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25 June 2012

Again – his voice is at the door –


Again – his voice is at the door –
I feel the old Degree
I hear him ask the servant
For such an one – as me –

I take a flower – as I go –
My face to justify
He never saw me – in this life
I might surprise his eye!

I cross the Hall with mingled steps –
I – silent – pass the door –
I look on all this world contains
Just his face – nothing more!

We talk in careless – and in toss –
A kind of plummet strain –
Each – sounding – shyly –
Just – how – deep –
The other's one – had been –

We walk – I leave my Dog – at home –
A tender – thoughtful Moon –
Goes with us – just a little way –
And – then – we are alone

Alone – if Angels are "alone" –
First time they try the sky!
Alone – if those "veiled faces" – be –
We cannot count
On High!
I'd give – to live that hour – again –
The purple – in my Vein
But He must count the drops – himself
My price for every stain!
                                                            274 (1862) 663

There is a haunting, Gothic quality to this poem. We have a mysterious stranger in the parlour asking for the narrator. He is no stranger to her, though, for she knows his voice and goes to greet him. There is quite a bit of history between them although they haven’t seen each other for a long time. The two take a walk, by themselves except for the moon, which soon disappears, leaving them alone in the dark.
            The power and attraction of her feelings for this man are so strong that she would slit her wrists to spend that hour once more. But, in true Gothic form, slitting her wrists isn’t quite enough. As her blood drops and stains the ground or her dress, the man must count every drop. It is a morbid and gruesome sort of commitment or pact that she is trying to extract. She may die, but he will have logged her death drop by drop.
            The poem begins in an air of mystery: “Again – his voice is at the door.” We feel we are entering into a story. What does the poet mean, though, by the narrator feeling “the old Degree”? I think the answer lies in poem F194, “Title divine is mine,” where she writes
Title divine,  is mine.
The Wife  without the Sign 
Acute Degree conferred on me  

This is the poem where the narrator was “Born – Bridalled – Shrouded – / In a Day” and  “Betrothed – without the swoon.” Her “Degree,” then, involves a real sense of marriage – even if not an earthly or legal union. The sadness in the “Born – Bridalled – Shrouded – / In a Day” line is touched on when the narrator says in this one that she feels “the old Degree.” That “Title divine” is no longer current. Things have changed. The old relationship is gone. And yet, just the sound of his voice awakens it all again.
            The story continues. The narrator puts a flower in her hair as evidence she is who she is. Her life now is different – and he might not recognize her. This reminds me of how Dickinson began to wear only white dresses and to spend her days only on her family’s property. This new white-clad and retiring woman “might surprise his eye!”
            We go with the narrator as she walks to the parlour, unsteady on her feet. She silently enters the room and then in an expression of great love says that when she sees her beloved she sees “all this world contains – Just his face…”
Antique plummet (plumb bob)
The next line is pure Dickinson: “We talk in careless – and in toss.” The truncated phrases are perfectly clear and delightfully suggestive. The man and woman speak superficially, as if carelessly discussing health and weather and the local news. They toss out words and phrases. And yet in all this conversation they are searching each other. Dickinson says there is “A kind of plummet strain.” A plummet, or plumb bob, is a device for measuring the depth of water or for establishing the center of a structure during construction, or for determining the degree of straightness. In their careless talk, both parties are sounding each other out, shyly trying to find out how much depth was in the other’s seemingly casual remarks. The image is of two plummets (plumb bobs, if you must, but the name is so silly sounding) each observing and taking the measure of each other as they strain downward.
            Then the two go for a moonlight stroll. The narrator wants no distractions and she feels perfectly safe, for she leaves her dog at home. Dickinson’s dog, Carlo, was a big Newfoundland who was her usual walking companion. But, again the Gothic detail, the moonlight doesn’t last long. Soon the couple is in the dark without their moon chaperone. But there is no sense of alone-ness. The poet uses ecstatic, heavenly imagery to convey the sense that the couple is not alone because their love is a palpable and supporting presence. An angel, her first example, is not really alone the first time he ventures to fly for he is part of the divine emanation and would not fall. Neither are the dead saints alone for they have joined together “on High.” And so love will bear them up; love joins them with the many lovers eternalized in fable, poetry, and story: Dante and Beatrice, Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, or Eloise and Abelard.
            It must have been a very bittersweet time, this moonlit and dark reunion between two who loved each other extraordinarily. The poet would give “The purple – in my Vein” to relive it. And yet… there is a price. In “Title divine” the poet calls herself “Empress of Calvary” – implying that she has suffered a great deal for the title. In this one she is willing to suffer again, even die; but this time she is not willing to suffer by herself. The beloved must be there with her, counting every drop of her pain.
            Grim price!

15 comments:

  1. Truly beautiful poem, just became one of my favorite.

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  2. I read it repeatedly because it deserve reading

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  3. You have left out a word.
    I'd give to live that hour -- again.
    The purple ..., etc.
    please check it out. Thanks.

