Failed like Themselves — and conscious that it rose —
Grew by the Fact, and not the Understanding
How Weakness passed — or Force — arose —
Tell that the Worst, is easy in a Moment —
Dread, but the Whizzing, before the Ball —
When the Ball enters, enters Silence —
Dying — annuls the power to kill.
F616 (1863) J358
Dickinson, as one who "Failed like Themselves", offers encouragement to the despairing. The worst part is the dread, she says; once the whizzing is over and the bullet hits, things improve, or at least stabilize.
She has covered this ground before, most particularly in "'Tis so appalling – it exhilarates" (F341) where "To know the worst, leaves no dread more—", and "Looking at Death, is Dying". In the current poem she adds rather gnomically that dying "annuls the power to kill". If you have, for example, been laid low dreading the death or departure (or abandonment) of a loved one, once the event happens there is a "Silence" in place of the incapacitating despair.
Other poems explore aspects of the same process. In "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (F340), "Silence" joins the poet following an excruciating and mind-numbing experience. In "I tie my Hat – I crease my Shawl" (F522) she describes the "scrupulous exactness" that keeps her going even though "existence – some way back – / Stopped – struck – my ticking – through". This ability to endure reflects the "Force" that follows the "Weakness" Dickinson describes in this poem.
In the first line of the poem Dickinson refers to herself as "this", as if she is gesturing to her body rather than her Self. The body, nonetheless, was conscious that after its failure it "rose" as its "Weakness passed" and "Force – arose". The body, now erect, doesn't understand the process; it only knows the "Fact" of weakness passing, strength increasing. Notice the word weaving and associations here. There is the pairing of "rose" and "arose", suggesting the Resurrection. The body is standing but without Understanding. The poem's speaker recounts this as if an observer – the aware Mind – were watching its own life.
The second stanza provides a metaphor to help the failing (and the reader) understand the first. A life of dread or despair is like the subjective infinity of hearing a bullet speeding towards you. That "Whizzing" is the worst. Once "the Ball enters, enters Silence" – an effective use of chiasmus (reversal of grammatical structure) that provides a clue as to what allowed Force to arise. Without the foreboding sound that presages catastrophe, silence like a cocoon allows some measured healing to accur. The killing bullet, the catastrophe itself, both rips and anneals the wound at once. The nerves may be dead, but the body will stand again.
The somber nature of the poem is underscored by longer lines than Dickinson usually uses: pentameter and tetrameter rather than the ballad form of tetrameter and trimeter.
This is a difficult poem.
ReplyDeleteThe exact rhymes in the first stanza seem to me, at least, to go from immediate experience in the first two lines -- "standing" and "rose" to reflection on experience "understanding" and "arose". Then, what is the Weakness that passes? And what is the Force? I may be projecting my own view, but it seems to me that the poem inverts the conventional view of life and death. Normally we think of "life force" and succumbing to death as weakness. But here, dying is falling into indestructibility -- annulling the power to kill. In the same way that a bomb cannot destroy space, dying is to be beyond death. So, Weakness is life, and Force is death.
The Worst is the transition -- the pain of clinging to hope and fear -- to what is solid and impermanent. The metaphor in this second stanza bothers me. ED is usually an astute observer and scientifically accurate. But a bullet travels at about twice the speed of sound; the whizzing does not arrive "before the Ball". But it is the metaphor that makes this a Civil War poem. ED would have read accounts of deaths from the minie-balls fired by sharpshooters on the battlefield.
I hadn't thought of reading it as life/death; weakness/force. But it makes sense, particularly when taking the second stanza more as an example than as a metaphor. Thanks!
DeleteCorrection. Based on some Civil War websites, the minieball was subsonic -- so a Civil War veteran would remember hearing the sound before the impact.
ReplyDeleteI find the note on the meter - the pentameter and its affect on the tone of the poem - especially valuable. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the help to understanding this poem, it is very difficult to translate it, especially because of the pronouns (any...this...Themselves...it...); to me it's hard to determine who's who in the poem. I assume that there are two sides: Any/Themselves (i.e. the soldiers at the battlefield) and this/it (the poet's body?).
ReplyDeleteAs for ball/whizzing I understand that being subsonic or not the most important thing is the metaphor: one should not fear death, instead we should be prepared to hear the what dying "sounds" like; and besides, she says, it's better to die than kill.
Well, this is my reading, and based on that I translate.
Thanks.
I don't see soldiers in the first stanza. The second refers to being hit with a 'ball' -- which because of the Civil War occurring at the time remind us of soldiers. But more broadly, I believe Dickinson is saying that Dread is the worst; that someone experiencing such Dread can have hope: once the bullet strikes you die -- and Dread is over. This metaphor suggests that once the worst happens life gets better. One who has sunk will again rise.
