833.1864.Pain — expands the Time —

833.1864.Pain — expands the Time —

Alternate words in Lines 2, 7, 8 – I prefer ED’s original word, “coil”, in Line 2 and her alternate words, “Triplets” and “Flit” in Lines 7 & 8 (emended).

Pain — expands the Time —
Ages (coil) within
The minute Circumference
Of a single Brain —

Pain contracts — the Time —
Occupied with Shot
(Triplets) of Eternities
(Flit) [by] as [if] they were not [eternities].—

EDLex, Definitions 4 & 6 of “Shot”: “gunshot flak” [incoming miniballs].
EDLex Definition 1 of “Pain”: “Emotional agony”.

My literal interpretation of Fr833, 1864, ‘Pain — expands the Time’:

Pain expands time: while you’re waiting in your trench for a rebel attack, hours drag by.

Pain contracts time: when rebels scream their rebel yell and charge your trench, and miniballs whiz by your head, hours pass like seconds.

My metaphorical interpretation of Fr833, 1864, ‘Pain — expands the Time’:

Emotional agony makes one minute feel like hours. In that one minute, entire ages coil in my tortured brain.
In “late 1861” when I composed ‘There came a Day at Summer’s full’ (Fr325), I was remembering that “summer day” in 1860 when Wadsworth came to visit me in Amherst. My emotional agony contracted the hours I spent with him to minutes. As I said in ‘There came a Day’ (Stanza 5):

“The Hours [of that summer day in 1860] slid fast—as Hours will—
Clutched tight—by [our] greedy hands—
So—faces [Wadsworth’s and mine] on two Decks—look back—
Bound to opposing Lands [Amherst, MA, and San Francisco, CA] —”

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After commenting on Poems 1-763 (Franklin) on The Prowling Bee’, I am convinced that (virtually) all of Emily Dickinson’s (ED’s) poems have a factual historical level in addition to their various poetic levels of meaning. The reason for her instant and continuing public adulation (1890 - present) was and is, by far, poetic. She is one of the "Greats" that she always dreamed to be, despite her lifelong refusal to publish. That refusal freed her from criticism and allowed her to explore the outer boundaries of poetic power.

More than a century of scholarly research has resulted in somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 books and published academic papers about ED. A large majority of these publications focus only on the “poetic levels” of one or more of ED’s poems. Publications that consider both the “historic level” and “poetic levels” comprise a small minority. Publications that focus only on the factual history of her life probably number less than 100. (All numbers in this paragraph are my estimates.)

Unfortunately for ED’s universe of readers, these two basic levels (historical and poetic) cannot be separated into two ivory towers. Every history-level publication that I know of includes at least some discussion of the poetic level(s).

The reverse is not true. In fact, authors of the “poetry-level” school seem to avoid commenting on the historical level, sometimes admonishing that a poem must stand on its own, without concern for its historical roots. To my knowledge, there are (virtually) no published “history-level” books or articles that totally ignore ED’s poems and their poetic levels.

Of course, ED’s refusal to publish her poems was only possible because of lifelong financial and daily social/housekeeping support by her family, especially her father and sister, respectively. In addition, throughout her life, the Dickinsons hired servants, first Negro and later Irish, some of whom became much more than housekeepers for ED.

My point is that our appreciation of ED's poems can be enhanced by understanding both poetic and historical levels of her sound and sense. We impoverish ourselves if we ignore their historical base.