Emily Dickinson Museum Poetry Discussion Group, January 2020

Emily Dickinson Museum Poetry Discussison Group

January 2020

Topic: Emily Dickinson and the Law

Facilitated by Jill Franks

Jill. One thing that feels personally relevant about this topic is, that going from the study and practice of law to the study of English literature, good writing is an important part of both of those disciplines. So the first comments that I was getting on my papers in those seminars for my master's degree at UMASS, was "Oh, you're writing like a lawyer." [laughter]. People were making lawyer jokes as soon as they arrived in the room today, you know? [laughter]. I've been writing like an English professor for so long - almost thirty years - I'm having to think about what it is to write like a lawyer. And, Emily Dickinson actually shows us; at least, she's making fun of legalese and the legal style of setting up an argument. I'm not saying this is unique to her, but it is characteristic of her - setting up poems as legal argument. That's why I say, "Law and Lyric poetry, Strange Bedfellows?" Well, not in her hands. So, it is her uniqueness that combines with all that influence in her home, with all those layers around her, whom she loved more than anyone in the world - combining it with her own unique capacity to look at nature, and look at the structures of nineteenth-century social life, and to approach that through a set of legal metaphors and rhetorical style. To prove that - interesting - you prove things both in law and in English scholarship. My English scholarship reminded me very much of my legal scholarship, because it's the same thing of going to precedent to proof. So we can't publish an article in English studies unless we have looked at everything that went before on our topic. And, that is exactly the case in every kind of law that we practice in America. We write a brief, or a memorandum for the court, arguing our client's case, based on precedent, which is previous cases. So, they are related, but the style, particularly lyric poetry and legal writing should be very very different. Something that grabs us about Emily is her ability to make an argument in the style of legal writing, but we recognize that she's trying to address topics that are way beyond the law. ... I found a pattern in these dozen poems that I've selected that what she does with law and literature is that she juxtaposes lofty, even metaphysical questions, which by their nature are unresolvable, with really down-to-earth technical rules that come from law. That's what makes it funny, but also very intellectually interesting, I say it produces a cosmic irony about the way humans try, mostly unsuccessfully, to order our lives according to systems that cannot do justice to the transcendent nature of the human spirit. That's a real long sentence, but it's juxtaposing the law's desire to control human interactions, versus human nature - which so much of us is outside what the law can control, or even speak to. So we see that tension between a system, which she truly believes in, because her whole family are lawyers, and that what makes them "The Dickinsons," you know, the first citizens of Amherst - the tension between that, and then so many other layers of existence that she was aware of, the spiritual, the psychological, critique of patriarchy. And another way that this is taught, sort of like in the 1930's approach to literature - do you remember studying Greek tragedy with this framework of natural versus divine law? I think in particular of Antigone. In that play, Antigone wants to properly bury her brother, but there's a law forbidding mourning for someone who's been exiled. She does it anyway, because she's Antigone, and she gets buried alive for it. So, when you do a very simple analysis of that play, you talk about natural law, which is the love for your brother - requires that you take care of him during life and after death, versus civic law, which says that you cannot mourn for the dead who have been forbidden from this community. So, I want to start with the spider poem,  because that's my very favorite. She has some poems in this set that are very serious, about life and death, but there are some here that are just so funny, because she's adopting the legal languge that she learned at home, totally making fun of it. ...

Greg reads.
Alone and in a Circumstance
Reluctant to be told
A spider on my reticence
Assiduously crawled

And so much more at Home than I
Immediately grew
I felt myself a visitor
And hurriedly withdrew

Revisiting my late abode
With articles of claim
I found it quietly assumed
As a Gymnasium
Where Tax asleep and Title off
The inmates of the Air
Perpetual presumption took
As each were special Heir —
If any strike me on the street
I can return the Blow —

If any take my property
According to the Law
The Statute is my Learned friend
But what redress can be
For an offense nor here nor there
So not in Equity —
That Larceny of time and mind
The marrow of the Day
By spider, or forbid it Lord
That I should specify.
                                    - J1167/Fr1174/M549

Jill. So many legal terms are in our public, common domain, and we know them. Articles of claim would referS to something in law that she is going to take a dustpan and broom ans sweep them out of there. Tax asleep and Title off, well, how can they owe taxes on any property if they're living in the air. Can you actually own property in the air? Inmates because she is really interested in incarcertion, as well in the law. Perpetual presumtion really does refer to adverse possession, which is when you occupied a property - when I was in the law it was seven years - without the owner or anyone shooing you off of that property or telling you to get off - it's amazing, but you start to gain a right to that property.

Cynthia. It has to be "open and notorious," doesn't it?

