Civilization – spurns – the Leopard!

Civilization – spurns – the Leopard!

Was the Leopard – bold?

Deserts – never rebuked her Satin –

Ethiop – her Gold –

Tawny – her Customs –

She was Conscious –

Spotted – her Dun Gown –

This was the Leopard's nature – Signor –

Need – a keeper – frown?

Pity – the Pard – that left her Asia –

Memories – of Palm –

Cannot be stifled – with Narcotic –

Nor suppressed – with Balm –

                                                            276 (1862)  492

Dickinson adopts her Leopard persona again in this poem. We saw it earlier in F201, “With thee, in the Desert,” where only when alone with her beloved can the leopard truly breathe.

Leopard in captivity

            Here, the leopard, or “Pard,” seems to be in a zoo. She has a “keeper,” a “Signor” who is displeased. He frowns at the leopard who in her defense says she is only acting and appearing according to her true nature. We don’t know how the leopard has displeased her keeper, but the poet goes on offense from the beginning: “Civilization—spurns—the Leopard!” she says. Leopards—fierce, predatory, and wild—are intrinsically antithetical to society. Nonetheless, “spurn” is a strong word. To spurn the leopard is to find its qualities worthy of scorn or disgust rather than respect or even admiration.
          In the second line we see that the leopard stands for some persona of the poet. She has her untamable side. She asks with heavy sarcasm if she were too “bold”—a term that in Dickinson’s day was used to describe impudent women or children who didn’t know their place (“Bold girl!”). She contrasts her rejection by civilization with the her acceptance by the uncivilized and wild deserts of Ethiopia. In such wilderness her fur is “Satin” and “Gold.” She was “never rebuked” there for who she was.
            In civilized Massachusetts, however, her satiny, gold fur is a “Spotted … Dun Gown”; her customs, presumably like her coat, are “Tawny.” She is not the lily-white, unspotted maiden that 1862 Amherst society preferred. She is admitting her awareness that she is not completely at home in polite parlors. “Signor” should know this. Does he, she asks with more sarcasm, really need to “frown”?

Dickinson's famous white dress

            Dickinson scholars include this poem with those written to “Master” whom she refers to as her “keeper” here. In one of the letters written to Master she writes, “God made me – Master – I didn’t be – myself. I don’t know how it was done.” Although she dearly wants approval from her keeper, she cannot or will not change her spots for him. The reference here on both “Ethiop” and leopard spots comes from the Bible, Jeremiah 13:23: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?”

            The second stanza drops the indignant sarcasm, appealing instead to the pity or empathy we have for the wild animal in its enclosure. The Leopard has left “her Asia,” her home (never mind the Ethiop referred to earlier – that was in service to the Biblical verse). Her memories of home, of the swaying palm trees, “Cannot be stifled” even by narcotics. It cannot be “suppressed” even by some soothing “Balm.”

            We can assume by the balm and narcotics that Master has tried to induce the poet to conform or otherwise change somehow, but apparently the changes would go too deep. The strength of the phrases “Cannot be stifled … Nor suppressed” affirm that, painful as it is, she truly belongs to another world. Compared to Amherst it is an “Asia” and she longs for it.

 

            At about the time she was writing this poem, Dickinson was beginning her eventual complete withdrawal from society. People who knew her said that this withdrawal was not because of some trauma but was a very gradual process. One suspects the kingdom of her room and garden allowed her to dwell more often in her interior Asia without concerns about being accepted.

            In F230, “For this – accepted Breath,” Dickinson took a triumphant tone about her difference.  In that poem she was born, “accepted Breath,” to be a poet. This poetic calling is a “Certain June”; it is “No Wilderness,” “No desert Noon.” It is sad, then, to see the price of her calling here: in search of love and acceptance she must be confined leopard dependent on a frowning keeper.