Nature — sometimes sears a Sapling —
Sometimes — scalps a Tree —
Her Green People recollect it
When they do not die —
Fainter Leaves — to Further Seasons —
Dumbly testify —
We — who have the Souls —
Die oftener — Not so vitally —
F457 (1862) J314
Wildfires, lightning can damage trees severely. If these “Green People” don’t die, they show the scars and marks. Their leaves are fainter, testifying for years to come that they had once endured a serious blow. Anyone who has walked in the woods has noticed the dead snags, remnants of trees that fell to fire, trees shorn of their uppermost branches from some wind storm, and young trees bearing the scars of fire around their lower trunks. Often the structural damage will make it difficult for the trees to thrive; thus, the “fainter Leaves.”
The ED Lexicon defines "vitally" as vividly. I think this changes the meaning a little. I think she is referring to the internal scars where meanings are. We die more often in life but our scars are not as obvious or vivid as a scarred tree.
ReplyDeleteThanks - I hadn't consulted the Lexicon on this. Your reading makes perfect sense.
DeleteVery interesting interpretation of the poem. I am wondering if it is possible to interpret the clause 'Die oftener' in terms of human mortality (in addition or alternatively to the notion of scars/wounds). Ultimately, human life is mortal and human beings pass away more frequently than a tree perishes from a rare lightning strike. The clause that follows could perhaps also be interpreted in this vein. The word 'vitally' suggests vividness (perhaps alluding to the demise of a tree in the electric flash of a lightning strike). Yet the word 'vitally' also suggests something that is of essential importance, and Dickinson refers to humanity as dying 'not so vitally', implying our diminutive or inconsequential status in the grand scheme of things. Nature throughout the poem is conveyed as powerful, with the ability to renew. Afterall, trees provide oxygen and are therefore indispensable to other forms of earthly life.
ReplyDeleteI also thought of the evergreen trees, whose needles/leaves are never the vivid bright green of a deciduous tree’s new growth, and “dumbly testify” to” further seasons” by their more muted color, also never achieving the spectacular fall foliage that the blow of autumn deals to the deciduous tree.
ReplyDelete“We who have Souls” die a little each time we are hurt there, but our dying doesn’t show like the pale leaves on an injured tree. ED knows too well because it happened to her when Wadsworth “left the land”, San Francisco bound.
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ReplyDeleteDon't remember where I found the 'evidence' but Dartmouth agrees: https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/whiteheat/jan1-7f300/
DeleteI keep reminding myself that TPB is a poetry blog, not history blog, but I’ve been searching unsuccessfully for evidence that ED read Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’. Apparently, as this quote from ED’s close friend and teen-age confidant, Joseph Lyman, suggests, ‘Book of Martyrs’ was virtually required reading for anyone pursuing literary ambitions; we can be virtually certain that she had read it [brackets mine, LB]:
ReplyDelete“He [Joseph Lyman, 28, reminiscing about himself in a letter to his wife, Laura Baker, in 1857] had read all the readable books in the [very small] Village [of Chester, Massachusetts:] 'Baxters Saints Rest' - ‘The Book of Martyrs’ & the S.S.School Books generally about little Lucy Thurston who was such a good girl at the age of 12 years & went straight to heaven when she died and the Life of Bob Hopeless who went stealing apples Sunday afternoon & was gored by a wild bull & went right to Hell - they were hardly readable, book-hungry as I was. But Learning soon unfolded her ample page to the pale faced boy [of 14] & he became a student.” (Sewall, Richard B, 1965, The Lyman Letters: New Light on Emily Dickinson and Her Family, Massachusetts Review, 6(4):693-780; p702).
“JOSEPH BARDWELL LYMAN, 1829-1872, lawyer, journalist, author, was distantly related to the Dickinson family through the Lyman Colemans of Amherst. From his home in Chester, Massachusetts, he visited Amherst frequently during his boyhood and was a schoolmate of Austin Dickinson (Emily's brother) at Williston Seminary in Easthampton, Massachusetts. During one school term [1846], when Mr. Dickinson wanted Austin at home, Joseph visited his friend [at Austin’s request] at the Dickinson house on Pleasant Street, perhaps for the whole term, certainly for a good part of it.” (Sewall, 1965, p. 695)
And finally, an amazing description of teenage ED by Joseph Lyman, who lived with the Dickinson family at Homestead for several months in 1846, when she was 15 and he was 16:
“EMILY”
“Things are not what they seem”
“Night in Midsummer”
“A library dimly lighted, - three mignonettes on a little stand. Enter a spirit clad in white, figure so draped as to be misty, face moist, translucent alabaster, forehead firmer as of statuary marble. Eyes once bright hazel now melted & fused so as to be two dreamy, wondering wells of expression, eyes that see no forms but glance swiftly to the core of all things--hands small, firm, deft but utterly emancipated from all claspings of perishable things, very firm strong little hands absolutely under control of the brain, types of quite rugged health, mouth made for nothing & used for nothing but uttering choice speech, rare thoughts, glittering, starry misty figures, winged words.” [Unpublished, written about 1870 by Joseph Lyman, a professional New York journalist]. (Sewall, 1965, p. 765)
Habegger (2002) infers Lyman visited ED in the late 1860s and wrote this for possible publication. Lyman died of smallpox in 1872, age 42.
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