How to and how not to read Earthsea

The first time I read the Earthsea Trilogy, I was fifteen years old and on the outer banks of North Carolina. Short of the Azores, that might have been the best place to read the original trilogy—on an island with the Atlantic washing the sands outside my door. At that point, that was all that Le Guin had written of Earthsea. I was a fifteen year old reading a YA series (as Le Guin herself describes it) about a 19 year old Wizard (and later a younger—16 or 17 year old?—Tenar). Le Guin doesn’t commit, simply saying that Tenar (as central to the series as the Wizard Ged) was ‘not even that old’. In a sense, I was the perfect age, reading a fantasy series written for me.

I still have the books that I read over 40 years ago—the same issue as the books above.

Close to ten years after I had read the original trilogy, Le Guin published Tehanu (for Le Guin, it was 18 years). Tehanu is a horse of a different color. Firstly, Le Guin decided the book wasn’t going to be a YA novel, but one for adults and with adult themes and secondly, she set out to right the perception that her initial trilogy (if it wasn’t misogynist) took a dim view of women in an uncritically patriarchal fantasy world. The men were wizards of great schooling, power and wisdom while women were, at best, smelly village witches living in dank, smelly little houses who pedaled deceit and ignorance. “There is a saying on Gont, Weak as woman’s magic, and there is another saying, Wicked as woman’s magic,” Le Guin wrote.

Le Guin changed all that with Tehanu. She would write:

[A woman’s magic] goes down deep. It’s all roots. It’s like an old blackberry thicket. And a wizard’s power’s like a fir tree, maybe, great and tall and grand, but it’ll blow right down in a storm. Nothing kills a blackberry bramble. [Tehanu 100]

This is spoken by the Witch Moss (who was still smelly) but whose mythology in the series, as a whole, undergoes a considerable transformation. This revision of women’s place in the Earthsea universe was beautifully written about in a paper called Witches, Wives and Dragons: The Evolution of the Women in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea—An OverviewUrsula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea—An Overview.

The point I would make, in regards to this, is that to read Earthsea as a unified vision, in the same manner as Lord of the Rings, is going to leave the reader disappointed. There are any number of critiques by readers bemoaning the “feminist revision” of the initial three books—the loss of the archetypal hierarchies easily recognizable from the fairy tales of the past thousand years. But if you’re going to read Earthsea this way, then you’ll likely be disappointed, wondering why she ruined the first three novels.

What makes Earthsea fascinating is to see how an author revisits a world that was ostensibly complete. Le Guin probably never planned to write another Earthsea book after completing the initial trilogy. Normally, the author drops hints and clues as to what’s to come. This propels the reader forward. Plot threads need to be tied up. But Le Guin tied up all her plot threads. Ged had lost his power. Like King Arthur, he was carried off into the mists of legend.

What makes the latter three books fascinating is to see how an author re-enters her own world, and radically transforms it. She can’t rewrite. The initial books are done and written, and yet she has to make the radical revision feel organic—as if the themes of the latter books were there, all along. Her solution is to make their very “completeness” a central problem. In this case, she treats their completeness as an artifact of Earthsea’s patriarchal bias. They only seem complete because it was the male perspective, in a sense, that was telling the story. It’s a neat feat, since she, Le Guin, was the author of the first three books, but the latter three books treat this perspective as the “evil” that threatens the latter books.

Melanie Rawls, the author of the paper cited above, puts it this way:

The “author” of the first three books did not know why women’s magic was weak or wicked, or she gives no explanation in the books, presenting that information as everyday fact. The “author” was unaware of the history of the founding of Roke. The author of the first three books seems to know the nature of dragons, and it is a nature familiar to us from our western myths, epics and folktales. In these books, dragons are indisputably male.

And then later:

The latter three books, however, demonstrate how much the earlier “author” does not know about dragons. The dragons of the last three books are female: the Woman of Kemay, Tehanu, Orm Irian.

It’s in that sense, in my opinion, that Earthsea should be read, as a fascinating and archetypal story of the author’s inner journey, her revision of self (perhaps redemption). You’re reading the work of an author who has turned her inner journey into an archetypal fantasy novel. That said, it’s a curious thing (and I speculate) but the author Le Guin seems to favor men over women. Even when she expresses a “feminist” critique of the first three novels, one gets the sense that she continues to adore her male characters (which is why I find some of the criticism leveled against her latter books—by readers who resent the intrusion of feminism—to be ironic if not oblivious). She does this even as she turns two of her female characters into goddess-like all-powerful beings—namely dragons—as if to balance the male power of the earlier novels. Her impulse to adore men—to attentively portray their struggles, foibles, tenderness, and nobility—remains, while her suspicion of female characters also subtly persists. I don’t consider that a failing. It’s refreshing, especially when compared to Tolkien, who absurdly idealizes women (if he bothers to write about them at all). It’s another reason that I find criticism of her “feminism” to be misplaced. Le Guin seems to possess a well-tested knowledge of female treachery— even in a male dominated fantasy world. She is disinclined to treat women as helpless victims. Speaking through Tenar, she scolds the young Kargish princess Seserakh, instructing her to get her act together and become the Queen, the co-ruler of Earthsea, that she is meant to be.

Literary Style in Fantasy

Yesterday I was out grocery shopping and was waiting to pick up my wife at the bus depot (returning from Europe), and killed some time at Barnes & Noble. The Sci-Fi Fantasy section was my playground, and I was there for one reason. I wanted to see how fantasy authors were writing their novels—stylistically. That meant me starting on the left and going right. I read, on average, one paragraph from each book, opened at random. What I discovered is what I had already suspected. All of them are writing in a modern vernacular that, apart from descriptions of swords and ox carts, could just as easily be narratives set in the modern day. Of those on the shelves, none of the authors made a discernible effort, at least to me, to shift their language to a less modern vernacular. Modern colloquialisms abounded. For example, one author used the phrase “despite the fact” in the middle of a medieval battle. The expression comes with a whiff of cliché but, more damningly, reads like the anachronistic narration of a second tier documentary. I like to compare the writing of fantasies to costuming in historical dramas. (One of my favorite Youtubers, Burnadette Banner, annually rates historical dramas in terms of their faithfulness to period clothing.)

The writing of modern fantasy authors, for me, compares to historical dramas that pay zero attention to period clothing. And music has the same disorienting effect. Modern background music in medieval movies is one thing, but when musicians show up, within the world of the movie, and start playing utterly anachronistic music on modern musical instruments, that really makes me—unhappy. Now I admit that we can’t have movies set in the medieval time (let alone novels) written in Middle English or Anglo Saxon (although that would be pretty cool). It would also be pretty cool if time travelers were actually confronted with the languages spoken in a given period. Go back to King Arthur’s court and good luck to you if you don’t speak Anglo Saxon or the Latin of Rome at minimum. And don’t expect to see any suits of armor (à la the movie Excalibur). Suits of armor wouldn’t show up for another several hundred years. But, in my opinion, the two fantasy authors who have written the standards of the genre, JRR Tolkien and Ursula Le Guin, both adopted a more rhetorical (oratorical style) that contributed to their world building (also worth mentioning in this regard is Micheal Moorecock’s Elric of Melniboné, although Moorecock’s stab at linguistic world building can sound more like Dungeon & Dragons than literature.). Just to really show you what I mean, and rather than pick on any particular, contemporary fantasy author, I’m going to take a paragraph from Le Guin and Tolkien, then rewrite them the way our modern fantasy novelists would write them:

Ged spent three days in that village of the West Hand, recovering himself, and making ready a boat built not of spells and sea-wrack, but of sound wood well pegged and caulked, with a stout mast and sail of her own, that he might sail easily and sleep when he needed. Like most boats of the North and the Reaches she was clinker-built, with planks over lapped and clenched one upon the other for strength in the high seas; every part of her was sturdy and well-made. Ged reinforced her wood with deep-inwoven charms, for thought he might go far in that boat. [From the opening of Chapter 9, Iffish, Wizard of Earthsea]

And our modern fantasy novelist:

Ged spent three days recovering in West Hand. He pegged and caulked his boat, getting it ready. It wasn’t like his old boat. His old boat had been held together by spells. It was constructed with good wood. It had a strong mast and a sail that was made from cloth. He would sleep easily when he needed to. Like most in the North and the Reaches, the boat was clinker built. The planks overlapped and were drawn tightly together so they’d be strong. The boat was sturdy and made well. Ged wove charms into the wood because he thought he would use the boat for a long time.

