Emily Dickinson Museum Discussion Group, 023 September 2016

Emily Dickinson Museum Discussion Group

Topic: The Vitality of Words: An Exercise in Philology

Facilitated by Margaret Freeman

023 September 2016

Margaret. The topic for today is “The Vitality of Words,” and Dickinson’s love of philology. This is an exercise in philology, and philology is the love of words, or the study of words – from the Greek. And all of you, I’m sure saw and know that famous letter that she wrote to Higginson – that first letter – where she asks, “Are you too deeply occupied to say if my verse is alive? The mind s so near itself, it cannot see distinctly, and I have none to ask. Should you think it breathes, I would be grateful …..” Of course, what’s interesting about this opening is the idea that verse can be alive, that it breathes, and that there’s a question of seeing – the mind so near itself that it cannot see distinctly. So what I want to talk about is the play of words that goes on in poetry, where poetry is often just words playing against each other, and what sorts of things they’re doing as a result. The whole point of poetry, it seems to me, is that it tries to capture that quality of words not having meaning, but suggesting meanings that we create as we read. That’s why there can be so many different readings of a single poem, right? We all have a different way of reading, of contributing. I’ve pulled out the three poems where she actually uses the word “philology,” so let’s look briefly at those. And not go into great detail about experiencing them. I should say that one of our missions at our institute [Myrifield Institute for Cognition and the Arts] is that in the arts and in language and in literature, it’s a question of experience, not interpretation. In studying poetry and literature in school, the first thing the teacher would ask, “What does this mean.” And, if you didn’t agree with the teacher, you were wrong. I think that that’s a real mistake. Interpretation should come last – if at all. What we’re really talking about is experiencing the life of the poem. So let’s look at the first one.

Shall I take thee, the Poet said

To the propounded word?

Be stationed with the Candidates

Till I have finer tried — or , other tried, or vainer tried

The Poet searched Philology  or, proved philology

And when about to ring

For the suspended Candidate

There came unsummoned in —

That portion of the Vision

The Word applied to fill

Not unto nomination

The Cherubim reveal —
                          - J1126/Fr1243/M557

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/v2xeTAygDRw ]

So, what I want you to notice from this poem as we start our discussion are several things. One is the idea of searching for words, for the right word, or the word that the poet wants to use. There’s the idea of vision – remember that very first letter - That portion of the Vision – so there’s the idea of seeing as well, in terms of words. And then, of course, Not unto nomination/ The Cherubim reveal. Immediately you’ve got Dickinsonian play going on here, because nomination and Candidate implies in the Church, when you are nominated, or in politics, as we nominate candidates. So you’ve got that meaning, but nomination also means making a noun – to turn a verb or an adverb or an action into a noun. It’s called nominalization in linguistics. We’ll talk about that, too – the way nouns and verbs play against each other. So those are the three things I want you to think about for that particular poem.

                        The next one is quite an interesting one.

"Was not" was all the Statement.
The Unpretension stuns —
Perhaps — the Comprehension —
They wore no Lexicons —  [variant - knew no Lexicons]

But lest our Speculation
In inanition die
Because "God took him" mention —
That was Philology —
                     - J1342/Fr1277/M566

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

That’s a lot harder poem to get your head around, isn’t it? I think the very first thing we have to recognize is the quotes. She’s quoting from Genesis chapter 5 verse 24 “And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.” And that is what Dickinson’s basing this poem on, right? What does that have to do with philology? What does it have to do with words? If you look at the inside of the poem, between the two quotes - The Unpretension stuns – died just like that, like something trivial. And Perhaps — the Comprehension – the unpretension/ comprehension tend to play against each other. They knew or They wore no Lexicons. Of course the Lexicon is the book of words, the dictionary. You’ll notice that I brought the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) because there’s no way that we can have a conversation about words without recourse to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Polly. Is that better, Margaret, than the dictionary that she used?

