Just the place I stood —
At a Window facing West —
Roughest Air — was good —
Not a Sleet could bite me —
Not a frost could cool —
Hope it was that kept me warm —
Not Merino shawl —
When I feared — I recollect
Just the Day it was —
Worlds were lying out to Sun —
Yet how Nature froze —
Icicles upon my soul
Prickled Blue and Cool —
Bird went praising everywhere —
Only Me — was still —
And the Day that I despaired —
This — if I forget
Nature will — that it be Night
After Sun has set —
Darkness intersect her face —
And put out her eye —
Nature hesitate — before
Memory and I —
F493 (1862) J768
Dickinson recalls three important days each characterized by a different emotion. She may be outlining the chronology of a narrative: first hope, then fear, then despair. But there really is no need for a single narrative. Each emotion may have its own distinct story. Each one is granted two quatrains (although Despair's are formatted together for a single, double-length stanza, no doubt to intensify it).
The last stanza is difficult, so I tried to work out a paraphrase as a springboard.
I remember just where I was standing when I had hope. It was at the west window. The rough, cold air felt good. Neither sleet nor frost made me too cold. It was my hope that kept me warm, not some wool shawl.
I remember the very day when I was afraid. The sun was shining on all the world, yet somehow Nature was freezing me. Icicles prickled blue and cool upon my soul. Birds were singing in praise everywhere. It was only me that was still.
And the day that I despaired? I am as unlikely to forget that day as Nature would be to forget that night follows sunset, that darkness covers the sun's face and puts out her golden eye. Nature will pause before my memory does.
The final dash leaves us in an unending loop of painful memory. We've seen in earlier poems that Dickinson finds despair the most crippling and paralyzing emotion (most recently in F484, "From Blank to Blank"). The violence of the last stanza is rather staggering. In the poet's despair, night isn't just the darkness that follows day, but darkness putting out the eye of the sun and intersecting her face as if slicing it away. It's as if every night the sun suffers a violent eclipse. Perhaps Dickinson is projecting what or whoever caused her despair onto the sun that is so punished.
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| photo: Alina Rogers |
Nature reflects and responds to the speaker throughout the poem. The poet's hope is able to protect her against cold and sleet. Nature uses her fear to turn a hot day freezing cold. Nature re-enacts her despair every night be obliterating the sun. It is a comment, perhaps, about how consuming emotions are.
Great analysis.
ReplyDeleteThis poem like other of EDs poems reflects on powerful emotions from a temporal distance. It is a meditation on emotional experience as powerful, but ephemeral and illusory.
Hope and fear are both emotions that take place in the present but where the mind is preoccupied with the future. ED emphasizes this preoccupation by contrasting the internal emotional temperature with the external weather at the time of the experience. Because the poem looks back on the experience, hope and fear take on an illusory quality. We aren't told the outcome of the traumatic event, whether the hope or the fear was justified. Instead we are left simply with the contrast between the emotional experience and the natural, external world.
Despair is different. Despair is a letting go; it has a timeless quality. ED contrasts despair not with a sensory experience but with the moment in the natural world when time stops -- when the sun is extinguished.
In other poems that deal with despair (like "From Blank to Blank" or "After Great Pain a Formal Feeling Comes") ED describes the present experience with original, powerful language ("threadless way", quartz contentment", "white sustenance") that emphasizes disorientation and numbness, with an element of indulgence. Here, because ED is recollecting from a future point, we know that the experience has passed and the experiencer has "survived". But the insight -- the memory -- is now the present. The despair, which seemed timeless, is now in the past. The poet assures us that the memory --the insight, at least, is permanent. Do we believe her?
The images of the last stanza particularly are very powerful. This is a great poem.
Thank you -- lovely and insightful commentary. The thread of numb paralysis and timelessness weaves through a surprising number of the nearly 500 Dickinson poems. You add that there is an "element of indulgence" and I think, after musing about that for some days now, that's very apt. Sometimes there is a conscious stroking of the memory of despair, the holding up the darkness of it to the light; it is not the bird that presses its breast against the thorn to sing, but the near-victim of freezing to death recalling and recalling the stupor.
DeleteThanks to both of you -
ReplyDeleteWhat do you make of her response to the 3:
Hope - recollect
Fear - recollect
Despair - forget
...or is the “forgetting” negated by its setting (IF I forget)?
I think she is emphasizing the remembering of the Day that she despaired, for "This — if I forget
DeleteNature will — that it be Night
After Sun has set —"
She will never forget that day, and her formulation is stronger than 'recollect'.
Lines 16 and 17 of ‘When I hoped, I recollect’ (F493) assign a female gender to the Sun and describe a solar eclipse:
ReplyDelete“Darkness intersect her face —
And put out her eye —"
On June 16, 1806, a 5-minute total eclipse of the sun passed directly over Amherst. ED, born 24 years later, would have known many witnesses of that eclipse. On July 18, 1860, a partial eclipse passed over Amherst and would have been fresh in ED’s memory when she composed F493 in late 1862.
Reverend Charles Wadsworth first visited ED at Homestead in March 1860, when winter still held western Massachusetts in its grip:
ReplyDelete“When I hoped, I recollect
Just the place I stood —
At a Window facing West —
Roughest Air — was good —
“Not a Sleet could bite me —
Not a frost could cool —
Hope it was that kept me warm —
Not Merino shawl —”
George Whicher, ED’s early biographer (‘This was a Poet: a Critical Biography of Emily Dickinson’, 1938), speculates that Wadsworth visited ED again in 1861 on “a Day – at Summer’s full”, and I concur. By that time Wadsworth was considering leaving Arch Street Presbyterian, Philadelphia, for Calvary Presbyterian, a struggling church in San Francisco, and probably mentioned it to ED. If he didn’t visit Homestead at that time, he may have informed her of his thoughts in a letter.
“When I feared — I recollect
Just the Day it was —
Worlds were lying out to Sun —
Yet how Nature froze —
“Icicles upon my soul
Prickled Blue and Cool —
Bird went praising everywhere —
Only Me — was still —”
On December 9, 1861, Calvary Church voted to invite Wadsworth to be their new pastor, and he accepted. Philadelphia newspapers announced his “remove” to San Francisco in January 1862. ED no doubt learned of his decision at that time:
“And the Day that I despaired —
This — if I forget
Nature will — that it be Night
After Sun has set —
Darkness intersect her face —
And put out her eye —
Nature hesitate — before
Memory and I —"
Dickinson can clearly recollect the day when she hoped and the day when she feared. About the day when she despaired, she says that she will never forget it. That is not the same thing as to say that she remembers it. The experience might have been so terrible that in fact she can't recall it.
ReplyDeleteI think lines 21 and 22, "Darkness intersect her face—/And put out her eye—," might refer to Nature. In the concluding lines, it is stated, "Nature hesitate—before/Memory and I—." This suggests to me that the speaker and the memory are disconnected from one another, and Nature herself seems reluctant to approach the memory. Moreover, even if she were to approach, she can't see.