The Positive — of Bells —
When Cogs — stop — that's Circumference —
The Ultimate — of Wheels.
F601 (1863) J633
In this wisdom poem Dickinson presents mortal life as a prelude to a better state in the hereafter.
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| From Hanford Mills, NY, 1840-1967 |
I like the dashes Dickinson puts around "stop" in the third line. They enforce the stop. The short, hard word, "Cogs" preceding it reinforces the effect. After "stop" the rest of the poem is in perfect iambs with "Circumference" rolling nicely into "Ultimate".
It's a thoughtful poem, compressed, vivid, and rewarding the bit of work to let the images expand in your mind.
I often wonder if Em actually knew she was doing all the poetic "tricks" we notice as we analyze her work, such as the effect of her dashes between "stop" in this case, since she uses so many dashes in all of her work. This poem is fairly transparent in meaning, but a great many of her others can be interpreted in as many ways as the number of readers' dissections, No doubt she was an original and a genius, but I don't think we always know what she herself intended, or if she was aware of the multiple meanings of many of her poems. Sometimes readers of my own poems notice "tricks" or other interpretations that I hadn't purposely intended (then I think I'm a genius and didn't even know it!). Also, I myself can read an old poem of my own and either not remember what I meant but now have an idea of what I might have meant, or what it means to me now, or I notice additional meanings that I had not realized when I wrote it. But subjectivity is one of the fun things about any art!
ReplyDeleteI agree that subjectivity and art go hand in hand, but in Emily Dickinson's case I do think that every moment of every verse is intentional. For example, according to her Wikipedia page, when her poem "A narrow Fellow in the Grass", was published in the Republican, ED "complained that the edited punctuation (an added comma and a full stop substitution for the original dash) altered the meaning of the entire poem."
DeleteThey also added a title - "The Snake"
How annoying for her!
Cole - I imagine Dickinson used her ear as much as any good poet. The juxtaposition of sounds, the placing of dashes, where the lines break, meters regular and irregular: I wager they all factored into her writing and editing process. That isn't to say that we don't notice things she might not have consciously done...
DeleteThis is not an easy poem. ED uses the word circumference in other poems ("I saw no Way -- the Heavens were stiched --" uses both circumference and the bell metaphor).
ReplyDeleteCircumference seems to refer to limits of time as as well as space. The bell image is the same as circumference. It evokes limited geographic circle (or sphere) in space that the sound of the bell penetrates, The bell also has temporal limits; the sound of the bell only exists because of the silence before it is rung and the silence after the sound fades.
In this poem, existence -- the sound of the bell -- is a negative. The positive is silence. Space (Beyond the Dip of Bell -- to use the phrase from the earlier poem) is positive -- unlike things in existence, it is indestructible. Similarly, silence -- underlies sound -- and is indestructible. Sound cannot destroy silence in the same way that light cannot destroy shadow -- it simply make shadows more intense.
These are just some thoughts. I don't know if any of this captures EDs meaning.
Fascinating. Your remarks remind me of that other great poem "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" where Heaven is a tolling bell and Being the ear -- and the narrator becomes stranded, alone with Silence. I'm going to have to think about the two poems ...
DeleteI hope you don't mind all these comments, Susan.
ReplyDeleteIt's just that the poems as of late in the fascicles have been transcendent, and I see so many things in them that seem worth mentioning. I'm still thinking about the "diadem upon the dome continually above me" several days after reading and thinking about that on this blog, not to mention being "pelted with rubies" (while looking at the fall foliage all around me here in deeply urban Queens.)
This one, just like church, starts with bells. I can hear them, perfectly tuned, a resonant & sincere pealing, a pure-toned ringing, appealing to all the people who can hear. And what is the result of the ringing? What is the transitive? What is the positive? (In an early draft she wrote "transitive". I like the change to "positive". It's a positive change.) The result is church, which, I suppose, is people together in the service of love (in an ideal sense of the word church.) One hears wedding bells, perhaps. That it is sound, itself, and beautiful sound at that, that brings them to this church is, perhaps, key. The keys of E and D.
The next stanza takes a more mechanical approach, with those cogs, which seem to stand for the "part" we all play in the larger machine, which is seen here as a wheel, of a train, going SOMEWHERE, perhaps to the end of our lives, or better yet, to the end of our reach IN life, a wheel getting us to the outer edge of the greater wheel, that which we may call the extent of our lives.
Emily's tone, the sound of HER bells, is so pure that here we are, now, together, in this church of her poem's making. Her cog was so well oiled that the circumference of her wheel extends all the way to here.
Here, as in the last poem in the fascicle (her ode to EBB) as well as so many of her poems, Emily seems to embody, in the form of her poetry, the poem's content.
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DeleteF601 is a poem about time, Lines 1-2 say a simple truth:
ReplyDelete“When church bells stop, church begins,
That’s the purpose of church bells.”
In a time poem, “cogs” would likely be watch-wheel cogs. EDLex suggests “cogs” are time, “circumference” is eternity, “ultimate” is destiny, and “wheels” are existence.
'When Bells stop ringing — Church — begins –' translates:
““When church bells stop, church begins,
That’s the purpose of church bells.
When time stops, that’s eternity,
The destiny of existence.”