ED-LarryB

ED’s three alternate words (Line 11) in parentheses

Bereavement in their death to feel
Whom We have never seen –
A Vital Kinsmanship import
Our Soul and theirs – between

For Stranger – Strangers do not mourn –
There be Immortal friends
Whom Death see first – ’tis news of this
That paralyze Ourselves –

Who – vital only to Our Thought –
Such Presence bear away
In dying – ’tis as if Our souls (World – • selves – • Sun -)
Absconded – suddenly –

• EDLex defines “import” (Line 3) as “communicate”.
• “Who” (Line 9) refers to “friends” (Line 6).
• ED’s “souls” (Line 11) sounds better than her alternates.

The poem’s final stanza convinces me that David Preest, Jane Eberwein, and Adam DeGraph (TPB) got close to ED’s intention:

“Jane Donahue Eberwein suggests that this may be another poem referring to the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861], like poems [F600, F627, & F637]. When Emily hears of Mrs Browning’s death, she is not mourning for a stranger, but for someone she had a soul ‘kinsmanship’ with when she read her poems. Mrs Browning’s ‘vitality’ may only have been present to Emily’s ‘Thought,’ but, when she heard that Mrs Browning had become immortal through death, she was paralysed, for such a ‘Presence’ had left this world that it was almost as though Emily’s own soul had fled.” [Preest 2014,]

• David Preest. 2014. ‘Emily Dickinson: Notes on All Her Poems’, p. 217 of 672 pp.

754.1863.Let Us play Yesterday

Before leaping into my interpretation of this poem, here is Preest’s (2014) comment:

“In her second letter to Thomas Higginson (L261), written in April 1862, Emily had said, ‘For several years, my Lexicon – was my only companion.’

“Like poem 299 [F418] this poem describes how the arrival of Sue awoke Emily to a new life and to riches she had not known before. Emily says to Sue in effect:

“Let’s imagine the time before your arrival when ‘You _ and Eternity’ were not part of my life. I did feel a hunger and thirst for something different, and tried to appease them by studying language and numbers. But in my dreams I would see the colours of morning, the reds of sexuality. I was still imprisoned in my egg, but you came and broke (= troubled) the ellipse of my shell, and I, a fledgling Bird, fell out from it. (Lines 1–16)

“I forgot my manacles, as the newly freed always do. Liberty, my last thought at night and my first at waking, would never be as common as it was to me then. (Lines 17–24)

“And now? I cannot return to my previous Bonds, any more than the Lark can ‘resume the Shell’ once it has known the easier freedom of the sky. Now that I have tasted the freedom of your love, my prison would ‘sorer grate’ if I was doomed anew to it. I can only pray to the God of everything not to take my liberty from me. (Lines 25–36)”.  (Preest 2014)

ED and Sue attended Amherst Academy together during academic year 1846–1847, when they were 15/16 years old. This poem seems to tell their story from ED’s viewpoint. Below (left) are ED’s stanzas and (right) my interpretation

Let Us play Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Let us play as we did Yesterday
I – the Girl at School – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .When I was just a girl at school
You – and Eternity – the untold Tale – . . You – and Love – / The untold Tale

Easing my famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .You eased my famine for love
At my Lexicon – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .I majored in English
Logarithm – had I – for Drink – . . . . . . . . .Math – had I – for Drink
‘Twas a dry Wine – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .’Twas a dry Wine –

Somewhat different–must be– . . Something different must have happened
Dreams tint the Sleep – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Dreams filled my Sleep,
Cunning Reds of Morning . . . . . . . . . . . . .Cunning Reds of Morning
Make the Blind – leap – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .I made the Blind leap into love

Still at the Egg–life – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .I was still in the egg stage
Chafing the Shell – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .But chafing at my shell
When you troubled the Ellipse–. . . . . . . . When you opened my Ellipse
And the Bird fell –. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I fell in love with you –

Manacles be dim – they say –. . . . . .. . My memory of loneliness grew dim,
To the new Free – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .I felt newly free
Liberty – commoner – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .This new liberty could
Never could – to me –. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Never feel Common to me.

‘Twas my last gratitude. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . It was my last prayer of thanks
When I slept – at night – . . . . . . . . . . . . . .When I went to sleep at night
‘Twas the first Miracle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .It was my morning Miracle
Let in – with Light –. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flooding me with Light –

Can the Lark resume the Shell – . . . . . . . Can a lover resume loneliness
Easier – for the Sky –. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . That would be easier for the sky
Wouldn’t Bonds hurt more. . . . . . . . . . . . Wouldn’t loss of love hurt more
Than Yesterday? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Than not knowing it at all?