Margaret. Yes, I was going to say, that’s important too. But the interesting thing about dictionaries and you, and how you developed your own vocabulary and grammar, most of the words that you know and use you never looked up in a dictionary. You acquired them. You develop meaning from the context that you learned it in. As a result, the shade that you have on a particular meaning is as much influenced by your own reading and experience as it is from the dictionary. If you think about the way the dictionaries were created, they had to get at a meaning somehow that we all kind of agree. A word like “vision” means seeing, and we can all agree with that – what in traditional grammar is called denominated meaning, the denotation of a word. Then you have connotations. What does “vision” imply? What else is associated with that word? In traditional grammar there was always a strained difference between the denotation – what the word means – and the connotation that we apply to that word. Now, cognitive linguists do not use that terminology anymore, because they believe that language is embodied, that the mind is embodied. And what that means is that the knowledge of words is encyclopedic. It isn’t something that is self-identified. Words don’t have meaning; we give meaning to words. And the advantage of the OED is that unlike other dictionaries it includes meanings of the word from the very first time that it was found in writing. They go through the meanings from the very first time that it was in print to the present day. That’s why the OED keeps getting bigger and bigger. Dickinson’s vocabulary was not taken primarily from her Webster’s ‘44. It was taken, like us, primarily from her experience growing up, the cultural meanings of words in the nineteenth century that were being used around her, and her reading. She read an enormous amount. And because the OED includes literary references, you can see where she might have picked up some meanings, say from her readings in Shakespeare. So, we have in the lexicon groupings of words and possible meanings, and for the potentiality of meaning. I want to use the term potentiality of meaning rather than the actual having meaning. That becomes very important for poetry, I think, and for language. So, that’s what I want you to get from that particular poem. Now, the third poem where she uses the word philology.

Julie. Could you define inanition first?

Margaret. Inanition comes from the Latin inanire, which means to make empty. Inanition is kind of exhaustion from lack of nourishment, but it also has a meaning of lack of mental or spiritual vitality and enthusiasm. So, But lest our Speculation/ In inanition die – if we lose the energy and empty out the meaning of what was going on here. What is the significance of Enoch being taken by God and was not, because God took him? Now, why was that philology? That’s the question. That was philology – what was the relationship between them? That’s what I want to get into, in terms of what is behind all of these ideas of words and language and especially poetry – and Dickinson

So, this third poem is again a quotation from the Bible. The interesting thing about this poems is, Sue transcribed the little inscription above. I’m going to read that before I read the poem. “The import of that paragraph. ‘the word made flesh,’ had he the faintest intimation who broached it yesterday.” You can speculate on what that meant. My guess is that this was written after a church sermon, and the pastor or the preacher ..

Greg. Could it be John? The Gospel?

Margaret. Well absolutely, that’s what we’re going to talk about, but what got me was the yesterday. She meant literally yesterday.

Greg. I wonder.

Margaret. I know. You don’t know. Here’s the poem.

A Word made Flesh is seldom

And tremblingly partook

Nor then perhaps reported

But have I not mistook

Each one of us has tasted

With ecstasies of stealth

The very food debated

To our specific strength —

A Word that breathes distinctly

Has not the power to die

Cohesive as the Spirit

It may expire if He —

"Made Flesh and dwelt among us"

Could condescension be

Like this consent of Language

This loved Philology.
                       - J1651/Fr1715/M671

[ To hear this poem rad alound, to to https://youtu.be/v2xeTAygDRw ]

And there you have the whole idea of the vivacity, the vitality, the word-making flesh. It’s almost as if Dickinson was a cognitive linguist. Words are embodied; they’re made flesh. And of course it’s about the St. John’s gospel. In the opening it says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John, of course, is referring to the very first chapter of Genesis: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said Let there be light: and there was light.”

            Now, if you notice in the Genesis passage, you’ve got the beginning, the creation of something. You’ve got the earth without form and darkness. The face of the deep – face, which implies seeing, vision – we see with out faces. The spirit of God moving – we’ll come back to that word, spirit, in a minute. And then God saying – speaking – let there be light – and there was light. So there you’ve got that vision of light again. So, something’s going on between speaking words, and light, and creation and making. And poiesis, poetry, is from the Greek word poiesis, to make. That’s what artists are doing; they are making.

            So we have in this poem again the idea of breathing distinctly, and the spirit made flesh. The opening of John’s gospel reads,

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” I’m quoting from the King James version.

“In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in darkness; and the darkness overcame it not.” Then there’s some here about John, the disciple, and I’m skipping that to verse 14.