DeleteA tough poem, especially as the first stanza seems to be about the body's mysterious power of rising again after falling, and the second stanza seems to be about death ending pain. There is the possible reversal as pointed out in the first comment above wherein weakness becomes life and force becomes the soul rising after death, but that seems to run counter to the idea of being "conscious that it rose." If you are conscious you are not dead, right? Of course this is complicated by the fact that the "it" does seem to refer to something "dead", and this is all made even more complicated by the fact that ED refers to herself more than once as having died before dying. "My life closed twice before it closed..."
ReplyDeleteThere is a double meaning in the "kill" in the last line. "You can't be killed once you are dead" is one way to read it, but another is, "You can no longer kill once you are dead." This makes sense when you are talking about being shot by a gun, and that this poem is probably alluding to warfare. It's as if killing another is the real pain that we dread, even more than being killed. I love your idea on the chiasmus here, that when the means of death enters, then enters silence along with it, and that the clue to "understanding" is to be found in that silence. That's a beautiful thought, and strikes the bell of truth. And perhaps there is something there about "peace" too, as "killing" itself seems to be cut off in that silence.
"Dying annuls the power to kill" has its own chiasmustic corollary in the later poem "My life had stood a loaded gun"...
I have but the power to kill,
Without - the power to die -
That later poem is also a hard one to understand, but maybe the two poems work together somehow. The two poems end with opposite statements, but both seem to be about murder by gun.
I keep thinking about that word "Whizzing" and how that's the only thing you need dread.
DeleteAs happens so often, Susan K intuited this poem’s meaning:
ReplyDelete“[ED] has covered this ground before, most particularly in "'Tis so appalling – it exhilarates" (F341), where ". . . “Looking at Death, is Dying". . . . If you have, for example, been laid low dreading the . . . departure (or abandonment) of a loved one, once the event happens there is a "Silence" in place of the incapacitating despair” (SK explication, above). For another example, when Wadsworth “departed (or abandoned)” ED by moving to San Francisco, she felt she had died.
ED described “dying” in ‘Three times — we parted — Breath — and I —’ (F514), but she ends that poem triumphantly by defeating depression:
“ The Waves grew sleepy — Breath — did not —
The Winds — like Children — lulled —
Then Sunrise kissed my Chrysalis —
And I stood up — and lived —”
ED's last line ranks right up there with Dante’s last line of ‘The Inferno’:
“Then we [Dante and Virgil] climbed out [of Hell] and looked up at the stars.”
Both ED and Dante defeated depression, won one battle in a lifelong war. In this poem (F616), ED reassures other sufferers of deep depression:
“If any sink, assure that this, now standing —
Failed like Themselves — and conscious that it rose —
Grew by the Fact, and not the Understanding
How Weakness passed — or Force — arose —”
Stanza 2 is “ difficult”(Anonymous, 11/16/2015), “tough” (d scribe, 11/20/2023).
ReplyDeleteLines 5-7 Susan K limns like the pro she is; at the end of Line 7 “the ball enters” and “the rest is silence” (Hamlet). Perhaps ED tried to imagine what her good friend, Frazar Sterns, son of the President of Amherst College, felt when that fatal bullet hit him as he led a Union charge against a fortified Confederate cannon on March 14, 1862, the beginning of the Battle of New Bern, NC. His charge failed, but it was the first skirmish in a Union victory. Federal troops captured New Bern, NC, and held it for the rest of the Civil War. During the battle Union troops captured the fortified cannon, “a six-pounder brass gun”, which now resides in the Amherst College Library. (Carpenter, E.W. and C. F. Morehouse. 1896. The History of the Town of Amherst, MA. 1062 Pp.)
“The worst part is the dread, [ED] says; once the whizzing is over and the bullet hits, things improve, or at least stabilize. . . . A life of dread or despair is like the subjective infinity of hearing a bullet speeding towards you. That "Whizzing" is the worst. Once "the Ball enters, enters Silence" . . . . “silence like a cocoon allows some measured healing to occur.” (SK Explication). When Wadsworth left for San Francisco in May 1862, ED felt she had died, and her “measured healing” took more than a year.
When Susan K wrote “silence like a cocoon allows some measured healing to occur”, I wonder if she was remembering F514’s last lines, “Then Sunrise kissed my Chrysalis —/And I stood up — and lived—”.
And then there’s that final, difficult line, “Dying — annuls the power to kill.” “d scribe” points out “There is a double meaning in the "kill" in the last line. "You can't be killed once you are dead" is one way to read it, but another is, ‘You can no longer kill once you are dead.’” That word “double” is true if we limit dying to physical death, but what about emotional death? For ED, “dying” can mean descending into deep depression after trauma. Two examples are ‘Three times — we parted — Breath — and I —’ (F514) and ‘My life closed twice before its close’ (F1733).
In ‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain’ (F340), ED describes that third way to die: deep depression drives her Mind numb, emotional death:
“And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum —
Kept beating — beating — till I thought
My Mind was going numb —”
Likewise, “Dying — annuls the power to kill” could mean “the power to kill” emotionally, a more likely spin for ED than firing a rifle or taking a bullet in the brain. However, to be honest, I’m not sure where that spin takes this “difficult” poem.