Jill. Yes. The Statute is my Learned friend is - you've probably seen this in lawyer movies - the the lawer will say of the opposing lawyer, "As my learned friend pointed out," but it never means a learned friend, it means "this dufus that I have to argue against is so twisting the facts that the jury will be unfairly influenced by him." That's what Learned friend means. [ laughter ]

.

Jule. Is that actually a legal term?

Jill. It's a usage in the court. Restitution is a way of saying "our redress." "our remedy under the law." Offence is the word for, taking your case in, you have a legitimate offence that's on the books, before you have an action before the law. Larceny you know is a way of saying "stealing." Equity is interesting; she uses it in three of the twelve poems I've seleced. We used to have equity courts in the state of Massachusetts; we abolished them. There's a court of law and a court of equity. A court of law deals with anything that would receive monetary damages, but obviously you can't redress all offences by simply awarding money, so equity is for those cases, where the award given by the judge would include injunctions, which is saying "you can't do such," or "you have to do such." But, it got perverted in Engand, especially around Elizabethan times, and then again at the time of the English civil wars, when King Charles the First was eventually beheaded, in the revolution. There was a Star Chamber, which was a special kind of equity court, wherte he pretty much took all the power, and had killed, by calling it an act of treason, anyone who threatened his power. So, in a couple of poems in this set, she's talking about how equity courts - they're calle that - and another word for equity in common   language is "fairness," right? And, of course, she loves paradoxes and satire, and she's saying that equity is anything but equitable. ... An equity court is appropriate in this case; it would be an injunction, and the judge tells the spiders that they must leave. [laughter]. Interpretation - anybody!

Greg. One note is that the word inmate meant just someone who shared a room with you, or a living space. It didn't have the connotation that it does now in her dictionary. It might have had it in common usage.

Jill. That makes sense, because they are sharing her space, quite literally. She sits down and they get on her bum. [laughter] She uses a wholly different concept here, because, beyond injunction - like, judge tells spiders to get out - she's also thinking about the Larceny of time and mind, and I don't know if you're familiar with these humongous monetary damages for pain and suffering suits now, like death, where you lose a parent, and you sue for the destruction of your psychic health ... they actually have legal language that they can use to argue how much you can get for the Larceny of your time and mind, and she can only know this because of her exposure to the law in her home.

Greg. You might point out that, for a long time it wasn 't understood what the Circumstance was that she's describing here. It wasn't until later in the twentieth century that - I forget who it was - decided that she must be in the family outhouse.

Melba. And I don't think it's necessarily certain. Susan Snively rolls her eyes and says that I'm way too dark about this poem, but she's saying that upon my silence a spider assiduously crawled.
That makes me think of a confined space, like being buried. She's decomposing, and wondering, "How am I going to get my body back?"

Clare. But there's no air for the bugs to be flying about in down there.

.....

Jill. The poem that's related to it is The Rat. And you know, it's not as good, I would have to say, but there's one tiny thing in it that I love, and that's the period at the end of the first sentence. [ Dickinson used periods sparingly ]

Robert reads.
The Rat is the concisest Tenant.

He pays no Rent.

Repudiates the Obligation —

On Schemes intent

Balking our Wit

To sound or circumvent —

Hate cannot harm

A Foe so reticent —

Neither Decree prohibit him —
Lawful as Equilibrium.
                       - J1356/Fr1369/M590

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/z7MUR805V2Y ]

Jill. Another definition I thought you'd need in this one is Decree; in this case, a court judgement in this case - an eviction notice.

Greg. Decree also has a weighty heft to it in Calvinist terminology, God issues decrees.

Jill. Do you think she could be analogizing the Rat to poor folks, who squat - adverse possession - or that it has any meaning outside the wittiness of natural law, where non-human animals don't have to pay for their homes? But, is it about poor people at all?

Jule.  Hate is a strong word. I think the key emotion here is her reaction to uncalled for hate. And, if someone doesn't care if you hate them or not, like the rat in the wall - "It's my wall" - That's a very strong word.

Jill. It's interesting to me how she's not on the side of the rat or the landowner. She doesn't love him She probably partakes of the hate that most people feel towards rats when you actually find them under the pantry, but, she's somewhere in between siding with the person and the rat. But, I wonder if she doesn't identify with the rat. Of course, it's reticent, and in the previous poem, she was so reticent, right?

Elizabeth. I like her use of the word concise though, just because she assigned a certain value[inauidible] she often likened herself to being small and taking the smallest room, and concise also suggests that it 's not something that's just meager. It takes up so little space, yet it packs a lot of punch. It's somewhat complimentary of the rat.

Jill. So the rat is her! in the way she writes.

Elizabeth. Maybe, I don't know, but I think that's an interesting word for Dickinson. That's as far as I might go with it.

Greg. I think it's Guthrie who points out that the root of the word concise means "cut out." The rat is cut out of the household - concise in that respect.

Jule. Jill, what do you make of the period?