Wouldn’t Dungeons sorer grate . . . . . . . Wouldn’t Prison grate more
On the Man – free – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .On a prisoner set free
Just long enough to taste – . . ..  Just long enough to taste the wine of love
Then – doomed new – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Then doomed to eternal loneliness

God of the Manacle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . God of the unloved
As of the Free – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And of the Loved
Take not my Liberty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Take not my Love
Away from Me – . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Away from Me

PS. ED’s handwritten manuscript format for Stanza 1 is a quatrain:

Let Us play Yesterday
I – the Girl at School –
You – and Eternity – the
untold Tale –

but ED’s capitalization indicates a tercet, which her editors have published (above left column). Did ED intend a quatrain?:

Let Us play Yesterday
I – the Girl at School –
You – and Eternity –
The untold Tale –

 

For me, Stanza 1 is the prelude to the “Untold Tale”, and Stanzas 2-9 are the “Untold Tale // Easing my famine”.

753.1863. Grief is a Mouse – An interpretation

My Heart is Grief –
He chooses Ribs of my Breast
For His shy House –
And baffles quest –

My Heart is a Thief, easily startled
He listens carefully for report
From that Vast Dark
That stole His Reason to exist

My Heart is a Juggler, performing clever tricks
To hide His Bruises, One, say, or Many
My Heart feeds on Pain
Allow Him His luxury

My Heart is Tongueless – before He’ll tell –
Burn Him in the Public square –
His Ashes will tell, possibly
If they refuse – You’ll never know –
Since a Rack couldn’t coax a syllable – now

Loss of love by death or separation grieved ED from girlhood. At 13, death of her 15-year-old friend and cousin, Sophia Holland, drove ED into deep depression relieved only by a month of rest and distraction in Boston with her Aunt Lavinia (L11, 28 March 1846). However, her greatest test by grief was in May 1862 when the male love of her life, Rev. Charles Wadsworth, relocated from Arch Street Presbyterian in Philadelphia to a new church, Calvary Presbyterian, in San Francisco.

ED suspected or knew that Wadsworth’s wife was unaware of their correspondence before he visited her in March 1860 in Amherst. For ED, their “friendship” demanded absolute secrecy (Stanza 4) because she feared consequences for them both if Wadsworth’s wife and congregation got wind of it. In addition, Whicher (1938) speculates: “There is . . . . much to lead us to surmise that [Wadsworth] paid Emily a second visit [in 1861]. . . . . . Her poems, . . . . though not to be taken literally, repeatedly emphasize a momentous interview on ”a day at summer’s full”. One protective measure ED took to bypass the gossipy Amherst postmistress was to mail all private letters by-way-of trusted friends in nearby towns for forwarding in cover envelopes (Habegger 2002).

 

PS. Time heals all wounds: “For Emily no passion ever died” (Judith Farr).

• In May 1862, Wadsworth moved to San Francisco.
• In late 1863, ED copied ‘Grief is a Mouse’ into Fascicle 36.
• In July 1869, Wadsworth moved back to Philadelphia.
• In fall 1876, “we have the first evidence of renewed correspondence with Wadsworth” (Habegger 2002, p. 676)
• In 1876: “[T]he most erotic poem composed by Dickinson between 1870 and 1878 [F1405] has been assigned to 1876 [by Franklin].” (Habegger 2002, p. 677):

(F1405, 1876)

“Long Years apart – can make no
Breach a second cannot fill –
Who says the Absence of a Witch
Invalidates his spell?

“The embers of a Thousand Years
Uncovered by the Hand
That fondled them when they were Fire
Will stir and understand”

• In 1879, ED composed a quatrain/invitation (F1485, 1879) that asked Wadsworth to correspond with or visit her in Amherst:

(F1485, 1879)

“Spurn the temerity —
Rashness of Calvary —
Gay were Gethsemane
Knew we of Thee —”

• In summer 1880, without sending an RSVP, Wadsworth showed up at ED’s front door for a Sunday afternoon visit.

