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23 June 2013

The name — of it — is "Autumn" —

The name — of it — is "Autumn" —
The hue — of it — is Blood —
An Artery — upon the Hill —
A Vein — along the Road —

Great Globules — in the Alleys —
And Oh, the Shower of Stain —
When Winds — upset the Basin —
And spill the Scarlet Rain —

It sprinkles Bonnets — far below —
It gathers ruddy Pools —
Then — eddies like a Rose — away —
Upon Vermilion Wheels —
                                         

                                                             F465 (1862) J656
photo: Christopher O'Donnell

Reader, you may choose to read this poem as an extended metaphor of the famous flaming New England fall colors as blood. The red trees follow the cliffs on the hill and the river valleys as if they were veins or arteries. The wind swirls the colored leaves off the trees, and they fall like “Scarlet Rain.” Trees from the upper cliffs drift down to sprinkle the hats and bonnets of people below. Dips and hollows fill with the scarlet leaves until a gust of wind eddies and swirls them away “Upon Vermilion Wheels.”
        Or, reader, you may feel, as I do, that such a close focus on blood is her horrified reflection on this very bloody year of the Civil War. In 1862, the year Dickinson wrote this poem, the War was raging at perhaps its most intense level. Notorious and bloody battles in this year were those of Shiloh, Antietam, and Fredericksburg.
        Dickinson scholar David Cody wrote an article on this poem* pointing to a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier titled “The Battle Autumn of 1862.” It was published in The Atlantic in October 1862, and Dickinson would probably have read it. The poem is in praise of Nature whose “bloom and greenness sweeps / The battle’s breath of hell.” It includes this stanza:

She meets with smiles our bitter grief,
    With songs our groans of pain;
She mocks with tint of flower and leaf
    The war-field's crimson stain.

“Stain” is a poetically convenient word in terms of rhyme potential (“rain” [Dickinson] and “pain” [Whittier]). It is expected in the Whittier poem as a contrast to Nature’s “fields and fruited trees,” but it is jarring in Dickinson’s poem, which is seemingly about a beautiful autumnal scene. It forces one to re-think the red blossoms as something more sinister. The same can be said for “Globules” –which I doubt have ever before or since been used to describe the leaves of New England.
       No, I think Dickinson is describing a landscape drenched in blood where the dying of the year and the dying of the soldiers mingle into a haze of dripping and flowing red.


*David Cody, “Blood in the Basin: The Civil War in Emily Dickinson’s 'The name of it is Autumn.'"  The Emily Dickinson Journal. V. 12.1, 2003

7 comments:

  1. Is she describing autumn in terms of blood, or blood in terms of autumn? Is autumn the metaphor's tenor, or its vehicle? The dual possibility sets up a kind of alternating current between autumn and blood. An unusual effect, and a very disquieting one.

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    1. You're right. I begin reading, thinking the "it" is the season, autumn and that it is as red as blood. But then it seems, as you indicate, that she is perhaps providing a literal description -- that there is so much blood it is like autumn. Yes, very much an alternating current.
      Thanks.

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  2. This is an insightful reading. The word "basin" evokes a field hospital -- with the horrors of amputated limbs. And "bonnets" recalls war widows far below/away from the battle field.

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    1. Yes, "basin" has that effect. In context it is quite horrifying -- all the more so, I think, because it happens to remind me (no doubt irrelevantly) of Whitman: "What is removed drops horribly in a pail."

      Even more horrifying are the "vermilion wheels". If by this stage of the poem you have started thinking it is a war poem, these wheels can only bring to mind some kind of wagon or artillery being hauled through a battleground.

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  3. ...and arteries and veins! A whole new (horrifying) world opens up! How many different ways can you say red?

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  4. Yes, the word "stain" does make this about something beyond just autumn (which in other ED poems is painted quite beautifully) so war must be it. Nice insight. And love the basin connection with Whitman's pail.

    Blood sprinkling bonnets is a suitably horrific war image.

    I LOVE the image blood eddying as a rose, or, conversely, a rose as an image of blood eddying. Wow. That and the vermilion wheel evoke the idea of violence as perennial.

    Surprise after surprise attend the daily readings of ED.

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  5. Dickens published ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ in 1859. Rivers of blood draining French guillotines were fresh in ED’s mind (Chapter 13): “Fifty-two were to roll that afternoon on the life-tide of the city . . . before their blood ran into the blood spilled yesterday, the blood that was to mingle with theirs tomorrow was already set apart.”

    “In October 1862, [Mathew] Brady opened an exhibition of photographs from the Battle of Antietam in his New York City gallery, titled ‘The Dead of Antietam’. Many images in this presentation were graphic photographs of corpses, a presentation new to America. This was the first time that many Americans saw the realities of war in photographs, as distinct from previous artists' impressions.” (Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathew_Brady )

    ED copied ‘The name — of it — is "Autumn" —’ into Fascicle 22 “about late 1862”. By then she would have read about Brady’s exhibit and perhaps seen photos herself.

    Line 5: “Great Globules — in the Alleys —”
    Blood running in alleys clots into “Great Globules”.

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