“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” So what’s going on here is that you’ve got word, you’ve got light, you’ve got creativity. You’ve got life, light, and you have truth, in the word being made flesh, full of grace and truth. So, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that all art, and especially poetry, conveys truth. I think this is what Dickinson knew above all other things. So, let me go through a few words that I think are aligned behind all three of these poems

First of all it’s spiritual. Spirit, right? Spirit is from the Latin spiritus, which means breath, and spirare, to breath. So, you’ve got the noun breath, and the verb. To animate means to give life to, right? Where did that come from? Anima, mind and soul. So, animate is to instill with life – is to give life. You have Genesis, which is from a Greek word meaning to be born or to produce. So you get the word generate, and generation, and to generate stuff means to bring it into being. Logos, the Greek for word, and reason. So you have philology – the love of words. Then, you have the Latin word for live, vita. So you’ve got vital, and vitality. In Latin, the vitalis is the animating principal of life and being. So, this is the way I want you to start thinking about he way words have a semantic network. One word will have a host of different associations. That is something that I think Dickinson really, really knew. Let me give you an example, then, of the way she’s playing with words before we turn to particular poems to try to figure out what they’re doing. The last thing on your handout, jut in four lines, which was transcribed – we don’t have the original manuscript, but Sue transcribed it, and it seems to me that there’s no question here that this is a Dickinson poem.

The gleam of an heroic Act
Such strange illumination
The Possible's slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination
                       -J1687/Fr1686/M662

[ To hear this poem read aloud, go to https://youtu.be/PMONFrV4-kI  ]

For what I’m going to talk about, I’m indebted to a linguist, Haj Ross – John Robert Ross, who is currently at the University of North Texas. He is an absolutely brilliant linguist. He loves Emily Dickinson. He calls her Saint Emily. He has written several pages on this poem. He is a phonetician and a syntactician. He believes the Blake thing, that every mark counts. If you know Blake’s paintings and poetry, every single thing counts; not a blur, not a mark is without significance. Haj takes that literally. He looks at every single thing in the poem, right from the letters, to the morphemes, to the syntax, to the sounds, to the patterns, and what he discovered is – he brings the poem to life in this way. So let’s start this with a gleam. What’s a gleam? A gleam of light, right. To gleam is to give light – to shine brightly. But that’s the verb. How about the noun? A gleam – it’s not just as light, right? It’s insight, a glimmering of something. It’s fainter, isn’t it, in the noun. If you have a glimmering of something, it’s not totally distinct. In the way that the verb is. Gleaming is totally distinct. There’s a Possibility of shining brightly, but it’s just a little flash, it’s brief. Dickinson is using it as a noun. The moment you put an article in front of it, it’s a noun.

Polly. Margaret, could it be a nugget?

Margaret. Yes, it could be a nugget. And again, what ‘s an Act? An act is an event, an action. It’s a verb, right? But again, she’s using it in noun form- an act, and also it’s an heroic act, which is associated with the Greek hero. It’s also associated with a first-century Greek mathematician called the “Hero of Athens” or something like that, so hero has become associated with something that is super manly or something special. Also, the heroic verse is used for expressing heroic subjects. Iambic pentameter, the Alexandrine, iambic pentameter were all considered heroic verse traditionally, and Dickinson would have been aware of that in the nineteenth century, that this is how you dealt with [inaudible] verse. And in the nineteenth century you had a classical education. You learned your Latin, you learned your Greek. And we know that Dickinson had Latin, and less Greek. So in that very first line we’ve got a noun from a verb, an adjective from a noun, and then another noun from a verb. Then the next line, Such strange illumination. Strange is a straightforward adjective, but what about illumination? It comes from the Latin again, lumen, for light, and illumination is a noun coming from “illuminate.” Again, we have a noun being made from a verb form.

            The third line, what the Chinese would call “the eye of the poem, The Possible's slow fuse is lit. Possible. What part of speech is “possible?” It’s an adjective, but she’s made it a noun by putting the article in front, and just in case you missed that, she puts a possessive at the end. Haj has some wonderful examples of that. …. She is not doing it meta-linguistically. She’s making it a noun, and in that, Haj says, is the whole poem – that it’s a poem in itself, The Possible’s. It’s playing with words. And lit, what’s that? To light, to light up. It’s a verb form, but it’s really an adjective, or a denominated verb. It’s really from “light,” but it’s being turned into a verb, so it’s the opposite.

            And, By the Imagination, and there you have the whole idea of the imaginative faculty, which is what enables us to be human, right – that enables us to create. And the reason we’re able to do that is through language, more than anything else. The other thing that’s going on here is the sound patterns. There’s a kind of symmetry in this poem that’s going noun-verb, verb-noun – the number of syllables, the number of words per line, the number of nouns per line are alternates, but equal. The number of words are 6-3-6-3; the number of syllables are 8-7-8-7’ the number of nouns per line 2-1-2-1; the number of syllables in the four adjectives 3-1-3-1. In this alternation you also have the alternation in the sound patterns. That would take us too long to go through – all of the sounds in this poem ….. The word “bomb” doesn’t appear here, but it’s suggested by the slow fuse…. Alright, moving on to another poem.