For information about ED’s use of codewords for Wadsworth (Calvary) and herself (Gethsemane), see TPB comments:

• F676, 1863, ‘You know that Portrait in the Moon”, comment on February 20, 2024
• F714, 1863, ‘No Man can compass a Despair’, comment on May 12, 2024
• F749, 1863, ‘Where Thou art – that – is Home’, comment on October 22, 2024

Wadsworth returned to Philadelphia in 1869 and preached there until his death in 1882. Before his death, ED’s surviving letters have only one comment about him. Writing the Hollands after their trip to the Philadelphia Centennial [in 1876], Dickinson offered to send them the minister’s Thanksgiving message, ‘God’s Culture’: “The Sermon you failed to hear, I can lend you”. (L695, about January 1877)

“Again and again, the slender evidence as to the identity of the man Dickinson loved points to Wadsworth. Every other known candidate of either sex can be ruled out; he never is. Yet he is never confirmed. The probable explanation is that the love was on her side only, it was a question of feeling and imagination more than action, she covered her tracks well, and the intensely private Wadsworth was equally careful.” (Habegger, 2002)

• Habegger, Alfred. 2002. My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson, Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
• Whicher, George. 1938. ‘This was a Poet: A Critical Biography of Emily Dickinson’, Amherst College; Special edition 1992 by Amherst College with a new Introduction by Richard Sewall, Professor of English Emeritus, Yale University

752.1863.Ah, Teneriffe – Receding Mountain –

David Preest (2014) is franker than usual in his sexual interpretation of Line 7, Variant A, F752, which ED signed and sent to Sue:

“The peak of Teneriffe, in geography a dormant volcano on the largest Canary island, in the poem stands for Sue herself. Just as the mountain of Teneriffe is heedless of the purple sunset displays of nature that take place before her day by day and indeed retreats from them, so Sue is heedless of Emily’s adoration which blazes a hundred yards away unnoticed. Sue is still and unmoved, made of steel, covered in unmeltable ice, with granite thighs that do not open in welcome, not even aware that she and Emily are parted. All Emily can do is to go on kneeling in adoration, and wait for Sue to notice her once more.

“In the [Variant B] version the sexual overtones of [Line 7] are toned down to ‘Eye of Granite – and Ear of Steel.’

“‘Teneriffe’ is a four-syllable word.”

[Get Preest’s closing joke?]

No wonder Sue wrote Lines 6-9 in her 1891 elegy for ED, ‘Minstrel of the Passing Days’ (TPB Comment on F752, July 3, 2024):

“Of all the gaudy shameless tints
That fire the passions of the prince
Strangling vines clasping their Cleopatras
Closer than Antony’s embrace”
_______________________________________________
David Preest, 2014. Emily Dickinson Poems Commentary, pp. 224-225.

For a free copy of Preest’s ED Commentary, go to
https://studylib.net/download/8773657
Click “Not a Robot”, and download PDF.

ED’s alternate words/phrases in parentheses.

On a Columnar Self—
How ample to rely
In Tumult—or Extremity—
How good the Certainty

That Lever cannot pry—
And Wedge cannot divide
Conviction—That Granitic Base—
Though None be on our Side—

Suffice Us—for a Crowd—
Ourself—and Rectitude—
And that Assembly (Companion)—not far off
From furthest (Faithful) Spirit (Good Man)—God—

I prefer all three of ED’s alternate words/phrases because they illustrate how ED refuses to be pidgeonholed into “atheist” or “deist”. In this poem, God is a “Companion” for the “Faithful Good Man”.

As Sherwood (1968) said:

“The Emily Dickinson revealed in her works is complex and inconsistent, often contradictory, moving from ecstasy to desperation, from a fervent faith to a deep suspicion and skepticism, from humility and submissiveness to defiance and scorn. She is blasphemous as often as devout, and in her poetry God is accused of petty vindictiveness and cold indifference as often as He is celebrated for benevolence or admired for His majesty.”

ED Lexicon defines “columnar” as “stony; rigid, like granite; similar to a marble pillar”, and ED’s poem fits that description.

Stanza 1 states ED’s quasi-religious belief that a stiff spine in times of “Tumult – or Extremity” rewards the true believer or disbeliever with “good” feelings of “Certainty”.

Stanza 2 reiterates ED’s belief in no uncertain terms: “Lever cannot pry – / And Wedge cannot divide / Conviction – That Granitic Base – / Though none be on our side –“. ED’s refusal at age 16 to stand and accept Christ as her savior, despite Mount Holyoke’s Headmistress’s exhortation in front of a class of schoolgirls, no doubt loomed large in ED’s mind while she composed this poem.

Stanza 2 closes with royal plural; “our” means “my”. ED has a history of speaking of herself in third person. Line 8 probably means “Though none be on my side”.

Stanza 3 continues royal plural in Lines 9-10; “Us” and “Ourself” probably mean “Myself”:

“Suffice Myself – for a Crowd –
Myself – and Rectitude -”.

In Line 12, ED pulls an ace from her pocket by adding “God” to her “Crowd”, forming a trio: “Myself”, “Rectitude”, and “God”. It’s always good to have God on your side. As Adam pointed out, she also suggested three alternative words for Lines 11 & 12: “Assembly” [Companion], “furthest” [Faithful], “Spirit” [Good Man].

