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16 November 2012

After great pain, a formal feeling comes—


After great pain, a formal feeling comes—
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round—
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought—
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone—

This is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—
First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—

                                                                                          F372 (1862)  341

If there’s a better poetic marriage of poetic device and meaning, I don’t know of one. Here Dickinson portrays the emotional paralysis that follows grief. The paralysis is mirrored in every line as the poet slows and thickens the pace and sound of the verse.
One device is the spondee (a metrical ‘foot’ with two adjoining accented syllables—such as “great pain” or “First—Chill”). Another is the use of long, drawn-out sounds. This is accomplished with long vowels (e.g., great pain, feeling, bore, before), dipththongs (e.g., round, Ground, Hour), and the dashes that encourage the reader to pause. Commas, too are used as in “Of Ground, or Air, or Ought.” Here the poem practically grinds to a halt as long-sounding words, separated by comma pauses, trail off into the nothingness of “Ought.”
                  The poem has three sections, each represented in a stanza. The first describes the how one feels after “great pain.” The feeling “comes” as if a visitor is paying a “formal” visit. The poor nerves must “sit ceremonious” rather than fall apart weeping. No, they must sit like “Tombs” as if they were impervious and lifeless marble rather than the messengers of pain and pleasure. The heart, too, is “stiff.” In this frozen drawing room it wonders about that former pain born by Jesus as he felt abandoned by God, his father. Yet the heart isn’t clear about this. Did he bear such pain? Was that yesterday? Centuries ago? It’s as if pain transcends and annuls time. The nerves and stiff heart are now no longer able to enter the flow and feeling of the living. They are frozen in a deathly formality.
                  The second stanza shows how the stricken person acts in the world. Their “Feet, mechanical, go round— / A Wooden way.” There is no spring in these steps. The feet themselves have lost all feeling, being just mechanical devices moving woodenly. There is no destination, nowhere to go. The person simply goes round. We see the person pacing the room or the garden, but there is nothing in the ground, nothing in the air, nothing at all—“Ought”—that is noticed. The progression here is a whiting out: ground, air, ought. The world is erased. It is the life of a stone, the “Quartz contentment” recalling the ceremonious tomb of the previous stanza.
Fir trees protected by a still, cold blanket of snow.
                  The last stanza shows the survival of the first wave of the great pain as a type of death. Referencing the stone imagery again, Dickinson introduces the first hour as one of Lead.” “Lead” is not only among the world’s heaviest minerals but has a familiar rhyme with “dead” and “dread.” The phrase itself, “Hour of Lead,” is ponderous and heavy. The stakes are high: it might not be survived. Those who do outlive it remember it as a death. But unlike death from cold, where the sufferer enters a disengaged dream state before losing consciousness and life, the grief survivor survives by “letting go.” I think Dickinson means us to imagine that what is let go is the state of warm vitality—the aliveness that is shut down by the formality, the woodenness, the feeling of lead, and the resulting stupor. As in the “bandaged moments” the soul must protect itself through a wrapped sort of paralysis.
                  The last line is masterly not only for the insight and the word choice, but for the physical sensations involved in the sound and rhythm of the words. The ponderous, slow pace is akin to the freezing process. Three phases are separated by dashes that convey the passage of time. There is a distinct difference among the three stages: “First—Chill” has slow abrupt harshness as if one has hunched down shivering, arms clasped around legs, head on knees. “Then Stupor” has a sluggishness like stupor itself. The gentle iambs of the final phrase—“then the letting go—,” are the final release as the freezing person slips away into final dreams among the soft but lethal snow. The final syllable is dropped and the dash hanging into the white space on the page is a fitting ending.

11 comments:

  1. this is one of the best reading i have seen on this poem. good work

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    1. I'm reading and rereading the last stanza. An amazing twist from death back into life. The freezing person who goes through the stages of Chill then Stupor then the letting go must have outlived the death in order to recount or remember it. If I am reading right.

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  2. "First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—"

    These are exactly the symptoms of hypothermia, which I'm sure were well known by survivors in ED's Amherst because death occurs an hour or even days after "the letting go", depending on the temperature and assuming the victim is not under water.