Victoria reads:

The Love a Life can show Below
Is but a filament, I know,
Of that diviner thing
That faints upon the face of Noon—
And smites the Tinder in the Sun—
And hinders Gabriel's Wing—

'Tis this—in Music—hints and sways—
And far abroad on Summer days—
Distils uncertain pain—
'Tis this enamors in the East—
And tints the Transit in the West
With harrowing Iodine—

'Tis this—invites—appalls—endows
Flits—glimmers—proves—dissolves—
Returns—suggests—convicts—enchants—
Then—flings in Paradise—
                                - J673/Fr285/M366

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

Margaret. That was lovely. Alright, how do you respond to this poem?

Polly. Well, it’s passionate

Margaret. In what way is it passionate, Polly?

Polly. Well, the elaborate language and the sense of all kinds of possibilities which appears in the final verse; also the sense of music through the center of it. It’s sort of orchestra.

Margaret. Yes, that’s a nice word for it. I was just thinking of the preceding verse to the music. It’s hyperbole, isn’t it, that gives you that sense.

Arianna. What is the Tinder in the Sun? What would that refer to?

Several. Used to start a fire.

Margaret. The poem starts talking about the Love, right? Notice again turning love into a noun. It’s but a filament. It is the filament of that diviner thing that is going to smite the tinder in the sun.

Daisy. It’s interesting, the repetition of Tis this. It’s like a pointer, helping finger guiding us.

Robert. I’m experiencing it a little bit like a definition poem, where she’s expanding on what love is.

Greg. Why did you choose it, Victoria?

Victoria. Because I’ve always love, as Polly put it, the large orchestral sound of it. I’ve also liked the sense that she’s given some tangibility to something that can’t be seen – that diviner thing, and in that last stanza, the driving verbs. I don’t think there’s any other poem that’s quite like that where she’s just – it’s got a lot of momentum to it.

Polly. Usually she’s choosing just one word from many, and this time she just throws them all in. [laughter]

Victoria. Apparently that’s what this diviner thing is –

Polly. But there’s more beyond

Victoria. But there’s more beyond., in that paradise.

Margaret. There are two copies of this poem in manuscript, and the other one begins “A love a child can show below.”

Susan. It’s almost a requiem for those of us left below. For us mourners.

Margaret. Yes. And notice, too, that in the repetition of all of those words. By putting them together she is making us see the connections, isn’t she? – between those words. All of them together trying to give us that sense of the all-encompassing. And the fact that she’s referring to music, and then she’s referring to painting in a way – she’s talking about art – about the creativity of all art, and of poetry. So you have it seems to me that this poem is also talking about the life force – the spirit that animates. The idea that poetry enables us to experience, and feel., and the idea is love- the idea that philology has the word love in it, and I think that that’s a perfect poem for that. Shall we move on to another one?

Susan reads.

How Human Nature dotes
On what it can't detect.
The moment that a Plot is plumbed
Prospective is extinct -

Prospective is the friend
Reserved for us to know
When Constancy is clarified
Of Curiosity -

Of subjects that resist
Redoubtablest is this
Where go we -
Go we anywhere
Creation after this?
                   - J1417/Fr1440/M604

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

Margaret. The variant for Prospective is extinct is "It’s meaning is extinct." But it’s interesting because the first variant for meaning is import – import is extinct. But then she has Prospective is extinct, and she underlines that, which means that’s probably the one she preferred, and that’s probably why Franklin put it in his reader’s edition. … Our friend and colleague Masako Takeda is always asking, “What makes Dickinson Dickinson?” What is Dickinsonian about a Dickinson poem? – and I think that’s a lovely way to get at it. This poem is a good example. Shall we choose one more? ... ... Oh yes, this one has often been a puzzle.

Julie reads.