And from Tolkien:

Now the Captains of the West led their host towards the City, and folk saw them advance in line upon line, flashing and glinting in the sunrise and rippling like silver. And so they came before the Gateway and halted a furlong from the walls. As yet no gates had been set up again, but a barrier was laid across the entrance to the City, and there stood men at arms in silver and black with long swords drawn. Before the barrier stood Faramir the Steward, and Húrin Warden of the Keys, and other captains of Gondor, and the Lady Éowyn of Rohan with Elfhelm the Marshal and many knits of the Mark; and upon either side of the Gate was a great press of fair people in raiment of many colours and garlands of flowers. [p. 244 The Return of the King]

And our modern fantasy novelist:

At sunrise, the Captains of the West marched lines of soldiers towards the city. They flashed and rippled like silver. The soldiers stopped at the gates and were several hundred feet from the walls. New gates weren’t up yet, but there was a barrier at the entrance and there were armed men in silver and black with long swords. There was the steward Faramir and Húrin, who was Warden of the Keys. There was Lady Éowyn and Marshal Elfhelm, who were from Rohan. And then there were the Captains of Gondor. They all stood in front of the gate with crowds of happy people on both sides. They were wearing colorful clothes and garlands of flowers.

What I’ve done is to remove nearly all of the hypotactic and syndetic writing, the inversions, the nominal phrasing (the prepositional phrases), and archaic words like “upon” and the obsolete usage of the prepositional “for”. In short, I tried to remove all the rhetorical devices that signaled a more formal, archaic or heightened syntax. The revisions are okay. They get the job done. Most importantly, they tell the story. The revised paragraphs are typical, for example, of what you might find in Brandon Sanderson’s many (and successful) fantasy novels. George RR Martin, who I’d consider the finest writer contemporary author of fantasy, splits the baby. He gives to his characters a slightly more archaic/heightened rhetoric, while narrating in an ostensibly modern vernacular. For example, the narrator:

“picking the way”, “muttered to himself”, the sarcastic “but try and tell”. The phrase “but try and tell” belongs to a modern vernacular and is the least likely to be found in anything by Tolkien or Le Guin (let alone the medieval period). The other phrases probably also don’t belong in any medieval world. I don’t recall that Gollum ever “muttered to himself”, though that would have been a likely description. On the other hand, the destrier (the warhorse) is “great“—an adjective that is a wholly owned subsidiary of the fantasy genre. And many are the “unwary” who sojourn in medieval fantasy worlds. But watch what happens when a character from GOT speaks:

While the character’s language doesn’t make use of the rhetorical heightening typical of Tolkien and Le Guin, he also doesn’t let anything conspicuously modern slip in. “It steals up on you” is a nicely antiquated phrase. “It burns, it does” and “Peaceful, like” is some nice cockney, “old world” signaling. Hollywood has long associated the English accent (and cockney specifically) with the old world and so Martin goes there. All well and fine. Ultimately, Martin settles on a sort of mid-Atlantic formality (for lack of a better description). He assumes a heightened literary style that avoids common colloquialisms (and the modern vernacular in general) but also largely steers clear of archaic syntax and grammar. Largely. He still peppers his modern prose with little Dungeon & Dragony gestures: “[He] slipped his dirk free of its sheath.” If Martin had fully committed to writing like this (like Le Guin or Tolkien) then it might sound less, to my ears, like a Dungeon Master remembering, every now and then, to throw in some old-school prepositional phrases (for atmosphere).

But there was a reason I was browsing through the fantasy section. In my own fantasy novel(s), I’ve gone full Tolkien and Le Guin. And how. And I’ve done it because, mainly, I enjoy it. The fantasy genre gives me the excuse to write in a lovely, heightened, rhetorical style that is a bit like poetry. It’s forgivable in the realm of dragons, so why not? It’s part of the world building. And maybe that’s the reason modern fantasy novels disappoint me so much. At least try. Why, with such a golden opportunity, do today’s fantasy novelists write in such a modern and generic prose? Translate the Iliad or Odyssey into this same prose and most, if not all of the magic and nobility is lost.

On the other hand, they’re published and I’m not. So there’s that.

I’m ready to try my hand at another Dickinson poem.

Pick one out!

This was a Poet | This, That and Who?

This was a Poet — 
It is That
Distills amazing sense
From ordinary Meanings —
And Attar so immense

From the familiar species
That perished by the Door —
We wonder it was not Ourselves
Arrested it — before —

Of Pictures, the Discloser —
The Poet — it is He —
Entitles Us — by Contrast —
To ceaseless Poverty —

Of portion — so unconscious —
The Robbing — could not harm —
Himself — to Him — a Fortune —
Exterior — to Time —

[FR 446/J448]

So. I’ve read a second interpretation of this poem, now by Cristanne Miller (the first by Helen Vendler) and both interpretations seem to fudge the final quatrain. Both seem to muddle. The reasons for the confusion, as with many of Dickinson’s more abstruse poems, are the “nonrecoverable deletions” (as Cristanne Miller nicely describes them). Essentially, because of the constraints of form, Dickinson chooses to delete connectives and syntax that would guide a reader’s understanding.

• Aside: I know it’s peak heresy to ask this question, but I do wonder to what degree Dickinson was aware of her poetry’s frequent obscurity. I’ll make the baseline assumption that her poems made perfect sense to her. If you had asked her what she meant by the final quatrain of This was a Poet, she might have looked at you like you were daft. (She didn’t take well to Higginson’s critiques and he learned—quickly—not to offer them.) And that makes me wonder if anyone ever asked her for clarification? She did send many of her poems to friends and relations, especially Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson. Based on my own lifelong experience as a poet, I’m going to say, No. On the other hand, maybe they didn’t need clarification? They were living in the same town, the same culture, spoke over tea and exchanged letters. We might expect a reader like Susan to fill in the blanks. So the question is this: Was Dickinson knowingly obscure or was she too familiar with her own poetry to recognize its obscurity? To say that she was knowingly obscure strikes me as out and out anachronistic. Poets in the mid 19th century were writing to be understood. Full stop. The 20th century’s infatuation with “pointless obscurity”, as William Logan nicely put it, just wasn’t a thing when Dickinson was writing. Does that mean that Dickinson was too familiar with her own poetry? There’s probably an element of truth to that. Another way of putting is that she might have expected too much from readers other than friends and family. Her syntactic compression/ellipsis/metonymy is part and parcel of her poetic art, but that’s a fine line. I wouldn’t have her poetry any other way, but sometimes, we must admit that her meaning is every reader’s best guess.

  This was a Poet — 
  It is That [poetry]
  Distills amazing sense
  From ordinary Meanings —
  And Attar so immense

My impression is that most readers interpret That as referring to the Poet. This would be Miller’s interpretation and, unless I’m mistaken, Vendler’s. I actually read That as referring not to the poet but to poetry in general. Normally this would be a four line stanza. R.W. Franklin notes that these lines are made four lines in “derivative collections” and Miller prints the poem this way (in her book A Poet’s Grammar). This makes the first line read: This was a Poet — It is That. Printing the poem this way makes it more tempting to associate That with the Poet. But if we print it according to Dickinson’s own lineation, then the assertion This was a Poet stands by itself. The statement is in the past tense and I read it, in a sense, as an epitaph. I read the poem as like a scene in a play. We’re accompanying Dickinson (or the speaker) on a nice afternoon’s walk through the graveyard (actually a thing in Victorian times). As we accompany Dickinson, she pauses at a grave stone we might have overlooked. She says,”This was a Poet.” Recognizing the poet’s grave, she then is reminded of his poetry and says, almost to herself, “It is That, that distills amazing sense from Ordinary meanings”. In her book “Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them”, Miller notes that in his “Letter to a Young Contributor”, Higginson wrote, “Literature is attar of roses, one distilled drop from a million blossoms”. This was the letter that prompted Dickinson to write Higginson and suggests that Dickinson’s own imagery was inspired by Higginson.

  And Attar so immense

  From the familiar species
  That perished by the Door —
  We wonder it was not Ourselves
  Arrested it — before —

  Of Pictures, the Discloser —

That Dickinson uses the word “immense” suggests Higginson’s “million blossoms”. Also worth noting, I think, is the notion that what “perished by the Door” was made into attar. Keep that in the back of your mind. The narrator, standing by the gravestone, next expresses appreciation for the genius of poetry. The poet’s skill is such that she wonders why we don’t ourselves “arrest”/grasp/comprehend what poetry, after the fact, makes self-evident. Poetry is “Of Pictures” (possibly meaning imagery) the “Discloser”. That is, poetry is the art that reveals truth through the language of imagery, archetype, and symbol.

So far, so good. It's the last third of the poem where matters get muddled. [Note: For an interpretation I find more convincing and simpler than my own, be sure to read the comment section; then decide for yourself.]

