Renunciation—is a piercing Virtue—

Renunciation—is a piercing Virtue—
The letting go
A Presence—for an Expectation—
Not now—
The putting out of Eyes—
Just Sunrise—
Lest Day—
Day’s Great Progenitor—
Outvie
Renunciation—is the Choosing
Against itself—
Itself to justify
Unto itself—
When larger function—
Make that appear—
Smaller—that Covered Vision—Here—


      -F782, J745, Fascicle 37, 1863


This is what David Preest refers to as “a definition poem of an abstract idea.” There are two more of them in this fascicle, FR775, "Suspense—is Hostiler than Death—" and FR781, the poem before this one in the fascicle, "Remorse—is Memory Awake—"  Together, they comprise a kind of series.

This one is difficult and esoteric, but its truth is a correspondingly deep one. 

Renunciation—is a piercing Virtue—
The letting go
A Presence—for an Expectation—

If you let go of your expectations, you are left with Presence. I find this axiom to be very meaningful. It reminds me of William Blake’s poem “Eternity”:

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity’s Sunrise

The adjective “piercing” here is rich. Piercing implies pain. Renunciation hurts. But piercing also implies depth. Piercing is an adjective and verb at once, and it sums up the paradox of the poem; in the piercing pain can be found the piercing Presence. (Compare this with the previous poem about "Remorse" in the fascicle, which may be summed up, "when you burn you learn.")

I love that two word stand-alone line following this opening:

“Not now—”

Forget your expectation of immediate gratification, sir! Not now!

The putting out of Eyes—
Just Sunrise—

These lines are a puzzle. On a surface level, you could say that the putting out of eyes, the putting to sleep of eyes, leads to Sunrise the next morning. But I think, in the context of the rest of the poem, they mean something like; the shutting of the eyes to desire leads us to the opening of a greater vision, the Sunrise. 

Lest Day—
Day’s Great Progenitor—
Outvie

Here, I think, Day represents the self, and the Great Progenitor is equivalent to Presence and Sunrise. If we close our eyes to the day, then that day does not attempt to “outvie” (compete) against the Source of that day. We close our eyes to our desires, and we come into Presence with the Source of the desire itself.

Renunciation—is the Choosing
Against itself—
Itself to justify
Unto itself—

What?! This is difficult to untangle because we don’t quite know what the “it” refers to here. It seems at first that “it” refers back to renunciation, but that doesn’t quite gel. Put into prose it would be; renunciation is the choosing against renunciation to justify renunciation unto renunciation? That’s doesn’t make sense to me. But if “it” refers to the object of desire, then I think we are getting somewhere. Renunciation is the choosing against the desired object, justifying the desired object unto itself. In “letting go” you are also “letting be.” The object of desire is free to be. You have "justified" it. 

When larger function—
Make that appear—
Smaller—that Covered Vision—Here—

Larger function = the Presence, the Great Progenitor, the Sunrise. (Notice Dickinson’s avoidance of the fraught word "God" here, even though she dances all around it.) When the shutting of the eyes allows that larger function, then that larger function makes the renounced object of desire appear smaller, and, then, paradoxically, that covered vision appears... “—Here—”

"Here" is set off between dashes, full of portent and Presence.

Here!

I find this poem especially poignant during this season of Lent.


     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Buddha's 7th Great Deed: Renunciation

Notes: 

1. It would be remiss not to talk about the form of this poem, with its wildly fluctuating meter, and its heavy use of dimeter. The only poem that seems in line with this one so far in the first 782 poems of Dickinson's oeuvre is the one a few poems back in this fascicle, FR778. This one feels wholly experimental to me, but I’d love to know if there is an antecedent for it. Perhaps it is worth noting that the poem starts out with iambic pentameter and ends with trochaic pentameter, but all the lines between are seemingly random. Still though, the rhythm and rhyme have a satisfying flow and finish. It's disjointed, but feels right. Perhaps this is in line with Renunciation itself.

2. I recently learned that Dickinson’s library contained a volume of William Blake. I’ve always wondered about that, since there are so many similarities between the two poets. Not only is the Sunrise in this poem reminiscent of Blake's Eternal Sunrise, but I can feel Blake's epigrammatic concision in, "The putting out of eyes/ Just Sunrise." It just occurred to me that Blake, himself, may have been alluding to Alexander Pope’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”