I cannot live with You –

I cannot live with You –
It would be Life –
And Life is over there –
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to –
Putting up
Our Life – His Porcelain –
Like a Cup –

Discarded of the Housewife –
Quaint – or Broke –
A newer Sevres pleases –
Old Ones crack –

I could not die – with You –
For One must wait
To shut the Other’s Gaze down –
You – could not –

And I – could I stand by
And see You – freeze –
Without my Right of Frost –
Death's privilege?

They’d judge Us – How –
For You – served Heaven – You know,
Or sought to –
I could not –

Because You saturated Sight –
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise

And were You lost, I would be –
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame –

And were You – saved –
And I – condemned to be
Where You were not –
That self – were Hell to Me –

So We must meet apart –
You there – I – here –
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer –
And that White Sustenance –       (White) Exercise, Privilege
Despair –

      -F706, J640, Fascicle 33, 1863



This poem is unusually long for Dickinson and it got me curious as to what her longest poem might be. I looked it up and it turns out this IS her longest poem. Since Dickinson is a master of brevity, the length of this poem is, itself, worth considering.

The dozens of poems before this one, all seemingly addressed to one person, make it seem as if the absence of her beloved was something that was thrust upon her. But the first three stanzas of this poem leads one to reconsider and see that this despair was more likely, rather, chosen by Dickinson.

Why would someone choose despair? The poem goes to some -length- to explain why. The revelation for me though, the main takeaway, is that it is something chosen. Dickinson appears to choose despair, and, moreover, she takes sustenance from it.

What does Dickinson mean by her cryptic statement “I cannot live with You –/ It would be Life – " Why doesn’t the poet choose “Life”? One way to think about this question is to ask what she is choosing INSTEAD of life? She says that she rejects “life” because it is what the sexton keeps locked in the shelf like a cracked porcelain cup discarded by a housewife. There is a lot to unpack in that idea. A sexton is someone that looks after a church, and, often, a graveyard. Life is, paradoxically, like something dead, something precious like porcelain perhaps, but also something that gets old and cracks. Dickinson is looking for something that doesn’t get old, that won’t crack, something that can’t be replaced by a newer and more beautiful model. She conceives that this can be found in a kind of eternal love that is beyond life. (“Fleshless lovers” is the way she puts it in F691). It can also be found, you might say, in poetry itself. One may take the “You” in this poem for one’s self, and read it as an invitation to join the poet in this mystic place beyond decay.

 

It is worth noting the housewife in the analogy here. It is the housewife that is discarding the cup/life, but the implication is, conversely, that Dickinson is discarding the life of being a housewife. Also worth noting is the metaphor of the Sexton, because if “Life” is put away by the Sexton, it reminds us that living life is inextricable from death. You can’t have life without death. Dickinson is aiming for something more.

But the poet also says “I could not die – with You –”, for one must wait to shut the other’s eyes, and, for one thing, the “You” this poem is addressed to apparently couldn’t wait around to do this. “I could not die – with You – / For One must wait/ To shut the Other’s Gaze down – / You – could not – “. This speaks to the fact that no one can really die with someone else. Death, as Dickinson has pointed out in other poems, is a solitary thing. In F698 Dickinson calls this “Death’s single privacy”. 

In the lines that follow you see the depth of the poet’s love, “And I – could I stand by/ And see You – freeze – /Without my Right of Frost – /Death's privilege?” She is saying here, I believe, that she couldn’t watch her beloved freeze into rigamortis without doing so herself. It would be a “privilege” to freeze into death for the poet if she had to watch her beloved die. The stuttering beginning of this stanza (“And I – could I stand by”) is rare for Dickinson and brings the poem closer to spoken language than usual. In that moment’s pause you feel the anguish at the mere thought of the beloved’s death.

