Month: December 2024

761.1863.So much Summer
ED’s alternate words (in parentheses)

So much Summer
Me for showing
Illegitimate –
Would a Smile’s minute bestowing
Too exorbitant (extravagant – • importunate -)

To the Lady
With the Guinea(s)
Look – if she should know
Crumb of Mine
A Robin’s Larder
Would (Could) suffice to stow –

To my knowledge, no one except David Preest has quoted from or commented on this poem. He was baffled: “The syntactical structure of this poem is not immediately obvious”. ED’s 37-word riddle reminds me of Molly Bloom’s 24,000-word monologue ending Ulysses, except Molly was less obscure. There’s nothing left to do but crawl out on a thin limb and hope.

ED had begged Sue for a smile before, in F735, ‘The Moon was but a Chin of Gold’:

“Her Lips of Amber never part –
But what must be the smile
Upon Her Friend she could confer
Were such Her silver will –“

In Lines 4-7 of ‘So much Summer’, ED again begs Sue for a small smile: “Would a Smile’s minute bestowing / Too exorbitant [be] // To the Lady / With the Guinea(s)”? That “minute” smile would be a “Crumb of Mine / A Robin’s Larder / Would suffice to stow”. ED referred to Sue as a “Robin” in ‘I have a Bird in spring’ [F4, 1854, Line 6].

If ‘So much Summer’ is about Sue, then what are we to make of Lines 1-3, and how are they connected to ED’s plea for a sympathetic smile? These opening lines, taken literally, are about “Me”, the poet, ED, who apparently is “showing / illegitimate” in her “Summer” frock and begging Sue for a “minute smile”. Occam’s Razor fails sometimes, but in the absence of compelling alternatives, these lines provide circumstantial evidence supporting Shurr’s 1983 hypothesis of ED’s pregnancy [Comment 1, F745, ‘Sweet Mountains’, TPB].

Mabel Todd wrote in her diary that Austin had told her that during the early years of their marriage, before Ned’s birth in June 1861, Sue had had three or four pregnancies “artificially terminated” [Longsworth 1984]. If so, this shocking poem may be ED’s plea, not just for Sue’s sympathy, but for her empathy as well. And, if so, two questions: Why did ED leave such damning words in a poem, and why did Austin’s scissors spare this poem when he censored ED’s manuscripts after her death?

ed-larryb.com/2024/12/761-1863-so-much-summer

PS1.    Preest’s “explication” makes no sense to me:

Poem F761, ‘So much Summer’, Explication by David Preest

“The syntactical structure of this poem is not immediately obvious, but perhaps Emily is saying, ‘In return for me showing the Lady with the Guinea so much illegitimate summer, would the very small bestowing of a smile seem too extravagant a reward from her to me, if I were to tell her that a very small crumb, no bigger than what would fit a robin’s larder, would be enough.’

“Emily does not say who the Lady with the Guinea was, but the illegitimacy of their summer together may show that she was married.”

 

PS2:     Adam DeGraff, Blogmeister of ‘The Prowling Bee’ (TPB), kindly reminded me that ED’s Poem F12, ‘I had a guinea golden’, shares two words with F721: “Robin” and “guinea”. I believe both poems are about Sue and Emily. In fact, F12’s last stanza tells us in plain camouflaged English (“ïts” = “her”):

“My story has a moral—
I have a missing friend—
“Pleiad” its name, and Robin,
And guinea in the sand.”

• Longsworth, Polly. 1984. Austin and Mabel. University of Massachusetts Press.
• Preest, David. 2014. ‘Emily Dickinson: Notes on All Her Poems’. 672 pp. [For Preest’s entire PDF of 1775 commentaries (Johnson 1955) free of charge, go to: https://studylib.net/download/8773657
  Click “Not a Robot”, and download PDF.]
• Shurr, William H. 1983. The Marriage of Emily Dickinson. University of Kentucky Press, 230 pages; pp.170-188.

