But doom me not to forfeit Thee—
To forfeit Thee? The very name
Is sentence from Belief—and House—
-Fr874, J775, Fascicle 39, 1864
First question: who is "Thee"? David Preest reads it as Christ, and says, "The word ‘Belief’ in line 4 suggests that Emily is pleading with Jesus." But I'm not so sure. Forfeit me, this poem says, but don't doom me forfeit you. This begs the question, does Christ forfeit us, or doom us to forfeit Him? In Christian theology, as I understand it, the answer would be no. God doesn't forfeit us. Rather we forfeit God. We make the choice.
First question: who is "Thee"? David Preest reads it as Christ, and says, "The word ‘Belief’ in line 4 suggests that Emily is pleading with Jesus." But I'm not so sure. Forfeit me, this poem says, but don't doom me forfeit you. This begs the question, does Christ forfeit us, or doom us to forfeit Him? In Christian theology, as I understand it, the answer would be no. God doesn't forfeit us. Rather we forfeit God. We make the choice.
Dickinson seemed to find so much of the divine in the earthly, and vice versa, that one can never be sure who she is talking about when she uses words like "Belief" and "Thee" and "House." But I think it makes more sense to see this poem as written to a beloved, and one close at hand too, one in the realm of "the House." It's fine if you blame me and don't love me, this poem says, but don't make me give you up by keeping yourself away from me.
This all points to Susan Gilbert for me. She wasn't living in the house, but rather a hundred yards away in a house within sight of Emily's window. She lived there as the wife of Emily's brother Austin. For those of you who don't know, Emily had a very intimate relationship with Susan Gilbert before Austin did, one which went on, in some form or other, until Emily's death.
The Evergreens as seen from Emily's house.
Dickinson wrote in a letter to a family friend, “They say that ‘home is where the heart is.’ I think it is where the house is, and the adjacent buildings.”
The key for me though is in another poem written 13 years after this one, where that word "forfeit" pops up again.
To own a Susan of my own
Is of itself a Bliss—
Whatever Realm I forfeit, Lord,
Continue me in this!
What is a reader to make of this poem? For me it points toward the idea that you can love someone without needing them to love you back. Is that desperate self-denial, or is it transcendence of the ego? I read it as the latter and here's why. An ego needs reassurance, but Dickinson isn't asking for the other to love her back here. All she asks is to be able to love.
I believe that the poems that Dickinson kept for herself and transcribed into a fascicle were meant for future readers, and I think Dickinson was too smart, in her poems at least, to champion dysfunctional relationships. So I don't think she is telling us that it is okay to be pathetically clingy in a one-sided relationship, but rather is saying: don't shut yourself off from the divine to spite yourself. She is saying to Sue, essentially, that she doesn't need anything from her, except her presence. That is an example worth following.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
P.S. The perfect rhyme of the first couplet, "Me" and "Thee" is disrupted by the complete lack of rhyme in the second, "name" and "House," as if the "Me" and the "Thee" completely fell off the rails...
"I think Dickinson was too smart, in her poems at least, to champion dysfunctional relationships."
ReplyDeleteAdam, could you cite an example of this claim? Perhaps what was early on a dysfunctional relationship, had matured into a mutually nourishing friendship.
"“Dickinson's correspondence with others after Wadsworth's death reveals much of how greatly she esteemed him. In a letter to Elizabeth Holland, for example, she wrote "All other Surprise is at last monotonous, but the Death of the Loved is all moments - now - Love has but one Date - 'The first of April' / 'Yesterday, Today and Forever.'"
"From 1882 until her death four years later, she also corresponded with James D. Clark, perhaps Wadsworth's closest friend, who sent her a volume of his sermons as well as his photograph, while she inquired about details concerning Wadsworth's life, and represented Wadsworth in a brief poem contained in one letter to Clark:
“Obtaining but his own extent
In whatsoever Realm -
'Twas Christ's own personal Expanse
That bore him from the Tomb.”
"All the evidence that scholars have from the writings of both Charles Wadsworth and Emily Dickinson points to the known and certain facts that he was her greatly esteemed spiritual mentor and confidant, that he was and remained til death a happily married father of two, that her feelings for him clearly at some level ran deep.”
https://waynepres.org/article/the-story-of-emily-dickinson-and-rev-charles-wadsworth
My biographical interpretation of F874, with ED’s alternate word in {curly brackets}[Line 4]:
ReplyDeleteStanza 1.
If Blame be my side - forfeit Me -
But doom me not to forfeit Thee -
To forfeit Thee? The very name
Is sentence {exile} from Belief - and Home –
S1.
If I’m to blame for your silence, forfeit me, but please allow me to continue loving you. To ask me to stop loving you would be a sentence of disbelief, an exile from all that I hold dear.
........................................................................................................
I suspect that Charles Wadsworth had not communicated with ED since his visit to Amherst in 1860 and that ED is keeping her flame for him alive despite his silence. He cannot escape ED; she still loved him the day she died, May 15, 1886.