  The Poet — it is He —
  Entitles Us — by Contrast —
  To ceaseless Poverty —

  Of portion — so unconscious —
  The Robbing — could not harm —
  Himself — to Him — a Fortune —
  Exterior — to Time —

Now, here’s my thought: If we keep in mind that Dickinson, at the very outset of the poem distinguishes between two subjects, the Poet (deceased) and “Poetry”—the That that makes the perished into attar—we have the makings of a contrast. Dickinson even spells it out. “By Contrast—” she writes. The speaker returns our attention to the deceased Poet (after describing poetry’s power). That is, unlike his or her poetry, by contrast, the Poet will not be made into attar. The Poet has perished. It’s possible to break down these lines into three separate assertions:

  The Poet — it is He —
  Entitles Us — by Contrast —
  To ceaseless Poverty —

The death of the Poet, in contrast to his poetry, is a cause of ceaseless Poverty. Ceaseless because his death is final. Dickinson isn’t referring to the The Poet, but to Death. Then she moves on to her next thought:

  Of portion — so unconscious —
  The Robbing — (!)

In a highly compressed fashion, she is accusing Death of thoughtlessness and indifference. Of portion, she says sarcastically, Death is unconscious/thoughtless/indifferent. In other words, she expresses dismay at Death’s indifference to the “portion” that is really being robbed from us—not just a man but a great artist—a Shakespeare, a Keats or a Brontë. She expresses dismay at Death’s indifference to who he robs from us.

                  — could not harm —
  Himself — to Him — a Fortune —
  Exterior — to Time —

Now she moves onto her third thought. And here, if I’m interpreting the poem correctly, Dickinson’s final lines remind me very much of the closing lines to her poem, Because I could not stop for Death:

  Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
  Feels shorter than the Day

There’s that same sense of timelessness—not the timelessness of paradise, but of awareness exiled from time’s rituals—a nothing that is both death and deathless. That is, just as with the narrator in Because I could not stop for Death, the Poet’s centuries feel shorter than the day. The conclusion just as laden with contradiction—but also consistent. According to biographers, Dickinson refused to “accept Christ” (and presumably the afterlife that went along with that) but she also seemed unwilling to accept the death of the soul. This may disappoint some metaphysical naturalists among my readers (and you know who you are) but asking Dickinson, in her era and culture, to throw the soul out with the Christian bathwater, is probably asking too much.

Though Death has robbed us of the Poet, Death cannot rob the Poet of his “Fortune”. The Poet takes what is most precious about him with him (Dickinson was untroubled, according to Vendler, by the use of He/Him in reference to herself as a poet). He takes his creative genius—his Fortune—into that deathless death that is exterior to time. Death can rob us of the poet’s creative genius, but cannot rob the Poet himself. “[Death] could not harm—Himself [the Poet]”. To Him—to himself—the poet’s Fortune is now exterior to time. Yet one is very hesitant to read this as triumphing over Death. Dickinson ends the poem, as with Because I could not stop for Death, with irreconcilable contradiction. She is both deceased and conscious. And that might be part of the point. The contradiction, the dissonance, is part of the tragedy.

• From Vendler’s Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries: “Dickinson here uses a capitalized universalized “he” in reference to the Poet; I follow her reverent practice. She assumes the ungendered nature of the Platonic Idea of the Poet. She would not have said that she meant to exclude, by the pronoun “He,” the women Poets whose works she admired: Elizabeth Barret Browning, George Eliot, and Emily Brontë.” [p. 212-213]

Edit: It’s tempting to read “Exterior — to Time” as the poet’s poetry triumphing over time. In other words, his fortune—his poetry—is exterior to death and time. The problem with this reading is that it seemingly contradicts the speaker’s earlier assertion that He entitles us to “ceaseless poverty”. One has to explain this apparent contradiction. My own way around this is to treat her final lines as a reference to the deceased Poet rather than to His or Her poetry (and Because I could not stop may give us a precedence for such a reading).

Worth mentioning is that she could be describing herself in This was a Poet—commenting on her own death. In this sense, This was a Poet and Because I could not stop for Death can be read as describing the same event—her own death. The former is from the perspective of the living, reflecting on the poet’s death, while the latter is from the perspective of the deceased poet.

I haven’t said much about Vendler or Miller’s interpretations because they’re so different from mine. I don’t know how to summarize their readings (and frankly find them somewhat scattershot and confusing). How exactly does Vendler land on plagiarism, for example? What and where does that come from? Vendler summarizes the closing couplet this way:

“Dickinson points out the degree to which the Poet’s capacity to notice, to notice everything, and then disclose His “Pictures,” makes us notice things too… And third, Dickinson points out the indifference of the Poet to us (or to anyone else), an indifference arising not from self-esteem but from His (to him unconscious) Fortune. He is so unaware of the grace bestowed on Him, of the great “Portion” of wealth He has inherited, that no robbing from his worth can harm Him (plagiarism of His work by others does not affect our recognition of the true Poet). He moves in a world (in Dickinson’s great phrase) “Exterior — to Time — “… He is as unaware of Time (and its obverse, Eternity) as He is of us. [p. 213-214]

So you can see how different our interpretations are. Vendler doesn’t even interpret the poem as being that of a deceased Poet (and this despite describing the opening line as a past-tense epitaph in the very first sentence of her analysis). According to Vendler, if I understand her correctly, Dickinson is describing the archetypal experience(?) of reading poetry. It seems to me that Vendler spends less time interpreting the poem than ‘biographizing’. Miller interprets the poem as Dickinson expressing (for lack of a better term) gender resentment(?). She reads Dickinson as addressing male poets (and not the Platonic Idea of the Poet) in her use of He, and frames the contrast as one of “difference and of strength”.

“As a younger sister of a favored son and as a consciously female poet, however, Dickinson might well differentiate herself with some resentment from the poet who creates unconsciously and with ease, the man of ceaseless, inherited cultural wealth. Evidently during this time when she wrote or at least copied “This was a Poet” for her own safekeeping, the contrast between herself as artist and the world was particularly vivid. In the fascicle where she binds this poem, Dickinson precedes it with two poems on similar differences. In the first, “It would have starved a Gnat — / To live so small as I — ” (612), the speaker brags that she can live on even less that a gnat, and without his privileges to fly to more sustaining places or to die. In the poem immediately preceding “This was a Poet,” the speaker is a “Girl” poet “shut… up in Prose — ” by uncomprehending adults, whom she escapes “easy as a Star” by willing herself to be free (613).  Later in the fascicle Dickinson includes “It was given to me by the Gods” (454), a poem about another “little Girl” far richer with her handful of “Gold” than anyone could guess and richer than anyone else is: “The Difference — made me bold —” she confides. These are poems of difference and of strength, whether these qualities stem from unique starvation or mysterious wealth.” [Emily Dickinson: A Poet’s Grammar p. 120-121]

Miller interprets Dickinson’s use of That, in reference to the Poet, as suggesting the poet’s “lack of humanity”.

“The poet’s lack of humanity is further suggested by his peculair invulnerability in the last stanza: “a Fortune — / Exterior — to Time —” is glorious as a description of immortal poems but somewhat mechanical and materialistic as a description of a man. We are poor, capable of “wonder,” within “Time,” while He is alone, “Exterior” to our world, knowable only “by Contrast.” [p. 120]

“The poet/narrator who speaks in Dickinson’s poem considers herself a part of the admiring, ordinary crowd rather than separate from it. Her stance indicates that not all poets share “His” isolation from community.” [p. 121]

So, from Miller, we have a feminist critique based on a reading of He as a specifically gendered reference; and not, as Vendler asserts, a universalized He. It could be argued, in that respect, that Miller’s reading is potentially anachronistic (giving too much weight to the pronoun). Miller’s interpretation is also, arguably, based on reading the first two lines as one (which is not how Dickinson preserved the poem).

At any rate, there’s my 2 cents. Spend it how you will.

upinVermont | March 12 2024

Emily Dickinson, The Wicked Queen of Snark

I was thinking about how often I read Dickinson’s poems as hot-blooded and sarcastic. The respectable term ‘Irony’ is applied to her poetry, but that strikes me as a high brow euphemism. Hers is not a coiffed literary irony. Hers is the raw snark of a modern troll—a sarcasm meant to bait and mock. I’m not a feminist scholar or critic, but it would seem to me that this would be fertile ground. What better way for a woman, isolated and hemmed in by societal expectations, to speak truth to power? I won’t be that critic, because I don’t have the background, but there’s a graduate thesis, if not a book, waiting to be written. I can’t think of any other female poet who compares to Dickinson until, possibly, Dorothy Parker (who generally treats sarcasm as a display of wit) rather than the often furious, despondent, and scathing sarcasm of Dickinson.

