Emily Dickinson by Cynthia Griffin Wolff

Author:Cynthia Griffin Wolff [Wolff, Cynthia Griffin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-5346-1
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-02-18T00:00:00+00:00

No Trace—no Figment of the Thing

That dazzled, Yesterday,

No Ring—no Marvel—

Men, and Feats—

Dissolved as utterly—

As Bird’s far Navigation

Discloses just a Hue—

A plash of Oars, a Gaiety—

Then swallowed up, of View.

(#243)

The first four lines anchor the verse firmly in the world of circuses and storms; the “shining Yards” of sunlight are swirled away as efficiently as the carnival’s “Tent” is struck, its “stakes” and “Boards” vanishing like gypsies in the night. However, when the “Rip of Nail” and “Carpenter” introduce the notion of Jesus’s Crucifixion, the tone of the verse shifts. The glory of nature’s show, captured in the glittering image of the first two lines, is displaced by the void that is the paradoxical legacy of the divine Magician, the blank vision of “miles of Stare—.” Now we must come to terms not with sunlit days a moment overcast, but with a Son Who has left us forever. The ultimate emptiness of the promised Resurrection is bitterest to a New England mind, for “North America” was to be the site of God’s New Jerusalem, the city upon a hill. By Dickinson’s day, little was left of that heroic legacy except “Retreat”; and this theme, announced at the conclusion of the first stanza, becomes the focus of the second.

Having opened so powerfully with the world of visible reality, the poem can convey a sense of felt loss through the systematic negation of that reality: “No Trace … no Figment … No Ring … no Marvel—.” Like a series of lights going out, this vision is “Dissolved”; and the word conveys not a removal to another place, but something potentially more terrifying, some species of annihilation. Tentatively, the poem recalls spring in the final four lines with the introduction of the bird, yet this creature can provide no comfort. It is too distant and too ephemeral to return us to the apparent security of the visible world in which the poem began; and if it is truly an emblem of the risen God, its message is little more than stark warning. The bird soars aloft, delighting in its freedom and rowing the blue skies with insouciant “Gaiety—.” And then it is gone, “swallowed up, of View.” Not carried into a superior realm by the effort of its own flight, the bird has been consumed by a devouring power—“swallowed up.” Has it entered an indiscernible Heaven? If so, the language of the poem asserts that the Creature Who awaits it is some unknown predator.

More than earlier times of the year, fall and winter cover the Connecticut valley with tumbling, huddling mementos of execution, and sometimes Dickinson strove to communicate this process through carefully limited, but vivid imagery. “The name—of it—is ‘Autumn’— / The hue—of it—is Blood— / An Artery—upon the Hill— / A Vein—along the Road— / Great Globules—in the Alleys— / And Oh, the Shower of Stain— / When Winds—upset the Basin— / And spill the Scarlet Rain— / It sprinkles Bonnets—far below— / It gathers ruddy Pools— / Then—eddies like a Rose—away— / And leaves me with the Hills” (#656; var.

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