I saw no Way—The Heavens were stitched— | The ‘Emily Has a Sense of Humor’ Interpretation

FR633/J601 A continuation of this post.

So, once we opened the door to knitting, Mr. Thomas (one of our fine commenters) pointed out that every aspect of this poem can be construed as a knitting double-entendre. But, before going where this leads, let’s all agree that Emily Dickinson did not have a sense of humor, did not do anything other than sit in her room all day contemplating moldering death, and would never demean the genius of poetry with a tawdry poem that might be, in its entirety, inspired by a knit cap. Great artists do not have a sense of humor. and do not trifle their genius with knit caps. With that out of the way, the poem again:

I saw no Way — The Heavens were stitched —
I felt the Columns close —
The Earth reversed her Hemispheres —
I touched the Universe —

And back it slid — and I alone —
A Speck upon a Ball —
Went out upon Circumference —
Beyond the Dip of Bell —

And now for the double-entendres:

• Heavens → According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the 19th century usage of this word included the meaning “canopy”, as over a stage.
• stitched → stitched/knitted
• columns → column stitch
• Earth reversed → Right side/Wrong side: The “right side” of the work is the side that faces out or toward the public. This would be the outside of a hat, sweater, mittens. On a flat project like a blanket it is the side that is intended to show the pattern. The “wrong side” refers to the inside of the work, the back of the work or the part that doesn’t face the public. Knitting for Beginners
• Hemispheres → the inside and outside of a knit cap/hat/bonnet
• Universe → The world or earth, esp. as the place of abode of mankind or as the scene of human activities. [Oxford English Dictionary, emphasis mine.]
• And back it slid → Could be a reference to needles sliding or putting on a knit hat (let’s say).
• Ball → A ball of yarn.
• Circumference → Any given hat has a circumference.
• Dip → Dickinson might, for instance, use a double dip stitch whilst knitting a hat.
• Bell → And she might also use a Bell Lace Stitch in the same hat.

So what to make of this? Imagine Dickinson sitting in the livingroom, by the fire perhaps, while here relatives are also knitting or simply bustling about the house. As she knits her hat/cap/toboggan/bonnet, and being in a light mood, she stops knitting long enough to feel the hat’s soft material between her fingers and begins (with the eye of poetic genius) to think that the hat would make a lovely metaphor. Or imagine that she pauses, knit hat in hand, before putting it on to go outside.

First she looks at the inside of the hat.

I saw no Way — The Heavens were stitched —

Image from Knitmuch.

She saw no way through the top of the cap. And that’s how a knit cap is supposed to look. Maybe she’s finished the hat by turning it inside out and tying off the last top stitches. From Knitmuch: “When you’re satisfied they are secure, pull the needle through to the inside of the hat and weave the yarn through a few stitches on the wrong side of the work. Tie a knot and cut the yarn, leaving a short end.” Or maybe she’s simply looking at the “wrong side” of the hat—the inside—and naturally enough the Heavens—the top of the cap—are stitched together and there’s “no way” through.

The Heavens are the top of the hat—and of course the hat itself—in the sense of a canopy for the head, the head and mind being the stage where our lives play out. This interpretation relies on synecdoche but Dickinson is nothing if not a master synecdoche.

I felt the Columns close —

She feels the column stitch closely, perhaps for the pleasure of feeling the finished cap, but also playing on the sense of enclosure (of the columns on a stage perhaps). There might also be the sense of her feeling the column stitches close at the top of the hat.

The Earth reversed her Hemispheres —

She turns the hat inside out. Passive tense: The Earth [the hat reversed itself/herself] her Hemispheres. A hat, after all, is hemispherical. And the hat is like an Earth in that it contains us, in a sense, and is the circumference beyond which the universe awaits. Here too Dickinson might be playing on the sense of turning dogma and religious doctrine inside out. Both interpretations of this poem can exist side by side. That’s the beauty of poetry.

I touched the Universe —

The inside of the hat is the canopy (Heavens) beneath which our cognitive drama plays out. The hat goes on our head and our head is enclosed in the hat’s “columns” much as a stage might be enclosed. The outside of the hat is the “Universe” or—perhaps better—the outside of the hat is where the universe begins—the abode of mankind. So, in a sense, by touching the outside of her knit cap, she’s touching the universe. Dogma is on the “wrong side” and the universe is on the “right side”—the public side.

And back it slid — and I alone —

She puts the cap on—back it slid—and goes outside/into the universe alone. Simple as that. There’s a feeling of loneliness but also the pleasure of being alone, free from the constraints of others—their dogmas, philosophies, and religious impositions. She goes out alone, unaccompanied by preconceptions, mind fully open to any experience.

A Speck upon a Ball —

And now she playfully compares the Earth to a ball of yarn and herself as, perhaps, a speck of color on that great “Ball”.