An example of one of our most renowned close-readers who seems to entirely miss Dickinson’s sarcasm, again and again, would be Helen Vendler. I have to stress my gratitude for Vendler’s writings on Dickinson, but I do think she treats Dickinson too much like just another very serious poet. When John Milton, as a young man, professed his poetic ambitions, he was thinking of Paradise Lost—a very serious epic without a shred of sarcasm. Keats would go on and on about poets’ laurels and would write the Odes and Hyperion—and there is not a shred of snark in those. Emily Brontë, who Dickinson read and favored, never once let her poet’s mask fall, but adopts the elevated, lofty and literary distancing of her peers. Christina Rossetti was sometimes so elevated as to be insufferable. In a fit of righteous pique, she figuratively sent her brother and his “merry lovers” straight to the bottom of the sea. Walt Whitman? Sarcasm? You jest. The only contemporary poet, to my knowledge, who compares to Dickinson in his unembarrassed sarcasm would be George Gordon Lord Byron. Consider Byron’s skewering of Wordsworth:

  What! can I prove "a lion" then no more?
    A ball-room bard, a foolscap, hot-press darling?
  To bear the compliments of many a bore,
    And sigh, "I can't get out," like Yorick's starling;
  Why then I'll swear, as poet Wordy swore
    (Because the world won't read him, always snarling),
  That taste is gone, that fame is but a lottery,
  Drawn by the blue-coat misses of a coterie.

Or, earlier on:

  Don Jòse and the Donna Inez led
    For some time an unhappy sort of life,
  Wishing each other, not divorced, but dead...

Which leads to Byron's beautifully snarky comments on the noble and admirable equanimity with which Donna Inez (and Spartan wives) suffer and suffered the agonies and deaths of their husbands:

  And then this best and weakest woman bore
    With such serenity her husband's woes,
  Just as the Spartan ladies did of yore,
    Who saw their spouses kill'd, and nobly chose
  Never to say a word about them more—
    Calmly she heard such calumny that rose,
  And saw his agonies with such sublimity,
  That all the world exclaim'd, "What magnanimity!"

Of lordly and aristocratic accomplishments:

  Then for accomplishments in chivalry,
    In case our lord the king should go to war again,
  He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery,
  And how to scale a fortress — or nunnery.

Or

  Sermons he read, and lectures he endured,
    And homilies, and lives of all the saints;
  To Jerome and to Chrysostom inured,
    He did not take such studies for restraints;
  But how faith is acquired, and then ensured,
    So well not one of the aforesaid paints
  As Saint Augustine in his fine Confessions,
  Which makes the reader envy his transgressions. 

Dickinson’s snark isn’t as urbane. Byron was an aristocrat, a Lord, and while he left England in disgust, subjected to the proto gossip columnists of the 19th century, he could nevertheless afford to leave. Not Dickinson. Hers is the snark of the caged starling. Unlike Byron, who filters his mockery and sarcasm through the conventional literary mask of Don Juan’s narrator, Dickinson speaks with the necessity of directness, less urbane humor than a biting cry to be heard. It’s what makes Dickinson feel so much more modern than her peers—to me.

My first example of this would be a poem I’ve already discussed here, I never saw a Moor.

  I never saw a moor;
    I never saw the sea —
  Yet know I how the Heather looks
    And what a Billow be.

   I never spoke with God,
    Nor visited in Heaven.
  Yet certain am I of the spot
    As if the Checks were given —

As I wrote in my prior post, I read this little hymn as dripping with snark. It’s possible to read this as a piously conventional Victorian poem affirming Christian faith, but as I wrote previously, one must (in my view) ignore the obviously mocking colloquialism (even in her day) of “Yet certain am I of the spot…” Yes, Emily knows just where to go if you want to speak with God and visit Heaven. Yesireebob. There’s a “spot” alright, otherwise known as a plot—as in a plot in a graveyard (if we’re spelling this out). Dickinson will suffer none of that happy talk about some insubstantial and eternal paradise. It’s a spot. Checks are always available! Enjoy your trip.

The earnestly pious, Victorian Christian poet does not describe God in Heaven as, wait for it, a spot.

Another poem dripping with snark would be the recently discussed ‘Tis so appalling — it exhilarates —.

  'Tis so appalling — it exhilarates —
  So over Horror, it half Captivates —
  The Soul stares after it, secure —
  A Sepulchre, fears frost, no more —

  To scan a Ghost, is faint —
  But grappling, conquers it —
  How easy, Torment, now —
  Suspense kept sawing so —

  The Truth, is Bald, and Cold —
  But that will hold —
  If any are not sure —
  We show them — prayer —
  But we, who know,
  Stop hoping, now —

  Looking at Death, is Dying —
  Just let go the Breath —
  And not the pillow at your Cheek
  So Slumbereth —  

  Others, Can wrestle —
  Yours, is done —
  And so of Woe, bleak dreaded — come,
  It sets the Fright at liberty —
  And Terror's free —
  Gay, Ghastly, Holiday!

The entirety of the poem concerns the joy and liberation of death! Once you’re dead, no need to fear the cold! As Emily says, the “Sepulchre, fears frost, no more —”. Yay? Once you’ve turned into a ghost. Voila! No need to fear ghosts anymore! “To scan a Ghost, is [makes one] faint —” she writes, “But grappling [becoming a ghost], conquers it [that fear]—” Aside: I should think. Let others “wrestle [with their fear of death]/Yours, is done”. Death liberates you from Fright! Death frees you from Terror! And then, all but writing “/s”, she concludes, “Gay, Ghastly, Holiday!” 🥳 Whoopee! 🎉 I haven’t read all of world literature before she wrote that line but, arguably, in the entirety of the English canon, there’s nothing quite so transparently snarky. Do please correct me if I’m wrong.

For a third example, I thought I’d turn to some pages at random, lest I be accused of cherry-picking.

  Take your Heaven further on—
  This—to Heaven divine Has gone—
  Had You earlier blundered in
  Possibly, e'en You had seen
  An Eternity—put on—
  Now—to ring a Door beyond
  Is the utmost of Your Hand—
  To the Skies—apologize—
  Nearer to Your Courtesies
  Than this Sufferer polite—
  Dressed to meet You—
  See—in White!

And I landed on this. It’s—pure, undiluted snark. That doesn’t stop the website All Poetry from treating the poem as an earnest meditation on the afterlife. They write, “This poem explores themes of loss, grief, and the nature of heaven.” The analysis goes on to write, “The use of religious imagery and language suggests the speaker’s struggle to come to terms with the idea of an afterlife. The poem’s concise and direct language emphasizes the speaker’s sense of loss and pain.” Really? The analysis, like so many, casts Dickinson as the victim of life and circumstances—a woman of endless loss and pain. As with so many interpretations, we walk away thinking to ourselves — Poor Emily.

I read this poem — very differently.

The poem expresses Dickinson’s sly power and refusal to be a victim. The final line, like the final line in ‘Tis so appalling — it exhilarates — all but drips with snark. As I read it, her poem is like a missive to a suitor who missed his chance.

  Take your Heaven further on— 
[Take your propositioning, promises of love, elsewhere] 
  This—to Heaven divine Has gone—
["Heaven divine" could be poetry or the gratitude of her own company]
  Had You earlier blundered in
[If you'd had the wits to strike when the iron was hot]
  Possibly, e'en You [even a fool like you] had seen
  An Eternity [my erstwhile affections for you]—put on—
  Now—to ring a Door beyond
  Is the utmost of Your Hand—
[Now, you'll have better luck at the next house]
  To the Skies—apologize—
[Apologize to God in Heaven for all I care]
  Nearer to Your Courtesies
  Than this Sufferer polite—
 [You'll have better luck there than with me]
  Dressed to meet You—
  See—in White!

  [FR672/J388]

And then that killer pun in the final line: White is the color of the virgin and of the bride. Look what you could have had, she says, with all the hot-blooded venom of a scorpion. (Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.) I was dressed for your company—in the white of a virgin and bride but, I have news for you, White(!) is also the color of death, my dear, of the burial shroud. In other words, your chances with me are dead, dead, dead. I’m dressed to meet you, not like a virgin, but like a corpse! Exclamation point.

This is not the poetry of a victim.

Sewall is the first biographer credited with freeing Dickinson from the perception that she was a hapless and delicate violet trapped in her room like a forlorn Rapunzel. When I read so many interpretations of Dickinson’s poetry that nevertheless portray her as an earnest, perturbed and death-obsessed damsel, I have to wonder whether critical readers have caught up?

