Teaching Literature - Analysis of the poem 'Success is counted sweetest  (67)' by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Autor: Conto e Encanto | Publicado: 2011-12-29T19:23:00-08:00




Profa. Dra. Bárbara de Fátima.







A bit about the author:

Born - December 10 - Amherst - Massachusetts.

Died - May 16.

Family:

Grandfather - a leader in founding Amherst College.

Father - a successful lawyer. He became a Member of Congress, and served the College as a trustee. He was ita treasurer. He was a stern and authoritarian moralist. When he spoke his timid wife trembled and was silent.

Hometown: Amherst was a small town and rigid world. The church wielded the highest authority.&nbsp;

Emily:

- She had a rebellious spirit.

- Her sister-in-law became her confidante.

- In her poems she constructed her own world (of her garden, of the beautiful Connecticut Valley scenery, of the books, e. g. forbidden books, of her private and quite startling thoughts, of her few friends at Amherst Academy, a deeply religious person).

- She visited Washington, Philadelphia, and Boston.&nbsp;

_ In 1848 she met Ben Newton (He was a brilliant free-thinker, he introduced her to a new world of ideas, but he was too poor to marry).

- In 1854 she met Reverend Charles Wadsworth in Philadelphia (he tried to teach her immortality).

- She spent her middle years as White-clad recluse, but she had contact with the outer world through Helen Hunt Jackson (her girlhood friend) and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (a literary friend of the family).

- Samuel Bowles – Editor of the famous Springfield Republican – only seven of her poems slipped into print during her lifetime.

- From 1884 until her death she was semi-invalid in a condition of a mental decline.

- Posthumous collections – 1890 and 1896 – reputation of a powerful eccentric.

- Later collections – 1914 – established her recognition as a major poet – influence upon Young writers. 



Her style:



- Simple yet passionate.

- Marked by economy and concentration.

- Discovered the sharps, intense image is the poet’s Best instrument.

- Antecipated the modern enlargement of melody by assonance, dissonance, and ‘off-rhyme’.

- Discoverd the utility of ellipsis of thought and the verbal ambiguity.



Her ideas:



- Witty and rebellious.

- Original.

- On death and immortality.



Her materials:



- Confined her materials to the world of her small village, her domestic cycle, her garden and a few good books.

- Possessed the most acute awareness of sensory experience and psychological actualities.

- Expressed radical discoveries in the áreas with frankness and force.

- Takes liberties with Grammar, punctuation and capitalization.

- was a product of Amherst Village, where colonial America lingered in puritan overtones. She inherited the tradition of the romantic nature poets; but her realism and psychological truth made her seem contemporary to a much later generation. 

- Glimpses of her most private thoughts and feelings (what in nature captures her attention; how she responds to beauty, to pain, to death; her special formo f worship and her haith in God).



Her obsessions:



- The problems of Good and Evil.

- Of life and death.

- The nature and destiny of the human soul.&nbsp;



&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Dickinson's poetry reflects her loneliness and the speakers of her poems generally live in a state of want, but her poems are also marked by the intimate recollection of inspirational moments which are decidedly life-giving and suggest the possibility of happiness. Her work was heavily influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, as well as her reading of the Book of Revelation and her upbringing in a Puritan New England town which encouraged a Calvinist, orthodox, and conservative approach to Christianity. 

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; She admired the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as John Keats. Though she was dissuaded from reading the verse of her contemporary Walt Whitman by rumor of its disgracefulness, the two poets are now connected by the distinguished place they hold as the founders of a uniquely American poetic voice. While Dickinson was extremely prolific as a poet and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955. She died in Amherst in 1886. (Source: poet's.org)





67



by Emily Dickinson 





Success is counted sweetest&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A

By those who ne'er succeed.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; B

To comprehend a nectar&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;C

Requires sorest need.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; B



Not one of all the purple Host&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A

Who took the Flag today&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; B

Can tell the definition&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; C

So clear of Victory&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; B



As he defeated - dying -&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A

On whose forbidden ear&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;B

The distant strains of triumph&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; C&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 

Burst agonized and clear!&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;B






This poem was one of the poems to be published in her lifetime. It presents 3 stanzas – 4 verses each stanza- 3 quatrains. Its rhyme scheme is ABCB – the second and the fourth lines of ecah stanza rhyme. It has an extra syllable in the first and third lines. It shows na iambic trimeter (one unaccented syllable followed by one accented).



Point of View:



- It could be a man or a woman, young or old.

- The narrator feels sure that one who has not been victorious can best understand victory (he or she has been on the losing side).

- Might be a dying soldier.





Analysis of each stanza:





First stanza: two statements with similar meaning.



Theme:

- What’s the poem’s primary meaning? The poet’s theme is summarized in the first lines of the poem: success is considered most desirable by those who have never been successful.

- The resto f the poem develops the theme further (to appreciate the good taste of a sweet néctar, one must need to be hungry for it or unfamiliar with it.





Second two stanzas:

- Describe the way in which the victorious soldiers (those Who successfully take the flag are unable to define success; 

- Those who have not been successful (those conquered – understand perfectly the nature of victory); 

- The poet introduces the Word definition (particularly useful; the entire poem a successful definition of what it means to succeed). 

- An expression of the idea of compensation (every evil confers some balancing good; through bitterness we learn to appreciate the sweet).

- The defeated and dying soldier of this poem is compensated by a greater awareness of the meaning of victory than the victorious themselves can.

- He can comprehend the joy of success through its polar contrast to his own despair.

- Emily Dickinson is arguing the superiorityof defeat to victory, of frustration to satisfaction &nbsp;&nbsp;(a material gain has cost tham a spiritual loss; material loss has led to spiritual gain).

- Its theme is universal, it existis independently of time.

- Its message pertains to all readers.