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09 June 2013

She dealt her pretty words like Blades —

She dealt her pretty words like Blades —
How glittering they shone —
And every One unbared a Nerve
Or wantoned with a Bone —

She never deemed — she hurt —
That — is not Steel's Affair —
A vulgar grimace in the Flesh —
How ill the Creatures bear —

To Ache is human — not polite —
The Film upon the eye
Mortality's old Custom —
Just locking up — to Die.

                                                                              F458 (1862)  J479   

The stoical narrator of this poem suffers verbal assaults from a woman without showing how deeply she is hurt. Instead, like a janitor making the rounds at the end of the day, she just begins “locking up” her damaged life in readiness for a figurative (I presume) death.
          The powerful first stanza uses two images to show how deadly cruel the subject’s “pretty words” were. The first is of a person wielding a “glittering” knife as she sets upon the narrator. Her words are polished and fine on the surface, but they cut deeply. This woman is no innocent: she deals the words purposely “like Blades.” I picture a decorative knife such as a letter opener: a seemingly harmless bauble but capable of great harm.
         Dickinson doesn’t just portray the cutting or stabbing pain of a blade, however. Her overlain image is one of rape. The blade unbares a nerve the way a rapist might strip off his victim’s clothes. It then “wantoned with a Bone” sensuously enjoying fileting the victim. I feel the force of the cruelty every time I read this stanza.
         The victim excuses the woman: she didn’t know how sharp her words were; didn’t mean for them to “hurt.” But such niceties don’t matter to the blade. It doesn’t care if the wielder believes it capable of murder or not. The knife’s “Affair” is to cut – quickly and smoothly. I don’t find the poet convincing in her feeble defense of the attacker, nor do I think she meant to be. Someone who “dealt” their words like blades would know something of their power.
       

  For whatever reason, the victim never lets on. It would be “vulgar” to wince from the pain. It would be in poor taste, a sign of weakness, if “the Creatures” bear the pain “ill.” Further, it isn’t “polite” to have tears of pain welling up. Much better to just follow the old (feminine) way of keeping silent – and dying inside.

Biographer Richard Sewall, as well as other scholars, believes Dickinson was writing about her friend and sister-in-law Sue Dickinson. This would have been about the time the two’s friendship hit a low point and Emily avoided going to Sue’s house (one hundred yards away) for nearly fifteen years. People who knew Sue mentioned her sharp tongue, and Emily’s sister Vinnie was firmly convinced that Sue’s behaviour to Emily had shortened the poet’s life considerably.
         Be that as it may, the poem succeeds with or without a biographical reading. Was it Rumpole who said of his wife, “She has a sharp wit and wields it like an axe”?

15 comments:

  1. This poem is so direct, a rapier; yet once again, your commentary adds to one's appreciation. Thanks for all of that, poem after poem.

    But did you mean "biographical" in that last paragraph? Having said that, however, I'm reminded of Barry Lopez' writing somewhere that since humans have only had language for not sure how many hundreds of thousands of years, we have not evolved anything like our ability to heal from even serious "biological" harm. Scratch or cut an arm, even amputate, and in time it heals. But sharp words can keep one away from a nearby relative for 15 years.

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    1. Oh yes, 'biographical' is what I meant -- thank you! I've corrected it now. (3 years later...)

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  2. how accurate ^^^

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  3. “Unbared” is odd - bared means laid open - un- would mean covered up. Just better metrics?

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    1. yep; I think it's all for the meter.

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    2. I thought so too. It seems obvious, but, according to the OED, "unbare" is a rarely used word that means "to lay bare" or "to expose to view". So full marks to ED.

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  4. Thank you very much for this exposition. I was particularly lost on the last stanza, but seeing the “Film” as tears helped a lot. The more I read of Emily Dickinson the wider I see her range of expressed emotions — not just the simplistic ones most often published.

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  5. Any idea where I can buy that letter opener? It's beautiful.

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  6. To me a rapier is better. These knives are serious weapons. ED's imagery in the first stanza and after details the damage that they perform. "A vulgar grimace" in line 7 is the ghastly smile shaped curve the knife leaves in the flesh.

    I'm mystified by the last two lines. What is "mortality's old custom"? But, then again, ED often leaves me wondering.

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    1. I think you're right about the 'vulgar grimace' being the wound rather than a facial expression. I love revisiting poems over reader comments. So often illuminating (and corrective). As to 'mortality's old custom, perhaps it is the film of death (which I think pops up in other Dickinson poems). It's the outer sign of the body locking up. Or something!

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    2. The other wonderful device ED uses in the poem is the shift of "she" from being the wielder of the knives in stanza 1 to being the knife itself in stanza 2. It jolts the reader to attention, I think.

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    3. Thanks or the thought about Mortality's old custom. That helps.

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  7. To be honest I'd really love this blog and its contents in paperback form, I mean, just imagine! the idea of it is so lovely and fulfilling.

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  8. “The Film upon the eye
    Mortality's old Custom —
    Just locking up — to Die.”

    Metaphorically die; eyes glaze over, go blank, to hide emotion such as pain of a cutting remark, as in the previous poem,

    "We — who have the Souls —
    Die oftener — Not so vitally —"

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  9. Happy to find your blog. I only know about Emily Dickinson since few days ago. What a waste of my life until now, right ?
    Thanks for your explanations, it helps me cause English is not my first language.
    But sad to see still today people continue to believe Emily and Sue were just friends. Change actually everything…

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