Of course, I could be completely wrong with my interpretations. You decide.

Higginson called his meeting with Dickinson—intense. I think these poems give some clue as to why he would write that.

up in Vermont | March 3 2024

I felt a funeral in my brain | Oblivion or Breakthrough?

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -

[F340/J280]

This is a fascinating poem simply because so much of its weight and meaning rests entirely on how one interprets the meaning of a handful of words. Each word exists in a sort of splendid isolation that conversely affects the meaning of every other word. To begin with, how does one interpret “sense”? How does one interpret “Plank”, “World”, “Finished” or “knowing” ? How does one interpret “breaking through”. This latter phrase, fascinatingly, appears twice in an alternative draft. Rather than writing “And Finished knowing”, Dickinson wrote “And Got through — knowing”. So, in one draft at least, the conceit of breaking through and getting through appears both in the first and last stanza, arguing that this conceit of break through is something we should be paying attention to. That is, the central conceit of the poem may not be oblivion or defeat, which is understandably how the poem is universally (as far as I know) interpreted (including recently by Vendler), but the opposite. In my usual contrarian way, I read this poem as a grim triumph; and my reasons for doing so are not just internal to the poem but have to do with the poem that follows it in Dickinson’s fascicle.

  I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
  And Mourners to and fro
  Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
  That Sense [sanity] was breaking through - [in the sense of falling into a chasm]

It’s tempting to read “breaking through” in the sense that sanity was “breaking through” the imagined drama of the funeral, but based on the stanza that follows, my hunch is that this would be misreading Dickinson’s meaning and anachronistic. I looked up breakthrough in the Oxford English Dictionary and was surprised that the noun—a breakthrough—doesn’t appear. I had to go to Webster’s where they pinned the noun’s appearance at 1918 and only in the sense of a military “breakthrough”—as in there was a breakthrough of the enemy’s defenses. It wasn’t until 1968 that the modern usage of “a scientific breakthrough” appeared.

What is the “Funeral”? No one seems to be certain. Some speculate that it was dissappointment as regards a love or friendship, while others suggest a spiritual crisis (her rejection of Christian belief and dogma). (Dickinson’s biopgrahper Sewall writes, for instance, that “Reason “breaks” may be a tortured requiem on her hopes for [Samuel] Bowles both to love her and to accept her poetry… [p. 502]) Later in the poem she will describe the footfall of the funeral attendants as creaking across her soul. In that sense, her soul is the floor, the foundation upon which her existence is predicated, and it’s this floor—her soul—that her sanity is breaking through. In other words, not even her soul can support the weight of her suffering. That floor, her soul, gives out and she plunges into nothingness.

  And when they all were seated,
  A Service, like a Drum -
  Kept beating - beating - till I thought
  My mind was going numb - 

This stanza is fairly straightforward, but for modern readers, I think, it does the work of clarifying the meaning of the first stanza. Clearly, Dickinson is describing a sort of mental breakdown, first of sanity, then of awareness. I interpret her ‘mind going numb’ as her failing awareness of anything other than suffering.

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,

The reader is likely meant to interpret the ‘Box’ as a casket (within which lies her “deceased” relationship, beliefs or she herself), but in her numb (touchless) and senseless (visionless) state, the only sense left to her is hearing. Lead would be a highly unlikely metal for heels, being soft and malleable, but I was curious if metal heels, of any kind, were a thing in the 19th century. A not-exhaustive search didn’t turn up anything. Dickinson was likely describing the heavy footfall of the mourners as leaden. Additionally, those carrying a casket are likely to walk in lock-step and their steps will be made heavier by the weight of the corpse within. If the corpse is Dickinson herself—or her mind—then the floor (her soul) is the last creaking stay against her ultimate descent into nothingness—although that begs the question: What exactly is her soul—what does Dickinson consider it?—if it’s the floor on which her being exists, then what falls through? How does she distinguish her soul from her mind? If it’s not her soul tumbling into nothingness, then what is it? But it’s also possible to read too closely and too literally. Her imagery is not static but makes her soul both the floor and the essence that falls through its own being.

  Then Space [existence] - began to toll,

  As all the Heavens were a Bell,
  And Being, but an Ear, 
[All of existence was the bell and I was nothing but the Ear.]
  And I, and Silence, some strange Race
  Wrecked, solitary, here -
[Both Dickinson and silence are, in a sense, banished and alone] 

This stanza is difficult to parse. Cristanne Miller clumps this sort of syndetic writing (the repeated use of conjunctions) under parataxis (in that there are no subordinating conjunctions to guide our understanding). Is each ‘and’ meant to refer Ear, I and Silence back to ‘being’?—or is Dickinson imitating a sort of cumulative madness. My reading is that the latter is the case, but that two different states of being are described. In the first two lines she’s describing her experience consumed by the tolling bell. The second two liken that experience to being banished, wrecked and helplessly alone. She is banished. The Emily Dickinson Lexicon defines Race, among other definitions, as a “Course; journey; progression; steady movement toward a goal; [fig.] life; continued course of existence after death.” So Dickinson could be referring to her experience as a kind of ‘strange journey’. She could also be using “Race” in the sense of not belonging. If this is a spiritual crisis (a rejection of Christian theology) then she’s apt to feel as though she belongs to an altogether different “race” or society—wrecked/ostracized and solitary/alone. The same feeling may apply if her romantic overtures have been rejected. Her strangeness, her identity as an ambitious female poet, also could make her feel like an altogether ostracized “race”—and both interpretations could apply. One gets the sense that she wasn’t the kind of woman men pursued in those days.

  And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
  And I dropped down, and down -
  And hit a World, at every plunge,
  And Finished knowing - then -

And now, as usual with Dickinson’s final stanzas, things get interesting—very interesting. There are two very different ways to read this stanza. I think most, if not all, interpret this stanza as the threatened conclusion to the prior three stanzas. If Dickinson is describing the pain of a lost relationship, for example, then it makes sense to read this stanza as her descent into madness or nothingness. We interpret “plank” as a continuation of the imagery that associated the creaking floor with her soul and we might associate Reason with the Sense or sanity in the first stanza. In other words, her sanity and reason finally give way to madness. Her soul, the floor/plank upon which the funeral takes place, breaks or “breaks through”. She drops down and down. ‘World’, in this sense, might be her memories. In other words, every memory is a “world”. Once she has exhausted those memories, she is “finished knowing”. Even hearing is gone. (Interestingly, one will read that hearing is the last sense to die in a dying patient, but how scientists know this has never been explained.) The loss of her relationship, or hoped for relationship, is like a death to her. Vendler, who apparently can’t bear to kill poor Emily, describes the final lines as “leaving madness for a merciful unconsciousness”. But this poem would hardly be the first to suggest oblivion as the last word.

But let’s suppose the crisis is spiritual, then that makes an entirely different interpretation possible. A plank can also be “one of the separate articles in a declaration of the principles of a party or cause; as, a plank in the national platform.” This is not a possibility that you will find at the Dickinson Lexicon, but according to the Oxford English Dictionary, this understanding of the word plank appeared in poetry nearly a quarter century before Dickinson wrote this poem, as well as in Newspaper articles going back to 1848. That Dickinson, of all poets, would have been unaware of this meaning of “plank” is unlikely.

• In William Logan’s book Dickinson’s Nerves, Frost’s Woods, wherein Logan gives I felt a funeral a close reading, he credits Cynthia Griffin with the observation that “a telling emblem from the book Religious Allegories (1848), [shows] a gentleman crossing a plank that bestrides a dark abyss. The man holds a radiant book that must be the Bible, the plank is carved with the word “FAITH” and a shining mansion awaits his crossing.” [p. 260]

If “I felt a funeral in my brain” was prompted by a spiritual crisis, and we know, according to Richard Sewall, that Dickinson was greatly troubled by her refusal to join her peers in declaring Jesus as their Lord and savior. This wasn’t just a figurative refusal. There were repeated calls for her to join the revivals at Amherst.

It is in the sixth letter, written a fortnight later (January 31, 1846), that a New Year’s meditations come to a focus on spiritual matters. Save for a gossipy postscript, the letter, a long one, is entirely given over to religion. Emily confesses to Abiah that she did not become a Christian during the revival of the previous winter in Amherst. She has seen “many who felt there was nothing in religion… melted at once,” and it has been “really wonderful to see how near heaven came to sinful mortals.” Once, “for a short time,” she had known this beatific state herself, when “I felt I had found my savior.” “I never enjoyed.” she wrote, “such perfect peace and happiness.” But “I soon forgot my morning prayer or else it was irksome to me. One by one my old habits returned and I cared less for religion than ever.” At Abiah’s recent announcement that she was close to conversion, Emily “shed many tears.” She herself longs to follow after: “I fell that I shall never by happy without I love Christ.” But midway through the letter she makes a striking admission. a real bit of self-discovery. Putting aside the revival rhetoric, she seems to be speaking her own voice (even to the misspelling):

Perhaps you will not beleive it Dear A., but I attended none of the meetings last winter. I felt that I was so easily excited that I might again be deceived and I dared not trust myself.