So both Life and Death with the beloved is off limits, but, then, so is resurrection. "Nor could I rise – with You – /Because Your Face/ Would put out Jesus’ – /That New Grace/ Glow plain – and foreign/ On my homesick Eye – /Except that You than He/ Shone closer by – “  These lines speak for themselves. Dickinson’s love for her beloved outshines Jesus. This is yet another example of Dickinson choosing a felt earthly love over an unknown heavenly one. This new Grace would be foreign to her and only make her feel homesick. (But what home we might ask? She has already told us she can’t Live with the beloved either.)

These lines may be seen as blasphemous, and most especially would have been so to the intended, who, we find out in the following lines, “served heaven”. “For You – served Heaven – You know,/ Or sought to – “ These lines indicate to me that Charles Wadsworth is very likely the “You” to whom this poem is addressed. See the gloss by Larry B (AKA Lawrence Barden) on the post for F686 for more on this: “At age 24, in 1855, ED attended a sermon delivered by Reverend Charles Wadsworth, a superstar, charismatic minister at Arch Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. He was 16 years her senior and married with two children, but ED had found her soul mate. In the words of her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianci (1866-1943): 'Emily was overtaken – doomed once and forever by her own heart. It was instantaneous, overwhelming, impossible.'" 

Some conjecture this poem, indeed this series of poems, is addressed to Susan Gilbert, but I think Dickinson tips her hand when she says the addressee sought to serve heaven rather than be with her. And then she tips it again when she adds “Or sought to”. I take this pointed addition to indicate that either Wadsworth wasn’t convincing her in his service, or Dickinson wasn’t convinced there was such a thing as heaven to serve in the first place.

At any rate, the beloved chooses to serve heaven rather than be with Dickinson, and, as for Dickinson’s part, she says she would choose her beloved over a “sordid Paradise.” Sordid paradise is a very Dickinsonian oxymoron. As to why Dickinson might think paradise is “sordid,” see my comments on F695.

She opens this section with, “They’d judge Us – How – ." How could they judge Wadsworth? Afterall, he served heaven. And how could they judge Dickinson, for she values Wadsworth over heaven. It’s hard to judge someone who doesn't believe in the machinations of this sort of judgment. This fixation on judgment and heaven, though, is explored thoroughly in fascicle 32 and 33, as I point out in my comments on F699.

The next two stanzas go on to say that the poet would rather not be in heaven if her beloved was not there, even if she was the most famous citizen there. On the other hand, if he was in heaven and she was not, it would be as good as being in hell.

The poem ends with another oxymoron, the idea of the two lovers meeting apart. The door is open, but there might as well be an ocean between them. On the flip side, you might read this as saying that the breadth of the oceans between them is merely a door to walk through. This is how you "meet apart."

So We must meet apart –
You there – I – here –
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer –
And that White Sustenance –
Despair –

I’m not sure what Dickinson means by the sustenance being the color white here. I think it likely means white hot, the way she uses it in “Dare you see a Soul at the "White Heat"? It’s worth noting that the two alternative words Dickinson provides for “Sustenance” are “Exercise” and “Privilege.” Both words add something important to the meaning. To think of despair as an exercise is instructive, and to think of it as a privilege even more so.

  

   -/)dam Wade l)eGraff  

I appreciate the poet Steven Cramer’s take on the last stanza of this poem. This is from an article on the poem in The Atlantic: “The final stanza seems to me one of the most overwhelmingly pained and resigned protests in verse. For Dickinson—the recluse who, paradoxically, valued personal attachments more highly than almost any other life experience—separation from a loved one amounts to Hell. The last six lines forsake the symmetry of the previous eleven quatrains, and desolation inheres in each syllable and juncture: in the choked finality of the heavy stresses and strong caesuras (“You there—I—here”); in the emotional abyss that opens with an enjambment (“With just the Door ajar/ That Oceans are”); in the oxymoronic precision of “meet apart” and “White Sustenance—/ Despair.” In this stanza and in hundreds of others, Dickinson resembles Shakespeare, one of the few other poets in English to achieve such a level of volcanic energy. To my mind and ear, no other American poet comes close.”