736.1863.You said that I “was Great” — one Day —

ED’s alternate word in parentheses

You said that I “was Great” — one Day —
Then “Great” it be — if that please Thee —
Or Small — or any size at all —
Nay — I’m the size suit Thee —

Tall — like the Stag — would that?
Or lower — like the Wren —
Or other heights of Other Ones
I’ve seen?

Tell which — it’s dull to guess —
And I must be Rhinoceros
Or Mouse —
At once — for Thee —

So say — if Queen it be —
Or Page — please Thee —
I’m that — or nought —
Or other thing — if other thing there be —
With just this Stipulus (Reservation)—
I suit Thee —

This poem can be read as happy, sad, funny, serious, angry, begging, imperative, and/or combinations of the above. Ambiguity, thy name is ED.

It could be a funny Valentine for a couple in the throes of infatuation or a silly Valentine for an older couple with a shared sense of humor. It could be a begging poem from a needy codependent in an unrequited relationship or a disguised demand from a dissatisfied, dominatrix. Or it could be a clever but barbed swipe at a married member of an imaginary ménage à trois from an abandoned lover who happens to be a world-class wordsmith.

A simple complement in a mixed-motive dyad can be interpreted in so many ways, particularly if both carry deep scars from childhood. When ED protests, “When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse – it does not mean – me – but a supposed person” (L268 → L345), I take it with a grain of salt.

This poem tracks with a few other poems in Fascicle 35 in which Dickinson wonders why an unnamed friend is withholding their smile.” Both her premier biographer, Sewall (1974), and an insightful Ph.D. student, Murray (1988), commented on ED feeling rejected:

Sewall (1974) posited

“Throughout her life, she never achieved a single, wholly satisfying relationship with anybody she had to be near, or with, for any length of time. . . . . As for Emily’s correspondents, affectionate as she might have been in her letters, they were always at a safe distance.

“The reason seems not far to seek. All her life she demanded too much of people. Her early girlfriends could hardly keep up with her tumultuous letters or, like Sue, could not or would not take her into their lives as she wanted to be taken.”

Similarly, Murray (1988) observes,

“Dickinson established a traceable pattern of behavior in her girlhood friendships that she continued into the relationships of her adult life. When she discovered a person who potentially shared her feelings about a certain subject, she responded with surprise, enthusiasm, and selfishness. . . . In Dickinson’s pattern, after initial discovery, the friendship would blossom and grow, fueled by a great profusion of letters sharing confidences, feelings, and ideas. In these letters, she engaged her fertile imagination, savoring the kinship that she perceived between her and the kindred spirit she believed she had found.

“The friend, at some point following the relationship’s blossoming, realized that he or she could not reciprocate with the same ardor, frequency, or depth of feeling as Emily, to meet the poet’s intense emotional, spiritual, or intellectual needs. The friend then usually withdrew, withholding contact from her. Dickinson, then perceiving the slackening on the friend’s part, sought in letters to renew the friendship through chiding and wheedling. When these attempts failed to secure the desired results, she decided that the slowing of the friendship had occurred because of the friend’s disloyalty and betrayal, and she cooled in her once-passionate feelings for the friend. In most cases, correspondence stopped. And she opened once again the lid to what she called her “box of Phantoms” and put away another friend.” (Murray 1988).

PS. ED coined her phrase, “Box of Phantoms”, in two letters, M&M / L181 and M&M / L185.

Apropos? A letter comment by ED, age 29, about being “great” (L244. To Louisa Norcross, a close, lifelong friend, December 20, 1859):
. . . . .
“I have known little of you, since the October morning when our families went out driving, and you and I in the dining room decided to be distinguished. It’s a great thing to be “great” Loo, and you and I might tug for a life, and never accomplish it, but no one can stop our looking, but the orchard is full of birds and we all can listen.”
. . . .
Emily

Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell.2024. The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.
Sewall, Richard B. 1974. The Life of Emily Dickinson. 2 vols. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux
Murray, Barbara M. 1988. The scarlet experiment: Emily Dickinson’s abortion experience. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Tennessee. 391 pages. (https://www.proquest.com/openview/0eecb3a583e119ca3a94cde080a874d1/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y )

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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.