Jill. The period I see as a visual metaphor for the smallness of the rat. You know how they can go into a little hole in the wall too? They can make themselves concise. She uses a period so rarely. She's having fun with what Elizabeth said - "The rat is concise and so is my sentence." [laughter].

.....

Jill. Let's take one of your own choosing.

Melba. I keep associating this one with her other rat poem.
Papa above!
Regard a Mouse
O'erpowered by the Cat!
Reserve within thy kingdom
A "Mansion" for the Rat!

Snug in seraphic Cupboards
To nibble all the day
While unsuspecting Cycles
Wheel solemnly away!
                           - J61/Fr151/M90

And, I'm just so struck by this notion of the heaven where this rat just nibbles away contentedly in the cupoard, and it make me wonder if Dickinson's meditating on her relationship to the rat. I am supposed to be the god in this household. I should be able to determine whether this rat lives or dies, and no, he's just enjoying the heavan of my bounty, because I can't get rid of him. And so, it's a really funny way of looking at the relationship between God and man.

[Interlude]

Rebecca reads.

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air -
Between the Heaves of Storm -

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset - when the King
Be witnessed - in the Room -

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable - and then it was
There interposed a Fly -

With Blue - uncertain stumbling Buzz -
Between the light - and me -
And then the Windows failed - and then
I could not see to see-
                                    - J465/Fr581/M270

Jill. One piece of legaleze - and it's one of my favorite lines of hers, - I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away/ What portion of me be/ Assignable, because to me, it's just such a - not snarkey, but an ironic comment on, near death, people are thinking about their estate, and she's trying to point out that only X part of things about me, and to do with me, are things that you can assign - that you will give.In her case, what was it? a couple of jewels? All the rest is not assignable. And I've always thought - and I know I'm adding in here - the family sitting around the death bed are a bit greedy. I don't know - they're waiting toward the legal event - and she is defying the fact of the legal concepts can define this event. Beyond that, the King is death, and he defied even the will; he's king of it all. You can't do your law system when the king has jurisdiction over everything.

Rebecca. Well, be fore I was ever a New England explicator [laughter], as a southerner I saw a fly as a flippant kind of, you know, "big deal." I thought it was funny when I first read it - minimize a big event.

Greg. She actually has a "flippant fly" in another poem.

Melba. [inaudible] like the spiders and the worms, that fly's ready to move in as soon as there's a clear opportunity.

Jill. Wow.

Polly. Melba, you are dark. [laughter]

Melba. When you have a classroom of twenty-year-old boys, you know where they're going to go. [laughter]. Of course, the fly's there to eat. [laughter]

Jule. A natural part of the environment.

Cynthia. Like the worm. Like the worm.

Jill. I alsos liked the word interposes in the third stanza, because I also like the legal connotation; it's when you interupt somebody when you're making an argument, and so the fly is interposing between the dying person's breath, and the family has stopped crying, and the breaths are nearing the death-rattle. And then interposes the fly. It has something to say, and like you've been saying here, death is this fact of physics. What Melba is interested in is the deterioration of the corpse that will happen, and so I think interpose may have been chosen to go along with the legal words.

Elizabeth. I do agree with Melba here, because I feel that the fly is able to take on some of those unassignable things, meaning the body. The fly is ready to take that portion.

Jill. So, natural non-human things have some powers that humans don't have.

Elizabeth. Or rights. They're heir to the body.

Greg. I used to like this poem. [ laughter ]

Jill. When the body dies, don't they sit with it? Are they required sit with if for a while under Victorian practices, then take it down to the mound? Greg wrote about it in his book [Emily Dickinson as a Second Language: Demystifying the Poetry], that they would take it down to the town vault. That was for holding the bodies in winter, because you could not dig the earth. I'm asking, are they supposed to keep the body in the bedroom for a while, to show respect?

Greg. Well, they did. We know that Austin and Emily and even Gib were laid out in the parlor. The sitting around for a while was while the person was dying - they called it the death watch, and they were waiting to see if this person recognized their own salvation or not. That's what they were most concerned about. That's why she wrote to Edward Everett Hale wanting to know if Benjamin Newton was willing to die. It was very important; they might see that the dying person has a glimpse of the after-life, and accept their death, because they knew that they were saved. They wanted to see evidence of that. That's what they were sitting around for. and that's what's going on here in this poem. She doesn't see anything.

Melba. About the buzz - I kind of read this poem as an ode to the primacy of sound. The final lines of the poem in particular: And then the Windows failed - and then/ I could not see to see- but she doesn't say that the sound stops. You get the impression that maybe the speaker continues to hear the buzz.

Greg. Isn't that the last sense to go?

Clare. I was just going to say that. Hearing is the last sense to go. That's definite.

Jill. Wow.

Greg. She built it into the poem.