760.1863.Pain – has an Element of Blank –
ED’s alteratives (in parentheses); LarryB’s comments in [brackets]

Pain – has an Element of Blank –
It cannot recollect
When it begun – Or if there were
A time (Day) when it was not –

It has no Future – but itself –
Its Infinite contain
It’s [Its] Past – enlightened to perceive
New Periods – Of Pain.

An interpretation:

Pain is like an Ocean Wave,
It can’t remember
When it began – or if there were
A time (Day) before its existence –

It has no Future – but itself –
Forever doing
What it has always done,
Perceive new waves – Of Pain.

As this poem implies, in 1863 ED was still stuck in a rut of recurring waves of emotional pain. Relief from Wadsworth’s abandonment seemed impossible, but, if time couldn’t completely heal her emotional wounds, it could at least “Perceive new waves – Of Pain”.

Apparently, by the late 1860s – early 1870s, ED’s feelings for Reverend Wadsworth had calmed, and they resumed correspondence. In summer 1880, Wadsworth made a surprise Sunday afternoon visit to Homestead. ED’s later poems and letters suggest they spent the afternoon in friendly chit-chat. He died in 1882.

Wadsworth’s 1880 visit occurred just as ED’s long friendship with Judge Otis Lord was blossoming into life-affirming romance. Wisely, 39-year-old ED declined Lord’s marriage proposal (L913, late 1880):

“To Otis Lord.

“Dont you know you are happiest while I withhold and not confer – dont you know that “No” is the wildest word we consign to Language? You do, for you know all things –”.

Their warm friendship and correspondence continued until his death in March 1884.

• Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell. 2024. The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Harvard University Press. P.358-359.

759.1863.Her Sweet turn to leave the Homestead

ED’s alternate words and phrases are (in parentheses), ED’s pronouns with no antecedents {in pointed brackets}.

Her Sweet turn to leave the Homestead
Came the Darker Way –
Carriages – Be Sure – and Guests – True (too)-
But for Holiday

‘Twas more pitiful Endeavor
Than did Loaded (swelling) Sea
O’er the Curls attempt to caper
It had cast away –

Never Bride had such Assembling –
Never kinsmen kneeled
To salute so fair a Forehead –
Garland be indeed –

Fitter Feet – of Her (fitter for the feet) before us –
Than whatever Brow
Art of Snow – or Trick of Lily
Possibly bestow (Ever could endow) –

Of {Her} Father – Whoso ask (claim) Her –
He shall seek as high
As the Palm – that serve the Desert –
To obtain the sky-

Distance – be Her only Motion (Signal)-
If ’tis Nay- or Yes –
Acquiescence – or Demurral –
Whosoever guess –

He (first) – must pass the Crystal Angle (limit)
That obscure (divide) Her face –
He – must have achieved in person
Equal Paradise –

This poem, ‘Her Sweet turn to leave the Homestead’, which Franklin dates “late 1863”, is one tough cookie:

Who is “Her” [6 repeats, Lines 1, 13, 17-2, 21, 25]?
Who is “He” [3 repeats, Lines 18, 25, 27]?

Adam’s final paragraph suggests capitalized “Her” might be ED, and I agree: “One other thought is that this poem could be, posthumously, about Dickinson herself. She never left the Homestead until her death.”

Before she died, ED planned her funeral in detail, including her pallbearers, who were all Dickinson employees, probably Irish workmen. They carried her coffin out the Homestead back door, around her garden, through Dickinson barn, and then across fields a quarter mile to West Cemetery.

I think “He” was Reverend Wadsworth, whom ED believed she would meet and marry in Heaven.