This revelation is followed by a long passage on the dreadful thought of Eternity… [p. 381]

Knowing this, the meaning of “plank” takes on a whole new meaning. It’s not just a reference to her soul (which she earlier compared to the creaking floor) but a punning reference to the “plank” of Christian beliefs.

  And then a Plank [an important principle on which the activities of a group... are based] in Reason [her own reasoning or the reasoning of others], broke,
  And I dropped down, and down -
  And hit a World, at every plunge,
  And Finished knowing - then -

What does she mean by “hit a World” in this case? In Dickinson’s poem Bereavement in their death to fell, Dickinson offers us some possibilities. In the line ‘’tis as if Our souls/Absconded‘, she also considers the words World, selves and Sun for souls. In other words, these were all in some sense synonymous. Interestingly, the context is also similar, arguing that this is a sort of Dickinsonian image cluster.

• Certain images seem regularly to have led Shakespeare’s mind along a train of associated ones. Walter Whiter, in his Specimen of a Commentary on Shakespeare (1794), showed that flattery suggested dogs, which suggested sweetmeats. The phenomenon was more fully discussed by E. A. Armstrong in his Shakespeare’s Imagination: A Study of the Psychology of Association and Inspiration (1946), and is used by Kenneth Muir as evidence of authorship in his Shakespeare as Collaborator (1960).

So, with that in mind, Dickinson gives us at least two alternate readings for World—soul and self. And in that light, her hitting “a World, at every plunge” might refer to previous selves, or other versions of Emily Dickinson (like the Dickinson who had found her savior) until she finally gets through (got through in one revision of the poem) her “Knowing”. And what does ‘knowing’ mean? As it turns out, ‘knowing’ has a very specific meaning in Christian contexts. Look up the meaning of know and you will read that “knowing God is not simply an intellectual apprehension, but a response of faith and an acceptance of Christ.”

It is he who has made God known ( John 1:18 ).To know Christ is to know God ( John 14:7 ). Eternal life is to know the true God and Jesus Christ ( John 17:3 ). Paul desires to know Christ in his death and resurrection ( Php 3:10 ). Failure to know Jesus as Lord and Messiah ( Acts 2:36 ) resulted in his rejection and crucifixion ( 1 Cor 2:8 ).

To know Christ is to know truth ( John 8:32 ). While this is personal, it is also propositional. Knowledge of the truth ( 1 Tim 2:4 ; 2 Tim 2:25 ; 3:7 ; Titus 1:1 ) is both enlightenment and acceptance of the cognitive aspects of faith.

This knowing, this acceptance of Christ, is precisely what Dickinson could not accept. So, read in this light, what Dickinson might be saying is that the funeral in her brain is the rhetoric of proselytizing that already condemns her as dead to God and comes or threatens to bury her. The good Christians “mourn for her” and their mourning is like an endless treading that threatens to drive Dickinson to madness. Their “service” is like a drum that keeps beating, that won’t leave her in peace or silence. The culture of Christianity surrounding her cajoles, threatens, and proselytizes until she feels her mind going numb. Their insistence is like a drumbeat. Their boots (their own beliefs) are, to Dickinson, leaden. Their step is heavy on her soul and creaks under their weight. The religious imagery continues as she describes all the Heavens as a ringing bell, so pervasive that she feels herself reduced to a tortured ear. In another of her poems, she gives tongues to the bells and, in that sense, the bell is also proselytizing.

• Isaiah 55:3

  “Incline your ear and come to Me.
  Listen, that you may live;
  And I will make an everlasting covenant with you…

• Matthew 13:16-17

  But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear.

She, and her precious silence, are wrecked and solitary. As a fascinating side note, John Keats so despised the ringing of church bells that he wrote a sonnet on the subject:

  Sonnet. Written In Disgust Of Vulgar Superstition

  The church bells toll a melancholy round,
  Calling the people to some other prayers,
  Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,
  More hearkening to the sermon's horrid sound.
  Surely the mind of man is closely bound
  In some black spell; seeing that each one tears
  Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs,
  And converse high of those with glory crown'd.
  Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp,--
  A chill as from a tomb, did I not know
  That they are dying like an outburnt lamp;
  That 'tis their sighing, wailing ere they go
    Into oblivion; -- that fresh flowers will grow,
    And many glories of immortal stamp.

This poem absolutely would have been read and known to Dickinson (note some of the interesting parallels—the drumbeat of Dickinson’s service, the horrid sound of Keats’s sermon; the melancholy round of Keats’s churchbells, the tortuous tolling of Dickinson’s bell; Keat’s damp chill, as from a tomb, and Dickinson’s funeral). Remember, from our previous discussion, that Dickinson put Keats at the top of her reading list during the same year that she wrote I felt a funeral.

  And hit a World, at every plunge,
  And Finished knowing - then -

The poem concludes with grim determination. The plank (the stated beliefs of their and/or her own reasoning) breaks under so much weight. She plunges through untold “Worlds” or selves or beliefs, her own and those of others, until she finally, as she wrote in one revision, gets or “got through”. She is finished with “knowing”—she will not accept Christ. And then the poem ends on the word then. This is where things get even more interesting. When Dickinson placed “I felt a funeral in my brain” in her fascicles, she followed it with ‘Tis so appalling — it exhilarates. Both poems were written the same year, and if we don’t know the reason Dickinson placed these poems next to each other, we know that she did. It is possible, for example to read “then” as leading directly into the next poem, such that both poems can be read as one:

  (...)
  And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
  And I dropped down, and down -
  And hit a World, at every plunge,
  And Finished knowing - then -

  'Tis so appalling — it exhilarates —
  So over Horror, it half Captivates —
  The Soul stares after it, secure —
  A Sepulchre, fears frost, no more —

  To scan a Ghost, is faint —
  But grappling, conquers it —
  How easy, Torment, now —
  Suspense kept sawing so —

  The Truth, is Bald, and Cold —
  But that will hold —
  If any are not sure —
  We show them — prayer —
  But we, who know,
  Stop hoping, now —

  Looking at Death, is Dying —
  Just let go the Breath —
  And not the pillow at your Cheek
  So Slumbereth —  

  Others, Can wrestle —
  Yours, is done —
  And so of Woe, bleak dreaded — come,
  It sets the Fright at liberty —
  And Terror's free —
  Gay, Ghastly, Holiday!

In this case, the word then is a transition to the next poem and the revelation that once the horror is past, the soul can “[stare] after it, secure”. But let’s say that Dickinson did put these two poems together meaning them to be read together. She still does the unexpected. ‘Tis so appalling (as discussed earlier) is more sarcasm, scorn and contempt, than celebration. If one reads ‘Tis so appalling as a companion poem, then I felt a Funeral, in my Brain is Dickinson refusing to accept Christ while ‘Tis so appalling — it exhilarates — is her sarcastic, darkly humorous riposte, saying, Great! “Gay, Ghastly Holiday!” Now what? She has escaped the leaden boots of Christian dogma, to believe in what?

One might object by saying that if these two poems are meant to be read as one, then why not every poem in her fascicle? That’s a fair objection but, conversely, she didn’t just roll the dice. The whole point of the fascicle, after all, was to arrange the poetry. It’s not far-fetched to assert that the reason these two poems are together is that, for Dickinson, they were associated.

Which interpretation do I prefer? If the poem is about a disappointment in love, friendship or her disappointment as an artist, then we’re greeted with a poem that conveys her suffering through analogy with the Christian rituals of burial. Her suffering is like a funeral. The persistence of the suffering and weight of it is like the leaden tread of the mourners. Heaven in her poem is not the heaven of paradise but the remorseless tongue of dogma, the church bell, ostracizing her, rejecting her, driving her to desperate madness. The service meant to offer solace and comfort is a brutal and annihilating drumbeat. Even if Emily Dickinson is not having a spiritual crisis, Emily Dickinson’s imagery is.

Lastly, Sewall credits Ruth Miller with identifying I felt a Cleaving in my Mind— as a variant poem of I felt a funeral.

  I felt a Cleaving in my mind —
    As if my Brain had split —
  I tried to match it, Seam by Seam —
    But could not make them fit —

  The thought behind, I strove to join
    Unto the thought before —
  But Sequence ravelled out of Sound —
    Like Balls — upon a Floor.

