01 April 2013

It is dead – Find it –

It is dead – Find it –
Out of sound – Out of Sight –
"Happy"? Which is wiser –
You, or the Wind?
"Conscious"? Won't you ask that –
Of the low Ground?

"Homesick"? Many met it –

Even through them – This
Cannot testify –
Themself – as dumb –
                                                                    F434 (1862)  J417

I would classify this poem as one of Dickinson’s wisdom poems, albeit a slightly bitter one.

Perhaps Dickinson had been thinking of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy as she composed this poem. Both poets were drawn by the mysteries beyond the grave that are unknowable to the living. Shakespeare has Hamlet say as much:



But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others we know not of.
(3.1.76-82)

Dickinson here expands on the idea of death as an “undiscovered country,” as she drily asks a series of rhetorical questions, the answers to which are all unknown. With her flair for the dramatic (so weirdly and wonderfully wedded to her ambiguous abstractions), she begins with a compelling imperative: “Is it dead – Find it.” The “it,” as in F431, refers to a person. Unlike that poem, however, this time Dickinson seems to be referring to the soul as well as the body.

            She follows the imperative by noting that the dead one is now both “out of sound” and “Sight.” The body is buried, the soul perhaps departed. There will be no finding it. There is no answer to whether or not it is happy either. You may as well try to answer the question about whether you or the wind is the wiser. It’s an interesting juxtaposition: the wind is like spirit whereas the “you” is of flesh. Any wisdoms either possesses would be of such different orders that there would be no meaningful comparisons, so don’t bother asking.
            A question about consciousness follows. Are the dead conscious? This is the million-dollar question, for sure. If only we knew whether or not we existed in some conscious form after death, our lives and the world would be very different.  Dickinson summarily dismisses the question. Ask the grave, she says. She calls it the “low Ground,” adding a dollop of negativity.
            The second stanza continues, with a question about whether or not the dead are homesick. Her dismissive answer is that even though there are a lot of dead, none of them can answer for the particular departed one for they are as speechless, as “dumb,” as he/she.

Just three poems ago she was telling a corpse that she would see it again. In numerous other poems she also talks about an afterlife where people maintain their earthly identities in perfected form. I read the questions, then, as germinating in both skepticism and bitterness. With Dickinson telling us that there are no answers, she is also saying that anything she believes about an afterlife is not based on empirical evidence. There is only the great silence at the other side of that wall.

            The bitter flavor of the poem seems to follow the outpourings of love and grief in F431. In that poem, after “making signs” to the dead beloved so that he would notice her, she was left alone and bereft. There was no reply, no sign given in return. And so Dickinson challenges the reader. Can you find it? Can you get a reply where I didn’t?

The unsatisfactory conclusion is mirrored in the poem’s construction: one has to look hard to find even any slant rhymes (perhaps “Wind” and Ground”); there is no regular meter or stanza form. Instead, what we have is much like modern free verse. Dickinson marks a couple of places for emphasis by making them slow reads: “low Ground” is one; “Themself – as dumb” is the other. Both lines end their stanzas on a note devoid of hope. And yet, comfort might be taken in the great void that swallows up the dead. Where they are, how they feel, if they even are conscious at all is unknown. So “eat, drink, and be merry,” the advice from Solomon (Ecclesiastes 8:15), another wisdom poet, is perhaps after all the best way to live.



7 comments:

  1. I don't feel bitterness, maybe bewilderment, certainly abruptness.

    I'm not sure, in the second stanza, what Even through them means.

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    1. So glad I re-visited this poem. I had the first line (and title) wrong. I'd written "Is it dead" when it should have been "It is dead" -- which is quite different.

      I can read the poem as abrupt as easily as bitter in flavor. Now that I'm re-thinking it, 160 poems later, I'm thinking it is (as I began the commentary) a simply concise wisdom poem. Her poems are like that -- always a new way to read it or a new insight to be found.

      I think the second stanza might be paraphrased as: Is the soul homesick? There's no way of knowing for even though it has now met many other souls on the other side of life, none of them can talk and so it cannot even 'testify' about the experience through them. (of course the mediums of Dickinson's day would say that at least some of the dead can communicate and carry messages from departed loved ones. Hmmm... now that I think about it, I wonder if this practice didn't help spark the poem).

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  2. Another compelling explication, thank you Susan.

    I’m not sure you had Line 1 wrong, at least not as ED first wrote it. The understood two words beginning Lines 3, 5, and 7 are “Is it”:

    [Is it] "Happy"? Which is wiser –
    You, or the Wind?

    [Is it] "Conscious"? Won't you ask that –
    Of the low Ground?

    [Is it] "Homesick"? Many met it –
    Even through them

    The declarative-imperative sentence that ED left us in Line 1 feels like an unlikely antecedent for the three implicit rhetorical questions that follow. My guess is that ED’s first (and best) antecedent for those three understood deletions was an explicit rhetorical question:

    Is it “dead”? – Find it
    Out of sound – Out of Sight –

    Why she would switch the poem’s first line from an explicit rhetorical question to a declarative sentence (if she did) is anybody’s guess.

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    1. My bad; it was declarative. ED's handwritten manuscript clearly says "It is dead".

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  3. Franklin dates the fascicle copies of F433 and F434 as “about autumn 1862”. ED copied F433 onto two sheets of paper (actually 1.5 sheets), drew a horizontal line, and then copied F434 on the bottom half of the second page. She stitched F433 and F434 into Fascicle 15 (fascicle poems #11 & #12).

    ED composed both poems for a mysterious “you” who appears twice in each poem (Lines 19 & 20 and Lines 4 & 5, respectively). Assuming “you” is the same person in both poems, ED and “you” are a dyad who share “audible” footsteps on the lawn (F433 Line 7). The “it” of F434 Line 1 is not a person because ED commands “you” to find “it”, which is literally dead by her wording of Line 1, “It is dead”; or either dead or alive by my inferred question, “Is it dead?”.

    The final mystery of F434, who or what are Stanza 5’s “many”, “them”, and “this”? “Many is always plural, “them” usually plural, and “this” usually singular, but maybe ED doesn’t follow rational rules of logic. Furthermore “themself” can’t tell us because it, he, she, or them is dumb

    ‘Alice in Wonderland’, anyone? Unsurprisingly, I think:

    1. “You” is Charles Wadsworth, who has moved to San Francisco,
    2. “It” is the love he and ED shared, at least in her imagination,
    3. “Many” is Wadsworth’s new California congregation, and
    4. “This/themself” refers to item #2.

    SK classifies F434 as a “wisdom poem”. I would classify it as stream-of-(sub)consciousness posing as poetry.

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  4. Unsurprisingly, the above two "Anonymous" comments c'est moi.

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  5. Or would that be "suis moi"?

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