On three Emily Dickinson poems
I have said before I feel a certain kinship with Dickinson, and the recent virus scare has made many people shut-ins, as she seemed to be much of her life. Anyway, here are three poems and a few comments.
1)
“Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of victory
As he defeated – dying –
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!”
I recently got into touch by phone with a high school classmate who appears to have become a successful D.C. lawyer and seems to have a happy family. When I mentioned on the phone that he has been successful as a compliment, he got a bit reticent. Samuel Beckett in one of his essays writes of something like the twin demons of failure and success. The poem also reminds me of the image of the dying Gaul, of which I have a slightly surreal version of in print form by a contemporary artist on my apartment wall.
2)
“Much Madness is divinest Sense –
To a discerning Eye –
Much Sense – the starkest Madness –
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail –
Assent – and you are sane –
Demur – you’re straightway dangerous –
And handled with a Chain -“
A previous post mentioned the Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing who proposed many seriously mentally ill people came from communities that had lied to them or at least were for some reason hostile to them. When I was a financial reporter, traders had a phrase of “demurrage charge,” when shippers are penalized for not delivering what was expected on time.
3)
“ALMOST!
Within my reach!
I could have touched!
I might have chanced that way!
Soft sauntered through the village,
Sauntered as soft away!
So unsuspected violets
Within the fields lie low,
Too late for striving fingers
That passed, an hour ago.”
Two thoughts. Dickinson liked to use exclamation marks (maybe most famously in the poem “Wild Nights – Wild Nights!”). One of my grad school classmates detested exclamation marks as an over-expression of emotion. The other is this poem reminds me of the short story by Henry James called “The Beast in the Jungle” about a relationship that is ultimately out of reach. It is worth reading.