[FR867/J937,J992]

Similar themes appear, though without the oppressive Christian rituals. The poem is said to be written in 1864, two years after I felt a funeral. I know I’m treading on sacred ground with leaden heels, but compared to the former, this poem feels more like the product of a doodle taken from one of her envelope poems—as though the conceit occurred to Dickinson and she ran with it. That’s not to say that the poem doesn’t succeed, just that it reads as though it’s eight parts “art” and maybe two parts “autobiography”. The impression is made more so with the revision she later sent to Susan Dickinson:

  The Dust behind I strove to join
  Unto the Disk before —
  But Sequence ravelled out of Sound
  Like Balls upon a Floor —

What I like about the revision is what it reveals as regards Emily the artist and craftsman. She wasn’t just an instinctive genius, but a thinking and discerning artist perfecting her craft. Sure, there is a portion of her poetry that are her letters to the world—but I would argue that a portion are also the product of a craftsman, someone to whom metaphors and analogies came easily, along with the ideas usefully expressed by them. Her first version—”thought behind, I strove to join/Unto the thought before“—effectively communicates the central idea, but “a thought” is an abstract thing. Like any poet/craftsman, she knew that a poem lives or dies in its imagery, its power to evoke through figurative language and the five senses. The fragments of the poem’s thoughts don’t just roll out of reach (her first version), but ravel out of Sound. So, she added specificity to the thoughts. The thought behind becomes dust and the thought before becomes the Disk. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” explains “the dust”, but what is the Disk? Vendler interprets Disk as “the Sun of sunrise”, symbolizing a new beginning, and I think she’s right. She quotes Dickinson’s four line poem “The pattern of the sun”, as evidence for her interpretation:

  The pattern of the sun
  Can fit but him alone
  For sheen must have a Disk
  To be a sun —

So anyway, whereas I felt a funeral reads like a poem arising from a real crisis, I felt a Cleaving reads more like a work of art—to me.

Amherst MA
Amherst Manuscript # 421
Amherst – Amherst Manuscript # 421 – The pattern of the sun – asc:7785 – p. 1

I died for Beauty | On the true and beautiful death of truth and beauty…

I died for Beauty — but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb,
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining room —

He questioned softly "Why I failed"?
"For Beauty", I replied.
"And I — for Truth - Themself are one —
We Brethren are", He said —

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night —
We talked between the Rooms —
Until the Moss had reached our lips —
And covered up — Our names — 

[FR448/J449]

 O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
         Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
         Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
         When old age shall this generation waste,
                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
         "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

From the closing stanza of Ode on a Grecian Urn

Here lies One 
Whose name was writ in Water.

Dickinson’s I died for Beauty is one of those Dickinson poems that is, relatively, straightforward. We’re not confronted with, as Cristanne Miller calls them, nonrecoverable deletions—omitted words that are otherwise essential to meaning—deletions that make Dickinson difficult to read but also interpretively flexible. They’re often what I’m trying to fill in and what none of us can agree on. Which is fine. In my post, The Tint I cannot take, I filled in those nonrecoverable deletions like this:

Their [the squirrels] Graspless [failure to grasp] manners — mock us — [belittle the poet's efforts or more generally mock/resemble all of us]
Until the Cheated [the deceived/wasted] Eye [arc of life/surmise]
Shuts arrogantly [triumphantly] — in the Grave —
Another way — to see — [our/their opportunity to see the world through Dickinson's eyes or more generally the ineffable]

The bracketed insertions in the first, second and fourth lines. Dickinson never specifies what “Their” refers to, or the “Cheated Eye”. And so we entertain alternative readings like this:

  Their [the onlookers or the squirrels?] Graspless manners — mock us —
  Until the Cheated Eye [the landscape painter’s?—the onlookers?—the squirrels?]
  Shuts arrogantly — in the Grave —
  Another way — to see — [who’s way? the landscape painter’s?—the onlookers?—the squirrels?] 

‘I died for beauty’ is less about establishing what Dickinson even is talking about and more along the lines of normal interpretive debate. What, after all, does she really mean by truth?—beauty?—and, above all, failure? Are these abstract notions? Are these the broad gestures of nebulous romantic affectation? Or might she be referring to something more specific? But before we get to that, there are a couple interesting rabbit holes I want to go down. And they’re rabbit holes because everything I’m going to write is utterly speculative and can be safely ignored by anyone demanding facts.

At the entrance to the rabbit hole is the (generally not disputed) assumption that Dickinson’s poem was inspired by (or is a reference to) Keats’s poem Ode on a Grecian Urn. And as far as I can tell, that’s about as far as responsible readers are willing to go. But there’s another possible reference in Dickinson’s poem, and that’s to the lines written on Keats’ tombstone: “Here lies One Whose name was writ in Water.” Is it coincidence that Dickinson ends her poem with the line: “Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.”? Possibly. And that sent me on a not-exhaustive-as-it-could-have-been search for what books were in Dickinson’s library, and whether she would have been familiar with Keats’s tombstone. According to this site (by one Gary Martin) the phrase appeared in the 1821 edition of Keats’s Poetic Works (if I’m reading his site correctly). I was unable to confirm that. But if Martin is correct, could Dickinson have read this early edition? Would the book have been available to readers in the States? What seems virtually indisputable is that Dickinson was exposed to Keats at a young age and that if her father didn’t have the book in his library, she almost certainly came across Keats’s poetry in the course of her Amherst education. Given what any reader quickly surmises as regards Dickinson’s interests, the story of Keats’ death, his tombstone and what is written there probably would have made a forceful impression on the poet—not something she would have forgotten.

And there are some other interesting coincidences.

The poem was written in 1862 according to Dickinson’s biographer Richard Sewall. Curiously, this is the same year that Dickinson wrote a letter to Higginson in which she answers questions pertaining to what books she’s been reading. The letter was dated April 25, 1862 and she writes:

“You inquire my Books — For Poets — I have Keats — and Mr and Mrs Browning. For Prose — Mr Ruskin — Sir Thomas Browne — and the Revelations.”

As Sewall points out, that’s an awfully odd list.

“Emily’s reading list (Keats, the Brownings, Ruskin, Browne, “the Revelations”) is as misleading, in what it says and what it omits, as anything in the letter. Ruskin and Browne seem to have been of minor importance to her; perhaps she mentioned them because Higginson did in his article. Where is Thoreau, for whom her few tantalizing references show a kinship greater than she ever acknowledged? Where is Merson, a major influence, whose Poems (1847) Ben Newton had given her in 1850? Above all, where is Shakepseare, of whom she was later to ask Higginson, “Why is any other book needed?” [The Life of Emily Dickinson p. 543]

And yes, where are all those books? But what interests me is that Keats is first on her list. It’s hard not to conclude that she must have been closely engaged with Keats at this time, hence the reason he was first on her book list. And at this point, which collection of Keats’s poetry might she have been reading? Interestingly, I found a source that lists all the books in the Dickinson estate (no doubt incomplete) here (a PDF listing all the books and magazines). Keats is nowhere to be found. However (another coincidence) a complete edition of Keats’ poems was published in 1858 by London: E Mocton, which you can read here. There’s a short memoir of John Keats included, and you can be sure Dickinson would have read the memoir if the book had been in her hands. And if she had read the memoir, she would have read this:

“In one of these mental voyages into the past, which precede death, Keats had told Severn that he thought ” the intensest pleasure he had received in life was in watching the growth of flowers,” and another time, after lying a while quite still, he murmured, ” I feel the flowers growing over me.” And there they do grow even all the winter long, — violets and daisies mingling with the fresh herbage, and in the words of Shelley ” making one in love with death, to think one should be buried in so sweet a place.” Some years ago, when the writer of this memoir was at Rome, the thick grass had nearly overgrown the humble tomb-stone, which however few strangers of our race omit to visit…”

Can you just imagine Dickinson reading these lines? The imagery could come straight from one of her own poems. And so, we know that Dickinson was reading Keats during the same year that she wrote “I died for beauty”. That, at least, is not speculation. Further, based on the fact that Keats was first on her reading list, we can guess that she was particularly engaged with Keats around this time. Is it possible that she read the memoir in Mocton’s publication? I don’t know, but the parallels in imagery are striking. Keats’ tomb is covered by vegetation and so are the tombs in Dickinson’s poem. The name of Keats disappears in water and in Dickinson the names disappear beneath moss. If she read the memoir, she surely would have remembered what was written on Keats’ tomb; and it would have been a short step for all those thoughts and images to combine into Dickinson’s now famous poem.

