That I have had before –
But did not finish – some way back –
I could not fix the Year –
Nor where it went – nor why it came
The second time to me –
Nor definitely, what it was –
Have I the Art to say –
But somewhere – in my Soul – I know –
I’ve met the Thing before –
It just reminded me – ‘twas all –
And came my way no more –
-Fr731, J701, Fascicle 35, 1863
When you come across a Dickinson poem that seems simple, you are naturally suspicious. It is almost always the case that there is more than meets the eye, often waaaay more. But does there have to be?
In an article for the LA Weekly, Alexandra Socrarides writes, “I eventually returned to the poem, because deep down I knew that Dickinson couldn’t just be saying that. It wasn’t her way to write anything so clear cut.” Socrarides was writing about the poem, “I’m nobody – Who are you?,” but she could just as easily have been talking about this poem.
This poem is, on the surface, funny. It reminds me of a Shel Silverstein poem. And why not? Dickinson was writing these poems nearly every day for years, so there is bound to be all sorts of poems in the mix. Not to mention, there is a lot more to Shel Silverstein poems than meets the eye sometimes too. (Afterall, where does the sidewalk end?)
I’ve read analyses of this poem that want to make something deeper out that “Thing” the poet “met before.” Indeed “Thing” does sound a little sinister. One commentary surmised it was suicide Dickinson was talking about, another, embarrassment, and yet another, addiction. It’s possible, but I think all of this is reaching after straws.
Maybe the Thought was of marriage? But the fact that she “could not fix the year,” probably rules that out. In fact it would rule out any major life event the Thought might be affixed to.
There are a lot of intriguing things to ponder here though. The idea of a thought going “up” the mind, as if the mind were a chimney, is provocative. Up from where?
The fact that the poet, who possesses the most subtle Art of all, says she doesn’t have the “Art” to say definitely what the Thought is certainly has me curious. What kind of Thought would be beyond THIS poet’s Art?
The idea that she says she knows in her SOUL that she has met the Thought before gives it extra weight. This must not be an ordinary Thought.
“It just reminded me – ‘twas all –” she says. Reminded her of what?
Then there is the ending in which we find out that the Thought “came my way no more.” Why didn’t it? What happened to it?
So many questions.
Was the thought the thought of a lost thought? David Preest writes, “The ‘Thought’ may have been the idea for a poem. If so the whole mental experience becomes another poem!”
Maybe it's not that complicated. Maybe this is simply a poem about how thoughts come and go? Who knows? The depth of this poem seems to lie, ultimately, in absence.
Whatever it is, the questions this poem raises leaves me in suspense. I'm very curious what you think. What's your best guess?
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
1. “When you come across a Dickinson poem that seems simple, you are naturally suspicious.”
ReplyDelete2. "It is almost always the case that there is more than meets the eye, often waaaay more."
3. "But does there have to be?"
Sentence 1 is wise.
Sentence 2 is waaaay true.
Sentence 3 is a question that can be answered “no” if and only if you can find one ED poem that is "nothing more than meets the eye". The burden of proof is on the nay-sayer.
That nay-sayer will not be me.
F731, ‘A Thought went up my mind today–’, appears to pick up where F721, ' Nature" is what We see’, left off:
ReplyDeleteF721, Stanza 3, [CAPS mine]:
"Nature" is what We know -
BUT HAVE NO ART TO SAY -
So impotent our Wisdom is
To Her Sincerity-”
F731, Stanza 2, [CAPS mine]:
Nor Where it went - nor why it came
The second time to me -
Nor definitely, what it was -
HAVE I THE ART TO SAY -
Are these lines in caps referring to the same “Thing” (F731, Line 10)? If so, what is “the Thing”? Or did ED use the line twice just because she liked the sound of it? My guess is that “the Thing” she thought twice, “But have no Art to say”, is the “Harmony” (F721) she heard with her “Conscious Ear” (F718).
Keats (1819) had the “Art to say”, almost.
“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone”
Like ED and Keats, Sigurd Olson (1961) heard the “Thing”, the “Singing”, the “spirit ditties of no tone”, and, like ED, he used the pronoun “it”:
“I have heard it on misty migration nights when the dark has been alive with the high calling of birds, and in rapids when the air has been full of their rushing thunder. I have caught it at dawn when the mists were moving out of the bays, and on cold winter nights when the stars seemed close enough to touch. But the music can even be heard in the soft guttering of an open fire or in the beat of rain on a tent, and sometimes not until long afterward when, like an echo out of the past, you know it was there in some quiet place or when you were doing some simple thing in the out-of-doors.”
ED first puzzles over the “Music of the Spheres” in ‘Musicians wrestle everywhere’ (F229, 1861), using the pronoun “it”, often with no antecedent or an ambiguous one like “Silver Strife” (F229). She revisited the “it” riddle at least ten times in her first 731 poems:
F229.1861.Musicians wrestle everywhere –
F285.1862.The Love a Life can show Below
F302.1862.It's like the Light
F318.1862.She sweeps with many-colored Brooms
F378.1862.Better—than Music!