A faded Boy — in sallow Clothes
Who drove a lonesome Cow
To pastures of Oblivion —
A statesman's Embryo —

The Boys that whistled are extinct —
The Cows that fed and thanked
Remanded to a Ballad's Barn
Or Clover's Retrospect —
                          - J1524/Fr1549/M631

[ To hear this poem reas aloud, go to https://youtu.be/EAs30w7YCzU ]

I looked at when it was written – 1881, toward the end of her life, but it has this tone of everything just becoming a subject for reflection, and memories, and withdrawal and so forth. But then the contradiction with the Embryo, because that’s the egg in the beginning, and combined with A statesman's Embryo? I might get “a poet’s embryo,” but a statesman’s Embryo? Then she goes from pastures of Oblivion to becoming the subject of a song and to Clover's Retrospect, as if you’re thinking about pushing up the clovers, after burial. But it’s just very mellow – reflective – but in a sad way, I found. Lonesome Cow? Everything has become so…

Margaret. If you look at the words, they’re loaded with sadness, faded, sallow, lonesome, oblivion, extinct.

Julie. There doesn’t seem to be any passion about it, like in the other one, but then there’s that embryo.

Polly. This sounds like an elderly person, probably male, remembering his childhood. I’m not sure there’s a big message; it’s more a description.

Julie. But why a statesman’s Embryo?

Greg. This sallow boy just might be the beginning of great things to come.

Polly. It could be a statesman recalling the days when he took the cows to the barn.

Melba. With the suggestion, perhaps, that the statesman has moved just so far from this original experience, that it’s barely comprehended; it’s faded and out of focus for him.

Polly. Because so mush time has gone by.

Greg. This poor sallow boy may be the beginning of a statesman to be. And the one who whistles and is cavalier fades away.

Margaret. But then I think, why pastures of Oblivion?

Daisy. Well, forgotten pastures

Greg. The subjects of ballads are usually lost to history, aren’t they? They’re kind of gone. So this whistling boy is remanded to that forgotten place. He’s not the statesman.

Polly. But there’s a nostalgia there, too, for simpler times.

Margaret. I wonder too whether our own experience and background, which is the context in which you start reading these words, is the way we respond to the word statesman. For me, frankly, it has a certain negative tinge. That’s from my own personal background, and I wouldn’t want to intrude that into the poem, necessarily – but the way I am responding to it …

Melba. Well, we’re all a little dubious about politics in general, so you might want to let yourself go there. [laughter]

Victoria. I thought she might think of statesmen as men like her father, that she held in such high esteem. So, if this boy became a statesman, he would be a respected man.

Greg. One thing to help with that would be to find out if and how she might have used it in other poems,

[Margaret consults the Concordance of Emily Dickinson’s poems. The word statesman occurs in only this single poem]

Margaret. I don’t have the concordance of the letters with me. Of course, that would be another place to look – for the association of the words.

            One of the things I have not talked about – one of the reasons I got into this Vitality of Words business is that we got into a discussion at the Emily Dickinson Reading Circle in 2009. Three people brought in poems they wanted to discuss because they found them difficult. It was an amazing discussion, and afterwards, and I very rarely do this, I sat down and tried to remember what everybody said. I don’t take notes. So, I wrote it up. The first poem was A Chilly Peace infests the Grass. That poem is just incredible, when you start looking at it. What I found was, that I was expecting certain words when I copied out the poem – and you always should copy out a poem, because that’s how you really get to know and understand. It’s the same as saying it out loud. When you get “a Trance of Industry” in that poem, I think of a trace of industry. She’ll often do this, you know. She’ll use a word that’s very close. One would be typical, but she doesn’t choose it. She chooses something else, and then suddenly the whole thing gets up into a whole different way of thinking about things.

Victoria. I noticed that phenomenon when we held the marathon last weekend, and particularly with those people who weren’t as familiar with reading her poems. By putting their own meaning into a word then they’d think that the next word must be one that follows and it would be incorrect. Many, many times people did that.

Daisy. At the beginning, Margaret, you said that interpretation is last and experience is first. It seems like we’re diving into a discussion of words. What do you mean when you say “experience first?”

Margaret. I’d like to give the example of the very first poem, where Polly responded and said that it was passionate. That was her experience of the poem feeling that sensory, emotional response to the poem. You’re not looking then at the words. I realize we’re talking about words, because that’s what I titled this talk to be, but, a poem isn’t just words. It’s also the meta-linguistic features – the properties, the sound patterns, the repetitions, the alternation principle that you get in the gleam poem. It’s the prosody that carries emotional weight. The repetitions of all those words in Victoria’s poem, the effect in this poem of all the associations with words like faded and sallow, and lonesome; those kinds of negative attachments that are happening. Those have nothing to do with the meaning of the words. It’s experiencing what that word is evoking.