But, getting back to the poem, what does she mean by truth?—beauty?—and failure? Are these nebulous romantic gestures or might she be referring to something more specific? Keats tells us what they are: Each is Each. In Vendler’s interpretation, Dickinson, Selected Poems and Commentaries, they are separate but eventually ‘all distinctions are resolved’ by their mutual decay. Vendler treats the deceased as Beauty/Feminine and Truth/Masculine. That’s perfectly reasonable, and requires the reader to identify the character with their types (like a short morality play):

“When we use an expression such as “He died for God and Country,” we envisage a battle; when we say, “She died for her faith,” we envisage a martyrdom. Apparently, Beauty and Truth have died in affirmation of the values they endorse; society will not permit their continued existence. Yet there is no recrimination in these two who have been so steadfast, not any indictment of the values opposed to their own. They were not executed: they merely “died” or “failed” for Beauty or Truth.”

But strictly speaking, Dickinson never states that the deceased are actually Truth and Beauty, only that each “died” for truth and beauty. Also, stating that “society [would] not permit their continued existence” is probably overstating the case. There’s nothing in the poem to suggest that society was responsible for their deaths (as gratifying as that assertion might be). But is debating who is in the grave like driving a pin through the butterfly’s heart? Maybe. I’m fine reading it both ways. The poem is a sort of set piece symbolizing a recurring tragedy: We know that truth and beauty haven’t really died, and yet truth and beauty dies with each of us. Life is doomed to failure. (I interpret the question: “Why I failed”? or Why did you fail? not as meaning — Why did you fail in your pursuit? — but as ­— For what did you die?”) While we live though, we can decide what to live and die for. In the case of Dickinson’s denizens, one has decided to die for beauty and the other truth—ultimately for the same things. They are “bretheren” and “kinsmen”. They both pursued truth and beauty, and became Truth and Beauty in the pursuit. Dickinson drives this home by eventually making them the same, erasing not just their identities but their names. In this sense, the poem doesn’t end in tragedy, but evinces a sort of satisfied resignation—each his lived and died for something noble. Each had their turn. And that is the best any of us can hope for. Eventually, the moss, like the grasses and flowers above Keats’s grave, erase all.

• February 26th I wanted to add a further interpretation to the post based on the comments section (for those readers who don’t read comments). If we read a touch of autobiography in the poem, then Dickinson might be metaphorically placing herself next to Keats. They were brethren and kinsmen in the sense that they were both poets and therefore seekers of truth and beauty. They both wrote magnificent poetry but, perhaps in EDs judgement, failed to obtain the support and recognition they deserved. (In this sense, ‘failed’ means ‘failed’.) Their poetry went unrecognized and unappreciated. That is their failure, but also society’s. That is, society failed and will fail them by allowing the moss to cover up their names (and any memory of them or their works). Read this way, the poem is especially powerful and poignant. It’s also arguably untrue, because Dickinson was reading Keats’s poetry. He was emphatically not forgotten, and yet what did that posthumous success mean to Keats? The pain of the living poet, her pain at being overlooked and unrecognized, would be what she’s expressing here. And yet as with the earlier interpretation, the “triumph” of the poem itself, the truth and beauty of poetry remains—just as it did with Keats.

And yet, in that very erasure—the entirety of the poem enacts anew—within us—both truth and beauty. Dickinson’s poem plays the same trick on us that Keats’s poem plays. By observing the tragic evanescence of truth and beauty, they renew them both. “Here is my poem,” says Dickinson, “behold the death of Truth and Beauty. Isn’t it tragic? Oh, grieve for them! Grieve! Isn’t it truthful? Isn’t it beautiful?” The poem sneakily confirms Keats’s final lines: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

This somewhat contradicts the interpretation (worth reading) made at the following website:

“In other words, this parable about idealists ends on a note of sobering realism. No matter what people “die for,” the poem suggests, death is death. Even the highest ideals, such as beauty and truth, become irrelevant in the grave, along with any work we’ve produced or sacrifices we’ve made in their name.”

Simply by virtue of the poem itself. Truth and beauty are not irrelevant because the poetry is not irrelevant. The ideals, in other words, exist within the framework of the poem and are renewed (brought to life) by those who read the poem. Truth and beauty are not in any real grave. Those are just the masks worn by the players. The poem itself is a sly part of the morality play—is truth and beauty—and lives on.

Finally, I’ve linked an interesting article (see below) that I came across while researching this post, on the rivalry between Amherst and Harvard as concerns Dickinson’s estate. The author writes:

“Dickinson sent many manuscripts off to friends in the mail, and the enormous remainder-well over a thousand manuscripts and other items-were divided after Dickinson’s death between her sister-in-law and childhood friend, Susan, and a neighbor, Mabel Loomis Todd. There was one large complication: Mabel was deep in an affair with Austin, Emily’s brother and Susan’s husband. Ever since then, the majority of Dickinson’s manuscripts and possessions have been stuck in the middle of a war between two houses. Eventually, the manuscripts residing with Mabel were donated to Amherst College, while those in Susan’s possession ended up at Harvard. The rivalry was bequeathed with the manuscripts.”

Good grief.

• For more on Keats’s Tomb.
• On the banal rivalry of egos between Amherst and Harvard

And this post was for Gabrielle.

WistÞistle | Along the Way

I just started the second novel in my fantasy cycle, WistThistle (modern spelling), entitled WistÞistle | Along the Way. If you have a magnifying glass handy, you might see the little green pixel at 0.62%. That’s how much I’ve written. When I wrote WistÞistle: Under and Over the Bridge, I took the same screenshot. (The project always looks insurmountable at this point.) Then I procrastinated, put off posting the screenshot, and a couple months later the novel was finished!

So this time I’m posting it before I finish the novel. This is what the progress bar looks like after writing for one day. Sort of like the first step on the Long Trail. This doesn’t include work on my outline (in which I’ve actually written some scenes). I’ll think about a given scene all day, as though watching a movie, then have to write it down, complete and fully written so that I don’t forget anything.

I’ve been submitting WistThistle and Murder Most Monstrous to agents. Both are intended to be multi-story cycles. So far, no nibbles. It’ll be just my luck, though, if there’s sudden interest in both. Next I’ll be asked how soon I can write a sequel to each. I’m looking forward to the self-pity.

In the meantime, I’m happy to report that Tara Caribou, of Raw Earth Ink, who so beautifully published Tiny House, Big Mountain, is currently reading and considering North of Autumn—a stand alone novel that is also, loosely, a sequel to Tiny House. If you haven’t already read them, follow this link to read the poetry written for North of Autumn.

Available at Raw Earth Ink

Lastly, if anyone wants me to interpret another Dickinson poem—or at least make the attempt—I’ll take a request. It’s a nice distraction from writing novels and my own poetry.

Raggedy

I’ve gotten so that I can’t see.
If you could thread the needle—
Who’d think that I could be
So old, she said, so feeble,
So full of holes and raggedy.

Yet also I am told, the sun
Grows old, the button moon,
And every shining pin. Each one,
She said, grows old. Too soon
The world itself will come undone.

Here and there the tattered string
And here and there the thread.
I bought this old dress traveling.
Unforgettable, she said.
She said before unraveling.


February 17 2024
by me, Patrick Gillespie

Not Gonna

‘Some things,’ the father said, ‘a girl don't flaunt.’ 
But straightaway she told him, ‘I don't care,
Not gonna live but in the world I want.’
And then her father asked, ‘Who else was there?’
To that she wouldn’t answer but to say,
‘My baseball hat, my bicycle and me—
That’s who was there. All them others—they
Don’t matter. Thumped me good, but you should see
What I done them.’ The girl’s father sighed,
Admitting—as he wiped her bloody nose—
‘I wish we’d learn to live, some, side by side, 
But life is real, earnest, mostly prose.’
  ’Supposedly, but that don't make it true,’
  She said. 'Just means there’s blood in poetry too.’


February 5th 2024
By me, Patrick Gillespie

• This sonnet is for my friend, Mr Thomas, and for the sake of the line “Life is real, earnest and mostly prose”, and comes from Richard Sewall’s biography, The Life of Emily Dickinson. I’d like to think that Emily would approve.

But then…

But then, at times, the way the snow
Topples the birches crossways,
The way they bar me going further
Makes me think, as always,

That I should cut them down, and yet
I’ll just as soon decide:
The beauty of their argument
Asks not to be denied.

With such humility, they stoop;
I stoop a little too;
And theirs the generosity—
They always let me through.

February 1 2024
by me, Patrick Gillespie

• Once one starts writing these— No wonder Emily wrote some 1800 ballad hymns. This poem is for the birches in my back yard. I’ll take a picture of them.