F406.1862.Over and over, like a Tune
F560.1863.Did Our Best Moment last —
F718.1863.The Spirit is the Conscious Ear -
F721.1863.'Nature' is what We see –
F731.1863.A Thought went up my mind today –
• John Keats. 1819. ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’. Stanza 2
• Sigurd Olson. 1961. ‘The Singing Wilderness’. pp. 5-7.
Your exploration of the "It" riddle here is wonderful. I had the same thought about F7221's "Art" in relation to this poem's. I also thought about "Embodied (Admitted) scarcely to itself — it may be —/ Too fair/ For Credibility's presumption (temerity)/ To mar (dare)—" from F724. There is often a dancing around some "Centre" that is beyond words, some ineffable Thing. It's like that old Zen saying about the moon being more than the finger that is pointing to it. The wonder of Dickinson is that that she points so much better than the next person, and more than just point to it, in the incredible beauty of the language itself, she embodies It to Itself.
DeleteThat said, there seems to be something more specific going on in this poem, a particular thought that came once, years before, and then only one time after. I think the music of the spheres, the IT, must be something different, something always there, no matter how difficult to hear or describe it may be.
Nonetheless, in both instances, the eternal and the specific, Dickinson seems to be comfortable with Negative Capability (as Keats termed it), allowing the mystery to be. At some level that seems to be what this poem is about too.
It is interesting to compare this poem to F436, where ED also cannot find words to express her thought. I do not want to suggest that the two thoughts are identical, though. In F436 the thought is obviously very important, and the poet seems to be frustrated at her inability to adequately convey it. In this poem, she appears to be more concerned with the experience of some vague thought emerging out of nowhere and then vanishing again. It is like a dream we cannot quite recall after waking, only some feelings linger for a while.
ReplyDeleteI found the words to every thought
I ever had – but One –
And that – defies me –
As a Hand did try to chalk the Sun
To Races – nurtured in the Dark –
How would your own – begin?
Can Blaze be shown in Cochineal –
Or Noon – in Mazarin?
Thank you, that is a very helpful comparison. I'd forgotten this poem. It really deepens this poem, especially by showing an attempt at description by the impossibility of comparison, Blaze compared to cochineal and Noon to Mazarin. I feel like we are really getting somewhere now. It must've been quite a Thought. And who knows, maybe this poem points to the same thought that's in F436, which has now returned? The mystery, and the satisfaction, deepens.
ReplyDeleteWilliam James (1917) sheds clear light on Keats’ “spirit ditties of no tone”, ED’s “Harmony”, and Olson’s “Singing”:
ReplyDeleteLectures XVI And XVII. Mysticism.
"Whether my treatment of mystical states will shed more light or darkness, I do not know, for my own constitution shuts me out from their enjoyment almost entirely, and I can speak of them only at second hand. But though forced to look upon the subject so externally, I will be as objective and receptive as I can; and I think I shall at least succeed in convincing you of the reality of the states in question, and of the paramount importance of their function.
First of all, then, I ask, What does the expression “mystical states of consciousness” mean? How do we part off mystical states from other states?
"The words “mysticism” and “mystical” are often used as terms of mere reproach, to throw at any opinion which we regard as vague and vast and sentimental, and without [pg 380] a base in either facts or logic. For some writers a “mystic” is any person who believes in thought-transference, or spirit-return. Employed in this way the word has little value: there are too many less ambiguous synonyms. So, to keep it useful by restricting it, I will do what I did in the case of the word “religion,” and simply propose to you four marks which, when an experience has them, may justify us in calling it mystical for the purpose of the present lectures. In this way we shall save verbal disputation, and the recriminations that generally go therewith.
"1. Ineffability.— The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists. One must have musical ears to know the value of a symphony; one must have been in love one's self to understand a lover's state of mind. Lacking the heart or ear, we cannot interpret the musician or the lover justly, and are even likely to consider him weak-minded or absurd. The mystic finds that most of us accord to his experiences an equally incompetent treatment.
"2. Noetic quality.— Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.
"These two characters will entitle any state to be called mystical, in the sense in which I use the word."
• William James. 1917. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902. Pp. 380-382. Kindle Edition.
F436 definitely belongs on the list "It" poems, now 11 poems:
ReplyDeleteF229.1861.Musicians wrestle everywhere –
F285.1862.The Love a Life can show Below
F302.1862.It's like the Light
F318.1862.She sweeps with many-colored Brooms
F378.1862.Better—than Music!
F406.1862.Over and over, like a Tune
F436.1862.I found the words to every thought
F560.1863.Did Our Best Moment last —
F718.1863.The Spirit is the Conscious Ear -
F721.1863.'Nature' is what We see –
F731.1863.A Thought went up my mind today –