Editors Johnson (1955) and Franklin (1998) decided to disregard alternative words in Stanza 3 and keep the royal plural. That wording confuses me. Does “Assembly” refer to “God” or to “Myself – and Rectitude”?

Inserting all three alternative words and converting royal plural to standard singular, Stanza 3 reads:

“Suffice Myself – for a Crowd –
Myself – and Rectitude -.
And that Companion – not far off
From Faithful Good Man – God –”

Now Stanza 3 makes sense; “Crowd” clearly consists of “Myself”, “Rectitude”, and “God”. For once, ED tells us what she means with her alternative words – or does she? ED’s coziness with God, “that Companion – not far off / From Faithful Good Man”, seems strange given their troubled relations. Maybe she’s just covering her agnostic bets.

Shira Wolosky (2000) asks a rhetorical question: “Is New England self-reliance, à la Emerson, a choice preferrable to traditional social interdependence or does it devolve into cold self-defeating stoniness?”

Her answer: “[W]e can see how desperate, and how self-defeating, this “Columnar Self” [is], for all its array of certain, granitic, language . . . . Posed almost frantically against tremendous, threatening forces — “Tumult,” “Extremity” — and assaultive intrusion — a “Wedge” that threatens to “divide” — this self stands in utter isolation, “None be on our side.” And the self’s rescue costs in fact the self itself: its liberty, its mobility, indeed consciousness itself — for here Dickinsonian selfhood is lapidary [stony], a downward metamorphosis from motive, sentient, conscious being into inorganic stone. What first appears, then, to be a declaration of absolute independence, emerges instead as a defensive, ambivalent contraction of selfhood, unto its own undoing.”

• Shira Wolosky. 2000. ‘Dickinson’s Emerson: A Critique of American Identity’. The Emily Dickinson Journal, 9(2):134-141

In my experience, adherence to “That Granitic Base” of a “Columnar Self” often “emerges instead as a defensive, ambivalent contraction of selfhood, unto its own undoing”, i.e., stolid stoicism.

Sherwood, W.R., 1968. Circumference and Circumstance, Columbia University Press.

Shira Wolosky. 2000. Dickinson’s Emerson: A Critique of American Identity. The Emily
Dickinson Journal, 9(2):134-141

ED’s alternate words in parentheses

Joy to have merited the Pain—
To merit the Release—
Joy to have perished every step—
To Compass Paradise—

Pardon—to look upon thy face—
With these old fashioned Eyes—
Better than new—could be—for that—
Though bought in Paradise—

Because they looked on thee before—
And thou hast looked on them—
Prove Me—My Hazel (swimming) Witnesses
The features are the same—

So fleet thou wert, when present—
So infinite—when gone—
An Orient’s Apparition—
Remanded of the Morn—

The Height I recollect—
‘Twas even with the Hills—
The Depth upon my Soul was notched—
As Floods—on Whites of Wheels—

To Haunt—till Time have dropped
His last Decade (slow Decades) away,
And Haunting actualize—to last
At least—Eternity—

Line 11: ED told Higginson her eyes were hazel, “like the sherry in the glass, that the guest leaves” [JL345, 1862-07-22]. I prefer the alternate “swimming” because she’s been crying. Line 22: I prefer ED’s alternate, “slow Decades” because ED expects to live several “slow Decades” before she dies and joins Wadsworth in Heaven. “His last decade” implies she must wait until the end of “Time”, which is not her intended meaning.

Especially for this poem, which ED  copied into Fascicle 36 “about the second half of 1863” (Franklin 1998), it’s important to know that:

“Emily Dickinson first went to Boston for eye treatment in February 1864 and stayed until November, followed by another treatment period in April 1865. She was being treated by Boston ophthalmologist Dr. Henry Willard Williams for an eye affliction that began the previous year [1863]. During these times away from her home in Amherst, she stayed with her cousins, Frances and Lavinia Norcross” (Google AI).   No wonder ED focuses so much on “old eyes and new eyes”; hers were failing.

ED’s best poems can be read at many levels, personal to universal. To see the universe in a blade of grass is a skill that requires a big mind. However, universalizing ‘Joy to have merited the Pain—’ eludes me, so here’s a biographical take, stanza by stanza, with my apologies to purists:

Stanza 1 sounds masochistic to me: “It feels so good when the beating ends”. ED Lex defines the verb “compass” as “achieve; arrive at”, so Lines 3-4, “Joy to have perished every step – / To Compass Paradise –”, translates for me “Since you left me, I’ve perished painfully every day, but when we meet in Paradise, that daily dying will be worthwhile”. Marianne Noble (1994) argues “that a broad undercurrent of masochistic imagery characterizes mid-nineteenth-century American sentimental fiction”, ED’s guilty pleasure, but that’s over my pay grade.