Melba. She starts out at the moment of death with I heard a Fly buzz - when I died, and then you go through this three-stanza digression to get back, almost, to that moment. It's almost as if she begins and ends with this same moment of sound. There's all this writing and signing, and then it comes back to the primacy of sound. I think that that's where a poem really exists for her, in the sound. The paper is a necessary record of it ...

Jill. That's brilliant.

Clare. What strikes me about this poem is that the small distractions, no matter how profound the moment, are always an indcation of daily life. She's a poet who, unlike so many of her time, really stays in the daily life. I think that's something very special about this poem.

Jill. And I think that's appeal of [inaudible] law, too, because that is part of daily life. There are rules ya gotta know, and papers ya gotta sign ... Someone pick another poem.

Polly reads.
The Fact that Earth is Heaven —
Whether Heaven is Heaven or not
If not an Affidavit
Of that specific Spot
Not only must confirm us
That it is not for us
But that it would affront us
To dwell in such a place —
                        - J1408/Ft1435/M717

Jill. It's really hard. I could not have broken the mystery of it without the help of James Guthrie. He says it's like a real estate prospectus. For some reason he brings in Austin. Austin and Emily are looking at a document that offers them to buy heaven, and they say, "We need a walk-thru of the property" [laughter]. And, because they can't, Earth seems preferable. I don't know how he goes so far as to say that it would be like an affront to buy such a place - to buy heaven. I mean, an affront to us, not to God. Guthrie describes this poem as:

"a real estate prospectus. The parties to a land contract are entitled to survey the premises, but these prospective buyers are not able to obtain a glimpse of heaven. With out the opportunity of a buyer's walk-through of Heaven, Earth will have to do. The poet also seems to question whether Heaven can even be heaven, if this terrestrial place can seem so heavenly. Can there be two heavens? The legal language juxtaposes highly metaphysical question with their extreme opposite - the technicalities of contracts."

So for instance, an affidavit; you would present one in court, or in law offices without going to court, to assert a statement of fact, or an occurence, under oath. We do it before a notary or even a higher officer of the court. You know how she's always between belief and disbelief? Is she saying "Prove to me that Heaven exists?"

Cynthia. Or, that it's heavenly; that it's more heavenly than Earth.

Polly. And it's so funny that she says it's a Fact. It's a fact that Earth is Heaven.

Jill. So, did she get that language out of the Bible?

Cynthia. Actually, the Fact is legal. That's a legal term. The Facts in a case. I think that's a legal term, rather than a belief. The Fact that Earth is Heaven. She's making an argument.

Jule. Oh, so that's legal argument?

Jill. Oh, she's making fun of trying to take over another realm that she cannot do with legal language. ... So, it's a little more than the real estate prospective idea. ... I gotta do one I love - I lo-o-o-o-ve! Are we ready to leave Heaven?

Jule. It's on Earth, we're here. [laughter]

Jill. I like this because I like the psychoanalytic aproach to literature.
A loss of something ever felt I —

The first that I could recollect

Bereft I was — of what I knew not

Too young that any should suspect

A Mourner walked among the children

I notwithstanding went about

As one bemoaning a Dominion

Itself the only Prince cast out —

Elder, Today, a session wiser

And fainter, too, as Wiseness is —

I find myself still softly searching

For my Delinquent Palaces —

And a Suspicion, like a Finger

Touches my Forehead now and then

That I am looking oppositely

For the site of the Kingdom of Heaven —
                                   - J959/Fr1072/M481

Greg. a Suspicion, like a Finger - That is so great. That should be in our common bag of catch-phrases.

Rebecca. I think the saddest line is A Mourner walked among the children. It just grabs you. Those kids on the border, you know?

Jill. Ok, so, I just want to through in a touch of Guthrie, which is interesting, but not, like, determinative. He says that this is about the loss of her house on West Street. It's not that we know whethe she didn't want to go back in 1840, it's just that we know that she didn't want to go back, in 1855; nor did her mother. To leave West Street to go to Main Street, right?

Jule. She had her growing years in West Street.

Elizabeth. It reminds me of something more like Paradise Lost, or something. The Devil is reflecting on the loss of Heaven, and this is not like losing their house. Losing your self or your innocence - more than your innocence - or potentially your soul.

Greg. And that kind of a reading makes it more universal - something that we can take into ourselves and recognize somehow, rather than a particular thing.

Jill. Now, that word oppositely , second to last line - very interesting - I did a word search on it, and it can mean "contrarily." So, she keeps looking for home, or her idea of home, or a paradise, but she knows she's looking contrarily; she cannot find it there. Once you lose it - to lose one's faith - Once you've lost it, it's gone forever. She may be saying that, that innocence you have when you're a kid, it's likened to Heaven, because it's all good. But now she's looking contrarily.

Rebecca. There's a lot of loneliness in this poem.