EDLex defines “Crystal” as “clear” and “Angle” as “crossing place”. Combined,

“the Crystal Angle
That obscure Her face”

is likely the “clear crossing place” between Earth and Heaven [Lines 25-26]. Just to confirm the reader understands, the poet restates what the bridegroom must do to see the face of his bride [Lines 27-28]:

“He – must have achieved in person
Equal Paradise –”

That’s a high bar, but then the speaker set the bar even higher than a “Desert Palm”. The man who wants to marry “Her” must ask “Her” “Father”, (God?), for her hand. She believed that was the agreement between “Her” and “He”.

Nayna Jadav (2019) presents an interpretation of F759 from an Indian woman’s point-of-view:

“Death is perceived as a suitor, lover or bridegroom driving away with his beloved or bride. For example, death is described in terms of a marriage in Poem [F759]:The girl has to leave her homestead as if she were going to her bridegroom’s house but ironically here is the ‘darker way’. There are carriage and guests, but in place of being for her marriage they are for her funeral.

“Instead of having the pleasure of honeymoon (“Holiday”) she will have “more pitiful Endeavor” of facing the rowdy Death, and her task will be more unpleasant than that of waves in facing the thrust of the “Loaded Sea.” The terms like “Loaded”, “Curls”, and “Caper” lend an erotic note to the expression. The duel image of marriage and funeral is sustained throughout. The kinsmen assemble but it is a different sort of assembling. In place of kissing her forehead, they have to kneel to salute her as a mark of paying their last homage. They have the garland indeed but it is fitter for her feet than for her “Brow” that now looks like “Art of snow – or Trick of Lily.” The impression created in the poem is that of a forced marriage which death actually is.”

Assuming the ”speaker” was ED, age 33 in “late 1863” (Franklin 1998), it was not too early for her to start planning her own funeral, especially if she expected poetic fame (Conradt 2015):

“Since so many of Emily’s poems focused on death and immortality, it should come as no surprise that she had very specific plans she wished to be followed upon her passing.

“In keeping with her particular ‘penchant’ for wearing white while she was alive, Dickinson had requested the color wherever possible at her funeral, . . . . the [‘dainty’] coffin was white, the casket lining was white, the handles were white, and it was all adorned with ribbon that was — you guessed it — white. Emily herself wore a robe of white flannel.

“Her specifications didn’t end there. She ‘requested’ that the honorary pallbearers, including professors and the president of Amherst College, carry her coffin just out the [back] door of her beloved family house, Homestead. But once they crossed the threshold, six men who worked for the Dickinson family carried her to the graveyard.

“Even the route to the cemetery was completely calculated. According to Emily’s instructions, the funeral party circled her flower garden, walked through a barn behind the house, then meandered across buttercup fields to get to West Cemetery.”

PS1. In a letter to her mother, Mabel Todd described ED’s small white casket as ‘dainty’ (Leyda 1960).

PS2. Thomas Higginson, on a train from Cambridge to Amherst to attend ED’s funeral and read Emily Brontë’s last poem, “No Coward Soul Is Mine”, [ED’s request], wrote in his journal: “To Amherst to the funeral of that rare and strange creature Emily Dickinson.” (Leyda 1960).

Based on the last two stanzas of F325, ‘There came a Day—at Summer’s full’, which ED composed in late 1862, I infer that the “Bride” who has died is ED, and the bridegroom is Reverend Charles Wadsworth, who “must have achieved in person / Equal Paradise”:

Stanzas 6-7, F325

“And so when all the time had failed—
Without external sound—
Each—bound the other’s Crucifix—
We gave no other Bond—

“Sufficient troth—that we shall rise—
Deposed—at length—the Grave—
To that new Marriage—
Justified—through Calvaries of Love!”

• Nayna B. Jadav. 2019. Emily Dickinson’s Obsession with Death in Her Poetry. Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research. Vol. 6(6):402-413. https://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1908B52.pdf

• Stacy Conradt, May 14, 2015, “The Very Particular Details of Emily Dickinson’s Funeral” https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/63726/very-particular-details-emily-dickinsons-funeral/

• Jay Leyda (ed.), 1960, The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson, Vol. II