Stanzas 2-3 echo Master Letter 3 (Summer 1861): “Would Daisy disappoint you-no-she would’nt-Sir-it were comfort forever-just to look in your face, while you looked in mine – then I could play in the woods till Dark- till you take me where Sundown cannot find us -”. Master’s identity will likely elude proof, but ED’s most recent leading biographer concludes “To date, there is only one candidate who matches what we infer about the unknown [Master] . . . Reverend Charles Wadsworth” (Habegger 2002, p.504), as did Whicher (1939) and Sewall (1974)..

Stanzas 4-5 likely relive an 1860 invited visit to Homestead by Rev. Wadsworth. At the time, he was the superstar pastor of Philadelphia’s Arch Street Presbyterian Church, and ED had heard him preach in March 1855 when she was 24. Apparently, that sermon planted a seed of adoration, infatuation, and love that affected her until the day she died.

The poet and the preacher corresponded over the next five years, probably including Master Letter 1 (spring 1858; Franklin 1984). ED’s memory of that 1860 visit, faulty or not, was that Wadsworth assured her they would meet and marry in Heaven

Stanza 6 closes the poem: You will haunt me / Until Time’s “last Decade” / That haunting will last / “At least – Eternity”. Apparently, ED believed Wadsworth, literally.

As a child, ED’s conception of heaven began in uncertain agnosticism: “Maybe heaven exists”. By 1863 her conception probably was certain agnosticism: “We have no evidence heaven exists, but absence of evidence doesn’t prove heaven’s non-existence”. See F725, ‘Their Height in Heaven comforts not—’, especially ED’s last two lines:

“This timid life of Evidence
Keeps pleading – ‘I don’t know’”.

We can’t assume ED was logical about her beliefs, as these two quotes suggest:

“The Emily Dickinson revealed in her works is complex and inconsistent, often contradictory, moving from ecstasy to desperation, from a fervent faith to a deep suspicion and skepticism, from humility and submissiveness to defiance and scorn. She is blasphemous as often as devout, and in her poetry God is accused of petty vindictiveness and cold indifference as often as He is celebrated for benevolence or admired for His majesty.”

Sherwood, W.R., Circumference and Circumstance. 1968.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function”.

F. Scott Fitzgerald. February, 1936. ‘The Crack-Up’. Esquire magazine.

During summer 1860, while visiting his best friend, James Clark in Northampton, Wadsworth took the 12-mile train ride to Amherst for an invited visit with ED. For a superstar Philadelphia minister to take such an interest in her, an unpublished, unmarried, small town, 29-year-old poet, must have sent her brain spinning.

Reverend Wadsworth’s memory of that 1860 meeting and his feelings for ED will never be known. The only thing we know for certain is that during a 1939 interview, Wadworth’s youngest son, Dr. William S. Wadsworth, Coroner of Philadelphia, answered a question by an early biographer, George F. Whicher:

“Did your father ever speak of Emily Dickinson’s poems?”. Dr. Wadsworth replied, “He would not have cared for them. The poetry he admired was of a different order. . . . My father was not one to be unduly impressed by a hysterical young woman’s ravings” (Whicher 1949).

During late summer 1861 Wadsworth probably informed ED that he was considering a “remove” to San Francisco’s new Calvary Presbyterian Church. In May 1862 he and his family did move, and ED, prone to separation anxiety, sank into a painful mental maelstrom that lasted at least two years (L338 to Higginson, April 28, 1862, “I had a terror – since September – I could tell to none”) Perhaps ‘Joy to have merited the Pain’ (F739, 1863) was a stage of her recovery.

• Franklin, R. W. (ed.). 1984. The Master Letters of Emily Dickinson. Amherst College Press, Amherst, MA. 52 pp.
• Habegger, Alfred. 2002. My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson, p.504
• Noble, Marianne. 1994. ‘“Joy to Have Merited the Pain”: The Masochistic Pleasures of the Sentimental Voice’. Columbia University Dissertation. 448 pp.
• Sewall, Richard B. 1974. The Life of Emily Dickinson. Paperback edition. 1998. Harvard U. Press.
• Whicher, G. F. 1938. A Critical Biography of Emily Dickinson; A Special Edition with an Introduction by Richard B. Sewall, Amherst College Press, 1992.
• Whicher, G. F. 1949. Pursuit of the Overtakeless. The Nation. Issue 2. Pp. 14-15.