Went out upon Circumference —

She went for a walk. Simple as that. The circumference of her hat was both the circumference of her own being and the beginning of the Universe. And the circumference is that of the Earth, the ball of yarn she walks upon. There’s the sense, perhaps, that Dickinson thinks of the Earth as a great Ball of yarn with which she’ll knit her own understanding of the Universe.

Beyond the Dip of Bell —

An understanding that goes far beyond the Dip and Bell stitch—the commonplace conceptions of others—and the columns. She will knit, from the yarn of Earth, an entirely individual and original conception of the universe. She doesn’t write Dip and Bell but Dip of Bell, which is why it’s not unreasonable to read it as a reference to the swinging peal and call of a church bell with all its dogma and doctrine. {Edit: Given the tactile emphasis of the poem, “Dip of Bell” may also refer to the tactile dip the bell stitch can make in the pattern). The line can contain both meanings, and Dickinson is going to walk beyond both.

up in Vermont | November 16 2023

FR633/J601 I saw no Way—The Heavens were stitched— | Me vs. Vendler & the World

And here we are. Vendler’s interpretation of I See no Way has sent me straight to the keyboard. The poem itself kept me awake last night, and then a thought occurred to me that, as far as I can tell, has occurred to no one else. First to the poem:

I saw no Way — The Heavens were stitched —
I felt the Columns close —
The Earth reversed her Hemispheres —
I touched the Universe —

And back it slid — and I alone —
A Speck upon a Ball —
Went out upon Circumference —
Beyond the Dip of Bell —

And my first reaction was my usual one—Wut? Then I read Vendler’s interpretation, and her interpretation largely swims in the same waters as every other interpretation I can find. She interprets the first line as meaning that “an access to God… has been stitched shut” [p. 275.] She explains the columns by writing that “Heaven’s door is a portico with stately Columns”, concluding that these columns are closed to Dickinson. She is barred entrance in a “putatively paternal Heaven”. “She turns to the maternal Earth” writes Vendler, but the Earth “is too unstable to be trusted, able to ‘reverse; her Hemispheres at will”. Further, writes Vendler, the Universe evades Dickinson by “sliding back into its interstellar spaces, leaving her alone on the geographic globe of Earth, that ‘ball'”. From, Vendler treats the final quatrain as both Dickinson’s realization of existential loneliness and revelation— “…she has had a revelation (not to be had from the rejoicing Father-God, not to be had from the unreliably revolving maternal Eearth) of her entire parentlessness, her orphan status in the void of the Universe, her ultimate magnificence.”

All of the interpretations that I could find online follow this same general pattern. No one is quite sure what “columns” refers to, except that they’re “closing”. Of all the interpretations I could find, the finest was here at the blog the prowling Bee (and there are some great comments there). The blogger, Susan Kornfeld, writes that “The very columns of the sky have closed. The speaker feels them close – a more visceral sense of denial than had she merely watched.”

But out on my limb I go. I’m going to say that almost everyone, Dickinson scholars included, have misread the second line, and in the poem itself is some evidence, possibly, to back me up. The meaning of the second line is not:

I felt the Columns close [shut like a door]—

But:

I felt the Columns close [as in closely]—

What? asks every reader of this poem ever. But hear me out. Dickinson herself sets it up in the first line when she writes that the “Heavens were stitched”. We have a metaphor and Dickinson, as she often does, continues the metaphor into the second line. Ever heard of a column stitch?

So, as I read it, Dickinson isn’t referring to some obscure notion of heavenly columns or a vague something about the sky, but column stitches! (Not even the Dickinson Lexicon considers this possibility.) If you think that such an obvious allusion would be beneath Dickinson, consider her early versions of FR796

The wind begun to knead the grass—
As women do a Dough—
He flung a Hand full at the Plain—
A Hand full at the sky—

Clearly, Dickinson kneaded Dough at least once in her life and touched on knitting and stitching elsewhere. And why not knit a hat for herself? (She drew her imagery from her well of experience as a woman.) There are many extent examples of 19th century knitted hats, caps and bonnets. My daughters knit. My wife knits. I’ve knitted on occasion.

748

Autumn — overlooked my Knitting —
Dyes — said He — have I —
Could disparage a Flamingo —
Show Me them — said I —

Cochineal — I chose — for deeming
It resemble Thee —
And the little Border — Dusker —
For resembling Me —

Or the poem Don’t put up my Thread and Needle.

And there’s no reason to think Dickinson wouldn’t draw such a homely analogy but I suspect that few—perhaps none?—have read it this way because readers give greater weight to the first line’s negating “no Way” rather than to “stitched”. The “no Way” naturally leads to interpreting close as something being shut to her. But the other piece of evidence that supports my reading is the rhyme scheme. /kloʊs/, not /kloʊz/, rhymes with Universe (called a consonant rhyme). /kloʊz/ doesn’t rhyme with Universe even as an eye rhyme. It is a consonant rhyme with Hemispheres, but that violates the rhyme scheme. It wouldn’t be the first time Dickinson ignored rhyme schemes, but there’s a consonant rhyme in Ball and Bell; and given that Dickinson makes the effort to rhyme lines 2 and 4 in the second stanza, my instinct is to count that as an argument for /kloʊs/ rather than /kloʊz/ in line 2 of the first stanza.

