Ambition cannot find him –
Affection doesn't know
How many leagues of nowhere
Lie between them now.
Yesterday, undistinguished!
Eminent Today
For our mutual honor,
Immortality!
- F 115 (1859) 68
This has the feel of something penned for someone who has lost her husband. No matter how diligently she tries to find him nor how lovingly she thinks on him, there are “leagues of nowhere” “between them now.” But then the poet remarks that he was a nobody yesterday, in fact he was probably nobody until he died and could share in the honor and eminence we will all share as immortal souls.
I hope Dickinson is right and that immortality and “life” post-grave is as wonderful as she so often makes it out to be. On the other hand, me thinks the lady doth protest too much.
The poem is divided between the first stanza outlining how distant and unreachable the dear departed is. The second makes a stab at glorifying his current lot. Each stanza is written in trimeter. “Immortality" cuts it a bit short, but as it ends on an accented syllable it reinforces the positive ending.
Makes you wonder though, what promtrd her to write this? It is so brief, and the words so rushed but pointed, and then they end. On an upnote you feel, but what prompted them?
ReplyDeleteI agree with myself in the first sentence. We know Dickinson would write poems and include them with baskets and flowers and this might have been written with some specific recently deceased man in mind.
Delete...or even her own thoughts in general on the matter. I don't see her sending this to say a widow, with flowers, and having the line "...yesterday undistinguished..." in it.
ReplyDeletehmmm... good point. Yet 'undistinguished' might not be considered a slight as it would today. In Amherst, the Dickinson men would be distinguished, and university men, perhaps. But I think (without being an expert) that most folks, be they ever so inventive and excellent would be admired without being considered distinguished. Just a slightly different take on the word from today.
DeleteBut I think the second stanza can be read as a pivot. The first is personal, applying to one couple, the 'them'. The second is general. In our human lives we are undistinguished (by and large) we are then honored (granted distinction) once we die. The 'we' in this reading would indicate the pivot.
That's a good point. In fact, excellent. If your flowers are as good as your insights, it must be one hell of a garden!
ReplyDeleteHi Susan,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your insight into this concise, early poem by Dickinson.
I am drawn to the way that Dickinson employs enjambment in lines 2 and 3 to convey a sense of the bereaved's restless, futile searching for the deceased loved one. This adds a somewhat emotive quality to the poem, before the tone, as you comment, turns universal (and almost triumphant) in the second stanza with its exclamatory final line.
And with your comment I notice the 'know', 'nowhere', 'now' line enders. They support rhyme but also rather stand on their own...
DeleteED sent a penciled copy of F115, Ambition cannot find him, to Susan D about the same time she sent a penciled copy of F112, Success is counted sweetest. She apparently did not send the two closely related, intervening poems, F113, The Bee is not afraid of me, and F114, Where bells no more affright the morn, even though all four poems connect in time and topic.
ReplyDeleteF112 and F115 are mirror opposites, the first lamenting loss of a close relationship and the second ending with ED’s triumphant rewording of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, which immortalized his love of a close friend in four unforgettable lines, ending with his unshakable belief, “this [poem] gives [eternal] life to thee":
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Just as Shakespeare was absolutely certain, so was Dickinson:
Yesterday, undistinguished!
Eminent Today
For our mutual honor,
Immortality!
Before this poem existed, our love was unknown
Today it became poetry
That honors us both
With immortality!
The first stanza of F115 employs a common disguise in ED’s poetry, switching gender, a ploy well understood by Susan D.
Ambition cannot find him –
Affection doesn't know
How many leagues of nowhere
Lie between them now.
My efforts cannot find her
Affection doesn’t know her
How many leagues of nowhere
Lie between us now
The finest poet of any age would be proud of penning those last two lines.
Unlike F112 and F115, the two intervening poems are private, meant only, as far as we know, for the poet herself. The Bee is not afraid of me, F113, asks why the poet is crying when she feels such closeness to nature, The poem doesn’t answer, but reading between the lines suggests there is something huge missing from her heart.
The fourth poem, Where bells no more affright the morn, F114, scares me, even across 134 years. Its Line 8, Please, Pater, pretty soon!, sounds extremely close to a suicidal death wish. Thank heavens she didn’t act on it. For more, see Replies on F112, 113, and 114.