    (https://www.emedicinehealth.com/how_long_does_it_take_to_die_from_hypothermia/article_em.htm)

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  3. I admire how you’ve analyzed the impact of the poetic devices, it’s really sensitive. What do you make of her use of time, especially in the final stanza? Remembered and recollect seem at odds with This being the hour of lead, just as time is confused in the first stanza

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    1. hmmm. Good question. The framing of the Hour of Lead seems to indicate a short period of great pain, yet the poem clearly indicates a longer period.

      Time is not experienced: emotions (heart and nerves) are stiff, formal, like Tombs. Untouched by time. The body, characterized by feet, becomes mechanical, heedless, as blank as stone. Our sense of time is meaningless as nothing meaningful penetrates our quotidian existence while in the great pain.

      The survivor (and it is implied that some do not survive) remembers/recollects (I believe ED means the two terms to be synonyms) the great pain as if body and soul were in a leaden stupor. She implies there might be some hope if the lead/snow is somehow let go.

      Perhaps we are to see that the leaden hour, the deadened senses and stiff mechanics of the body are somehow part of a recovery process. It is as if the body and soul respond to great pain by retracting into something like a plaster cast where the cells begin their slow invisible work of repair.
      Chillingly, this repair may or may not be successful.

      Now that I'm thinking about this poem again, I'm wondering if Dickinson isn't saying that some intervention or rescue isn't needed in such an extreme case. Otherwise, how could the freezing person survive?

      Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I'd love to hear any further thoughts you might have.

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  4. Vendler has it that "remembered if outlived" shows the poem written mid crisis. The speaker doesn't know if they will live yet. It's unclear.

    I'm always amazed by the doubleness of the ending, that "letting go" is both a "letting go" of life, and "letting go" of grief at the same time. Something is born from the death, a quartz contentment.

    The quartz is a beautiful metaphor for this. Layers of sediment, pain, creating something as beautiful as quartz.

    Finally, the marriage of form and content here with those feet mechanically going round, the metrical feet, so regular in the opening stanza, so mechanical, and then it's as if something trips those feet up in the second stanza. And you are walking on air. I picture someone cleaning the house for guests after the funeral, mechanically, and then stumbling as emotion breaks through the formal. There is a great upsurge of volcanic feeling which breaks the formality. This is a poem ABOUT form, and about the upset of that form. It mirrors the emotional content in a breathtaking way. And in the last stanza it's as if the poet is slowly getting back into (mechanical, formal) step, with those 2 lines of tetrameter testing the ground before being fully back in with those final two lines of pentameter. Wow.

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  5. No matter how we interpret this poem, as it ends an audible exhaled wow escapes as we let go that last long-held breath. Such moments are rare and we ask her, How did you do that? She answers, “I don’t know”. We draw our second breath. We have been in the presence of God.

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    1. Stanza 1 sets the scene and asks the question (Franklin date “about autumn 1862”):

      After great pain, a formal feeling comes—
      The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—
      The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
      And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

      Something horrible has happened, its aftermath anaesthetized nerves like tombs. Her stiff heart asks, Was it He crucified yesterday, or centuries before?

      Here, ED conflates Wadsworth, who, in her mind, abandoned her when he sailed from New York harbor for San Francisco on June 1, 1862, and Jesus, who died 18 centuries earlier.

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  7. Susan K’s explication is lovely, insightful, and compelling. I would add to her comment on “the letting go” that by April 1862, ED knew Wadsworth was moving to San Francisco. Despite the pain and deep depression of knowing that chapter of her life would soon end (“the letting go”), ED was a proactive survivor.

    On April 15, 1862, she mailed her first letter, along with four poems, to Thomas W. Higginson, Atlantic Monthly editor, renown abolitionist and suffragist, and soon Union Army officer, asking if he had time to look at her work. He responded immediately, despite not understanding ED’s poetic sound or sense.

    Her reply to his response, postmarked April 26, contains the now famous confession, “I had a terror - since September - I could tell to none - and so I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground - because I am afraid”. I suspect her "terror" was depression anticipating the looming loss of Wadsworth.

    In Higginson she chose well; they remained close friends until her death in 1886. Afterward, during the early 90s, Higginson assisted Mabel Todd in publishing the first two volumes of ED’s poems.

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