From: s1mbm@isuvax.iastate.edu (michael bruce mcdonald)
Subject: Re: Dickinson (was Re: Paglia)
Reply-To: s1mbm@isuvax.iastate.edu
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 10:53:14 GMT

In article <1993Jan8.183017.23003@ecrc.de>, sanjiva@ecrc.de (Sanjiva Prasad) writes:
>In article <JMC.93Jan6142030@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>>I learned a lot from _Sexual Personae_.  It made me decide to read
>>some Emily Dickinson and Swinburne.  
>
>Maybe I should read La Paglia, after all, to get me to decide to read
>Dickinson.  A brief encounter with Ms Emily was sufficient to convince me that 
>she was bland, mawkish and weak.  Pale, Pale, Pale, beyond the pale of
>inspiration.  We also had a pathetic little poem on the moon as prescribed
>reading in school, and to my disgust in our 10th grade board exams (like the 
>O-levels) we had to analyse the poem, pointing out the similes, metaphors and 
>other such stuff.  I couldn't resist adding that the only point of this maudlin
>poem seemed to be to make readers suffer through such exercises (minus 5 on
>that question I guess).  So what is a *good* Dickinson to read?  I know many 
>Americans consider her a goddess, so may I have a considered opinion?
>
>--
>Sanjiva Prasad,  Guest Magus				E-mail: sanjiva@ecrc.de
>European Computer Industry Research Centre		Off: +49 89 92 69 91 58
>Arabellastrasse 17					Fax: +49 89 92 69 91 70
>8000 Muenchen 81, Germany				Res: +49 89 16 33 59


Well, I would want to place her work somewhere between "bland, mawkish and
weak" and that of a "goddess."  I think that twould be rather silly to hand
you a list of poems to read; I think that much of the delight to be found
in E.D. comes from discovering gems on one's own, gems whose particular idioms
resonate with one's own idiomatic quirkiness.  Here's one--a very famous one--
that I find particularly magnificent:

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter afternoons--
That oppresses, like the Heft 
Of cathedral Tunes--

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us--
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are--

None may teach it--Any--
'Tis the Seal Despair--
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air--

When it comes, the Landscape listens--
Shadows--hold their breath--
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death--



I love the synesthetic notion that cathedral tunes have "heft."
I love the way that, without saying that "Heavenly Hurt" is *like* an
internal scar, Dickinson anticipates Derrida's notion of a rupture at
the level of internal differences, or Lacan's notion of the linguistic
"suture."  If she had merely said that the Hurt causes something *like*
an inner scar, the poem would not have the force it bears, a force
stemming from the remarkable congruence of ambivalence and precision
embodied here.  This quality is also embodied with uncanny force in the
line "None may teach it--Any" . . . If you paraphrase this line as "no one
can teach it, yet anyone can," you come up with something that is 
accurate enough at the *level* of paraphrase, yet which, in its ineluctable
clunkiness, does not begin to touch the self-deconstructive efficiency of
Dickinson's line.  The difference between this line and its hopelessly
daft paraphrase is one of the best arguments for poetry I could ever hope
to conjure.

michael mcdonald