Edit: It occurred to me the following day to add that a third piece of evidence is the contrast that Dickinson creates between feeling the column stitch and touching the Universe. The contrast isn’t nearly as effective if felt is made a sort of insubstantial “feeling” of metaphorical columns closing in rather than an explicit contrast between feeling the “column stitch” of theology and touching the actual universe.

So where does this leave us?

I read the first two lines as an analogy. Dickinson compares religious notions of Heaven to the man made and complex needlework of a hat, shawl, or gloves She can’t see her way through the complexity even as she closely feels the pattern. There’s “No Way”.

The Earth reversed her Hemispheres —
I touched the Universe —

There are a couple ways to interpret these lines. My instinct is to interpret the Earth reversing her Hemispheres as a change of seasons, each to it’s opposite. When it’s summer in the northern hemisphere, it’s winter in the south and vice-versa. So, what she could be saying is that summer changed to winter or winter to summer. Time passed. Seasons changed. She was given time to think. If we go with this interpretation then I would read the poem like this:

I saw no Way [I could not see through]— The [way that the] Heavens were stitched — [were explained]
I felt the Columns [the pattern/belief/faith] close — [closely]
The Earth reversed her Hemispheres — [then winter changed to summer]
I touched the Universe — 

In winter (let’s say), Dickinson spends her time inside, studying religious and philosophical explanations of life and the universe—studying how they’re “stitched” together. She feels/considers them closely, but come summer, when Earth’s hemispheres reverse, she goes outside and gazes at the Universe itself. “I touched the Universe” itself, she writes (in contrast to the removed “column stitch” of philosophy and religion). Others interpret the reversing of Earth’s hemispheres as revelation, and the line can still carry that sense, but my hunch is to treat the first quatrain as a sort of image cluster centered around knitting. Knitting is done any time of year, but in general, the clothes one knits are intended for colder weather, if not winter; and so I treat Dickinson’s opening lines as possibly indicating season. We begin in winter (although as she intimates in Don’t put up, maybe she preferred knitting in summer?). She compares the man made explications of the universe—religious and philosophical—as akin to something stitched together and overly complex. The seasons change—inner and outer. I read Dickinson’s “I touched the Universe—” as meaning that she went outside and gazed at the actual Universe. Then there was no need for any mediation (the knitted clothing of religion and philosophy) between herself and what she saw.

And back it slid — and I alone —
A Speck upon a Ball —
Went out upon Circumference —
Beyond the Dip of Bell —

Many readers, including Vendler, interpret “back it slid” as the universe backing away from her attempt at communion. Vendler describes it as “sliding back into its interstellar spaces, leaving her alone”. To me, this contradicts Dickinson’s assertion that she “touched the Universe”, and so I’m not inclined to agree with Vendler. One can also interpret “back it slid” in its opposite sense, meaning that it slid “back into place”—as something that was displaced and made distant and restored by her simply gazing at the night sky. Dickinson doesn’t say whether it was night or day, and it ultimately doesn’t matter interpretively, but I read it as night.

Edit: “Back it slid” might also be a continuing reference to knitting, of the needlework sliding along the needle and back into place (in a way that she can comprehend.

Then she was alone, in the sense that the universe spoke directly to her, rather than through the mediation of (again) man made dogma. Then she felt herself as just herself, as a “Speck upon a Ball [the Earth]. In other words, by engaging the Universe without the precepts of others (free from the constraints of anyone else’s belief systems) she stood alone and capable—reliant upon her own thought, judgement and insight. She went out “upon Circumference”, upon the limits of knowledge, and did so “Beyond the Dip of Bell” [beyond the limits and constraints of doctrine, dogma and theology—the rise, dip and rise of the calling church bell]. She once wrote to Higginson saying that “My Business is Circumference.” The circumference of what? I read her as meaning the ever widening circumference beyond which there is always the next mystery and the next truth.

The fear of standing alone before the universe is what drives humans into the welcoming embrace of dogma, doctrine, philosophy and religion; but to allow all these statements (of someone else’s belief) to fall away, to stand alone before the beauty, mystery and immensity of the universe unencumbered by anything but wonder, is the bravest act of all. Reading it this way, I find the conclusion of Dickinson’s poem to be truly lovely, powerful and humbling.

November 16th 2023 For an interpretation that treats the whole of Dickinson’s poem as a sort of double-entendre on kitting, look here.

Something you can knit yourself, just go here.

up in Vermont | November 14 2023