Monday, August 29, 2011

   My father used to hate Emily Dickinson’s poetry.  He thought she was too precious.  He would recite “I’m nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody, too” in a mocking tone. Well, when he went to school, the curriculum emphasized her nice, girly-girl stuff, and more importantly, the poems had been printed wrong! Some guy in the 1950‘s got hold of Dickinson’s original drafts and realized that her earlier editors had “cleaned up” what they thought were mistakes in spelling or punctuation, or merely rough drafts of her work.  Turns out she was way more experimental and smarter than they gave her credit for.  Every word, every dash, every capital letter in her work helps to communicate how she feels at that moment in the poem. 


    Her poems about death are her best  In this one, she uses careful euphemisms to convey how unsettling a death is.  The last lines reveal a spiritual, as well as social and physical, confusion.

The last Night that She lived

The last Night that She lived


It was a Common Night


Except the Dying—this to Us


Made Nature different

We noticed smallest things—

Things overlooked before

By this great light upon our Minds

Italicized—as 'twere.

As We went out and in

Between Her final Room

And Rooms where Those to be alive

Tomorrow were, a Blame

That Others could exist

While She must finish quite

A Jealousy for Her arose

So nearly infinite—

We waited while She passed—

It was a narrow time—

Too jostled were Our Souls to speak

At length the notice came.

She mentioned, and forgot—

Then lightly as a Reed

Bent to the Water, struggled scarce—

Consented, and was dead—

And We—We placed the Hair—

And drew the Head erect—

And then an awful leisure was

Belief to regulate—

   Notice right away how careful she is to not say “death” or “died.”  Her euphemisms show respect for and fear of what is coming. It bothers her how unfathomable death is.  To the living, this big event is just a “Common Night.”  To the dying, it’s the biggest thing ever.  Nature, apparently, abandons people.  Yet, it’s an eerily quiet event.  She has to rethink Nature.


Italicized type is emphasized.  A great light would help one see things more clearly.  But, she doesn’t give us a definitive message about death.  The message is that certainty about death is unknowable.


Notice how “Blame” is separated from the rest of it’s sentence. That technique is called enjambment.  Usually this causes the reader to think about the word in a number of ways.  The people alive feel guilty that She (the Dying) must go through the ordeal, but they don’t.  Maybe she blames them for abandoning her in a way.  But then there’s that jealousy.  Why be jealous of a dying person?  Well, she gets to escape the world, but, more importantly to Dickinson, she gets to know the truth.  That’s why her jealousy is nearly infinite.  One can only understand the infinite experience of the soul by dying.


    See, the living Souls are jostled!  What’s going on here is most important to the soul. 


    Another euphemism for death.  Notice came that she had died,  but no revelation of the consequence ofwhat just had happened. 


    The reed image is poignant, but what’s telling is that the dying woman consented.  Whom or what did she consent to? Nature? God? Death?

    Notice, the living can deal with little physical tasks, but thinking about death, regulating one’s belief about what happens to the dying, is tough.  The event seems so trivial, yet it’s of the greatest importance.  Religion wants us to believe in the afterlife, but when one has time and opportunity, an “awful leisure,” since there’s nothing one can do but think, there’s no evidence to lead us toward the truth.  Note that “awful” can mean horrible or full of awe. Dickinson wants us to consider both meanings.

    She quietly stopped being.  Where is she now? What was there, in that body, that has left?    Coming to one’s own conclusions, like any strong personality would want to, is a frustrating task.