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  4. I am new to poetry, and to Dickinson, but I have been studying her lately and I SO appreciate your site. Could this poem not be about someone going to heaven? I wonder because of "He never saw me- in this life-" and then the last two lines might be interpreted as Jesus on the cross?

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    1. I read the last lines as the speaker bleeding and the beloved one counting the drops she gave as price to relive that hour. There is a going-to-heaven quality, but because the rest of the poem seems to me to be so courtship-ish, I take the heaven as a metaphor for the earthly love. Two people shy at first beneath the moon, then more and more engrossed.

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    2. This is a random question, but do you know how Emily indicated italics in her poems?

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    3. She underlines words sometimes and, as in the poem above, publishers use italics to indicate her marking. This is a conventional rendering, one based, I think, on aesthetics.

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    4. Understood now! Thank you.

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  5. “He” could be the same coachman who stopped for her in “because I could not stop for death” who was also a personification?

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    1. I am always tempted to read the poem this way but there are too many signals, I think, that the poem refers to some assignation in this earthly life. There is the 'again' in the first stanza, there is the conversation as if between two equals and there is the speaker extracting a price from the 'he'.

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  6. ED’s manuscript of this poem fills five pages of her fascicle, more than any preceding poem. It must have been an important poem to her because she continued considering changes on her final fascicle copy, which is atypical of ED. A close inspection and analysis of manuscript PAGE 4 suggests she intended to break the final nonet (nine-line stanza) into two quatrains, combining LINES 25-26 into one LINE 25. Her sequence of thoughts certainly begs for a stanza break there:

    Alone – if Angels are "alone" –
    First time they try the sky!
    Alone – if those "veiled faces" – be –
    We cannot count – On High!

    I'd give – to live that hour – again –
    The purple – in my Vein –
    But He must count the drops – himself –
    My price for every stain!

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  7. LINE 1: “Again – his voice is at the door –”

    “Wadsworth’s deep bass tones, ….., produced an unforgettable effect.” (Habegger 2001),

    LINE 8: “I might surprise his eye!”

    ED considered replacing “surprise” with “not please”, which suggests that she wanted to please her visitor.

    LINE 10: “I – silent – pass the door –”

    ED considered replacing “silent” with “speechless”, but didn’t.

    LINE 13: “We talk in careless – and in toss –

    ED considered replacing “careless” with “venture”, but didn’t. Who knows what unspoken words follow “careless” and “toss”. Note that Stanza 4 is a quintain.

    LINES 16-17: “Just – how – deep – / The other’s one – had been –”

    ED’s original Lines 16 - 17, written in dark ink with a broad-bibbed pen read, “Just – how – deep - / The other one – had been –”, with no “apostrophe s”. Perhaps she was implying without stating, “Just – how – deeply in love – / The other one – had been -”.

    She considered replacing “other one – had been” with “other’s foot had been”, editing with lighter ink and a narrow-bibbed pen, perhaps thinking of the cliché “head over heels in love”, but she rejected the idea.

    Editors have ignored the obvious difference in the two pen tips and failed to remove the “apostrophe s” from “other", hence the silly line, “The other’s one – had been”.

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  8. On Saturday, March 10, 1855, ED and Vinnie arrived in Philadelphia after their visit to Washington, DC, with their father. They checked into the Willards Hotel, probably for one night, and then he left them with their friend and second cousin, Eliza Coleman and returned to Amherst. They stayed with Eliza for two more Sundays, the 18th and 25th. On one of those Sundays, probably March 18, Eliza took them to Arch Street Presbyterian Church to hear the famous Rev Charles Wadsworth preach. One sermon was all it took, ED fell head-over-heels in “love”. After preaching, Wadsworth’s habit was to sit bowed at his pulpit, lost in thought; she probably did not meet him personally after the service.

    In 1858 ED began correspondence with Wadsworth by asking him for counsel concerning her mother's illness. She had been sent a copy of one of his sermons earlier in the year (by Eliza Coleman). She continued corresponding with him, and he visited her twice at her home in Amherst, in March 1860 and March 1880.

    Habegger (2001, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books) provides compelling evidence, and I agree, that Wadsworth, 16 years her senior, was the recipient of the three Master Letters, which Franklin dated “about 1858”, “about 1861”, and “early 1862”. There’s one surviving letter from Wadsworth to ED, probably dated soon after he received her alarming ML1. In his letter he misspelled her last name and expressed sincere pastoral concern about her health, probably based on the tone of ML1.

    I believe that this poem, “Again – his voice is at the door –”, recalls that 1860 visit. The first word in the poem, “Again”, refers to the first time she heard his voice, in 1855. As far as we know, he had not visited her previously.

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  9. “Again – his voice is at the door –”. (Franklin date "early 1862")

    During the three months since my comment of April 1, ED's "when-she-says-it-she-means-it" style has firmed for me. Now, that first line boosts my burgeoning belief that Wadsworth made two visits to Amherst, in 1860 and 1861, before departing for San Francisco on June 1, 1862, as Whicher suggests (1938, That was a Poet, p. 105).

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