use opposing terms that are interdependent in comparison and contrast. So she's comparing and contrasting  in this first poem Children and flowers - Night time and merry - and just a little less easy to get, in terms of their definition than the additional, second poem. Now, in that poem, what is she defining?

Greg D. I don't know if she's defining anything. They're comparing. I would call them comparison poems, unless you say definition by comparison.

Lois. Right, exactly. She's comparing and contrasting in order to define.

Greg D. Pain and pleasure, I guess. Really, coming around to saying that they're not that different in a larger context. It's almost like undefining them.

Robert. Well for me - the Delight poem - it's kind of the passing nature of delight. As soon as you obtain delight, it's lost. Longing is always greater than when delight actually arrives.

Lois. OK, what is delight similiar to, in this poem; the mountain, right? Both of them to what, just as you're saying, Robert?

Robert. Delight is similiar to the mountain viewed at a distance, with amber beauty. Approach it closely, and it's just sky.

Lois. OK, so she's using the mountain, and you're more familiar, or you're more pictorial, if you will, understanding of the difference in the mountain at a distance as opposed to when you're up close to the mountain. And delight is the same way, right? More fair, just like when you approach the mountain, the amber flits, just like delight is more fair because it's impossible to gain. It's a much more complex poem than the previous.

Greg D. I read it a little bit differently, that first stanza. Delight becomes pictorial - pictorial to me in a sense of - like an illustration, so therefore kind of derivative, sort of a copy - pretty, or almost fake. When viewed through pain - so, you're happy, you have pleasure and so on; then you see it through that darker, more painful feeling; then all of that, happiness and stuff seems kind of distant, and sort of fake. And, when she says More fair, I think she means, or even more importantly or even further, in stead of, daylight doesn't become more fair, but more fair daylight becomes - viewed through pain delight or pleasure becomes impossible That any gain. It's like when you're feeling depressed there's no way out. That's just the first stanza. So, I think it's a way of looking at one emotional state through another, and in the second stanza it seems like putting both of those states into a landscape picture, and looking at it from a distance, you've got a mountain in amber, it's all lit, it's distant. You go a little closer, the light changes, the skies. It's almost like everything becomes more equinimitous - equal, anyway. So, it's almost like looking from this side and looking at that side at feeling.

Margaret. For me, Delight becomes pictorial means that you can actually - it actually becomes visual and tactile, almost. It's a feeling, which is amorphous, right? But pain is more specific. Pain is like the mountain that you can see in front of you, and Delight is like the skies, which are enormous - indefinable, almost. Anyway, I'm looking at as different thought about pictorial - as something you can see; and experience, and it's a good thing, and not fake.

Greg D. Like vivid?

Margaret. Yeah vivid, that's it.

Lois. Well, if it's pictorial, contrast it seems would be at a distance.Becoming pictorial is the same as something becoming at a distance. No?

Victoria. No, I don't think so. I think pictorial means it becomes more clear, more visually - you're more able to view it.

Lois. Well,, if you're in pain the idea of delight is a goal, but it's not something you feel. You can't. Pain is the antithesis of delight. You can't feel those two things at the same time; you can't experience fully delight -

Greg. Unless you're into certain stuff. [laughter]

Judith. Yeah, and she starts actually froim a state of pain in this poem, it seems to me. And then the light comes along, but it's not as close as the pain was.

Lois. You want the light. It's all you want, if you're in pain. But, you can't gain it. It's a picture. [crosstalk]

It's kind of like the poem "Success is counted sweetest/ By those whon ne'r succeed." That poem is not so hard to grasp. This one is not so easy.

Robert. This Delight poem reminds me of another delight poem I really like, Fr1375

Delight's Despair at setting
Is that Delight is less
Than the sufficing Longing
That so impoverish.

That same sense of delight being evanescent. The longing to get there, and the sense of "Oh, this is so exciting," is lost once you get there.

Lois. Oh, yeah, yeah - they're incompatible in the sense that you can't experience them both at the same time. In fact, you could even reverse this. You could say, "Pain becomes pictorial when viewed through delight."

Burleigh. To me, both of those stanzas are about perspective, about how you see something.

Lois. Well, it's really not necessary to define them, but she couldn't resist [laughs]. Gain in this poem I think is just something you can obtain. It's impossible to gain delight, even though you haven't forgotten it.

Victoria. Because of the pain.

Lois. Yes.

Greg M. Does she gain anything in the last line?

Victoria. That's the skies.

Robert. The skies.

Greg M. Pow! It's unexpected, isn't it? You're expecting it to say, well, you get closer to the mountain and it's no big deal, but - it's kind of what she does in the first line, and it's such a theme of hers, to say that anticipation is always greater, but she pulls the rug out from under us with the skies; it's so unexpected.

Robert. Are the skies a disappointment or an attainment?

Greg M. No, they're beautiful - wide - great.

Robert. They're not amber!

Victoria. The delight is always there - I'm trying to build on what Greg is saying - the delight is always there - it's just always there,  in the skies - and the pain may make it seem as thought it's impossible to feel - and this is where I'm not so sure [laughs] about those last three lines - but then at the end it's just like you were saying, Greg - it's like Pow. It's there. lt's always there. You just can't see it through the pain, and you feel like you'll never get to see it, but then ...

Greg Darms. I think that the sky, in terms of landscape painting at least, is what I'm talking about by a larger context. All the landscape is there, but the sky is there, and so all the pain and delight are in that some larger context.

Victoria. Oh yeah, I can see that - in that bigger composition of life the mountain looks really big, but if you go to paint, the sky is going to be so much more to try to capture. ... I'm also wondering about that word amber - not as just a color word - but amber is a resinous type of material, a natural material ...

Greg D. Fossils. Insects drown in amber and then you can see them millions of years later.

Victoria. Exactly. So, there's something about that In amber lies where pain is fixed in amber. It seems like that's not going to go anywhere.

Greg M. Yeah, that's a cliche' now, almost. To say that George Washington's memory lies in amber is to says that we've preseved our fine image of him in amber and forgotten about the rest, like that slavery stuff. [44:41]