I know the Butterfly.
The pretty people in the Woods
Receive me cordially—
The Brooks laugh louder when I come—
The Breezes madder play;
Wherefore mine eye thy silver mists,
Wherefore, Oh Summer's Day?
- F 113 (1859) 111
- F 113 (1859) 111
The mood of this poem is quite different from F104 where “A something in a summer’s Day” “solemnizes” the poet. This one starts off quite gaily with poet and Nature in happy and friendly accord. We have the bouquet of “B”s again: Bee, Butterfly, Brooks, and Breezes – and it is as if they are dear friends and playmates. The “B” alliteration, along with the “p”s of “pretty people” keep the tone bouncy.
But not all is well in Paradise. The poet finds herself a bit weepy. Sometimes all the glories of a summer day are not enough to overcome grief or even melancholy. Sometimes, in fact, the simple beauty and joy exacerbates our sense of failure. Still, however, I would like to think that “The Brooks laugh louder when I come.”
A new entrant to the world of Emily Dickinson but now simply fascinated by her works.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy the voyage!
DeleteThanks for opening this discussion, apparently I am a bit late. Based on the holograph from the summer of 1859 (F113), this poem is lineated and punctuated as follows:
ReplyDeleteThe Bee is not afraid of me.
I know the Butterfly -
The pretty people in the Woods
Receive me cordially -
The Brooks laugh louder
When I come-
The Breezes madder play;
Wherefore mine eye thy silver mists,
Wherefore, Oh Summer's Day?
I know this all may seem nit-picky, but the asymmetry between the two stanzas is important, not just because Dickinson drafted them that way, but to set up the climax of Line 8. I would simply note that the first stanza gives us four-beat lines paired with three-beat lines. But with Stanza 2, the music is broken. Just as you observed, yes, there is "trouble in paradise" and the three figurative logs that we step over (the three three-beat lines of Stanza 2) are broken by the five beats of Line 8; in fact, the entire poem turns on that line. I think Dickinson is doing something a bit more radical here than enacting an emotional response to the beautiful, alternative fairytale world of the woods, more than remembering something melancholic. I think she is directly interrogating -- perhaps even indicting -- emotion itself as a film or state that places the world in an obscuring hothouse of her own making, then leaves the poet looking for where the objective reality of that object is (a Summer's Day) when she now cannot see beyond the panes surrounding her. Even more perplexing, the interior object illudes her from within this metaphorical hothouse. This double irony "rhymes" with the earlier moments in the poem that seem to me like little roadmaps to the egocentric predicament: I mean the poet's presence makes brooks "laugh louder" and breezes "madder play," but of course those shifts are all artifacts of proximity. Yes, Dickinson and all of us have the misfortune of being fixed under the anchoring pin of a compass. We don't control when the needle bounces and weaves; we don't determine when it settles down and stops, then, in all the sturm and drang of feeling things, can we even make out where the compass points?
I'm enchanted by the "silver mists" that continue so fluidly the fairy woods setting. With the upwelling of those silver mists the joyous summer's day vanishes. I see the egocentricity you refer to -- and I think that plays to Dickinson's teasing out perspective from consciousness in many of her poems. Her world is full of portents and messages, it reveals an often terrifying, often awesome, and sometimes as in this poem, a tender consciousness. The poet's perspective amplifies, negates, describes – and dynamically affects the pantheistic world.
DeleteAs you suggest, it is emotion that introduces the disturbance in the flux. It is the poet who sees and records it.
Thanks for your very interesting comments! I was drawn back to another poem: http://bloggingdickinson.blogspot.com/2012/09/many-phrase-has-english-language.html
that shows that more explicitly ties emotion to how nature's portents and revelations are received.
Could Emily be commenting that the natural world in summer is so beautiful, inviting, comfortable, neighborly--but (she asks) why am I crying (or at least misting over)? Could she be expressing that longing we sometimes feel to cling to or possess those good times, that beauty--and the pain of acknowledging that the world and its beauty remain always outside of us, ephemeral. (Actually now I think maybe this might be what your commenter is saying...)
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking now of the almost painful ephemerality of the seasons. Dickinson treats this more sharply in "I dreaded that first robin so": https://bloggingdickinson.blogspot.com/2012/10/i-dreaded-that-first-robin-so.html. Thinking of summer as the plenitude of the year -- and herself in the plenitude of life (in her 30s), there is fall to look forward to... and then winter.
DeleteSo, yes, I agree with you.
My explanation or, rather, my contribution to the discussion concerning the enigmatic ending of the poem:
DeleteI tend to think that though Dickinson inserts her belief that nature acquires a significance, amiability and dreaminess (nature resonding obediently and pleasingly to the presence and stimulus of the lyric speaker, goblin-like creatures, i.e., "pretty people in the Woods"), she also follows one of the long-established tropes of summer as a limited lease. That is, the poem (especially its ending) finds its meaning in tandem with Shakespear's sonnet #18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?) among others. Dickinson borrows the exact wording in Shakespeare: " summer’s day" and seems to agree with him in terms of the "tempus fugit" the sonnet lays stress on. In sonnet #18 the eye plays a central role, presenting the contrast between lucidity and dimness; likewise Dickinson creates a similar effect through the use of teh verb mist.
Do you think "cordially" should rhyme with "bee" or "butterfly"?
ReplyDeleteRhymes with 'bee' but is a slant rhyme for 'butterfly'. Less predictable, perhaps; hence, more interesting.
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ReplyDeleteThe poet feels close to the physical world — bees, butterflies, brooks, breezes — and the spiritual — pretty people of the woods — so why are her eyes filled with tears? Are they tears of gratitude because a mystical summer happiness fills her heart (F104) or are they tears of sadness because nature’s gifts are not enough, something huge is missing from her heart (F112), or both? The closing question — Wherefore, Oh Summer’s Day? — suggests grateful happiness should be enough, but it's not.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the answer for the first one
ReplyDeleteWhat is 'first one'?
Delete