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16 January 2019

No Rack can torture me —
My Soul — at Liberty —
Behind this mortal Bone
There knits a bolder One —

You cannot prick with Saw —
Nor pierce with Cimitar —
Two Bodies — therefore be —
Bind One — The Other fly —

The Eagle of his Nest
No easier divest —
And gain the Sky
Than mayest Thou —

Except Thyself may be
Thine Enemy —
Captivity is Consciousness —
So's Liberty –
Fr649 (1863)  J384

I've been struggling with this poem for a few weeks now. Oh, it goes along tamely enough for the first three stanzas. Dickinson builds the unremarkable case that the soul is not constrained by the "mortal Bone," but is instead, like the eagle, a creature of flight and freedom. It can "divest" itself of the body and "gain the Sky." It is the "bolder" of the two Bodies – and no wonder! Unlike your flesh body, it cannot be hurt by saws, scimitars, or even torturers' tools. It cannot even be bound; it can simply fly away.

But then there is the ambiguity of the fourth stanza: "Except Thyself may be / Thine Enemy –". Which phrases are these two lines are attached to? Is Dickinson saying that the soul can gain the sky unless you are your own enemy Or is she saying that unless you are your own enemy, Captivity and Liberty are both synonymous in some way with Consciousness? If forced to choose, I would opt for the latter reading although I don't think it is a significant point.

In terms of liberty enabling a consciousness-enhancing captivity, Adrienne Rich, in her marvelous essay on Dickinson, "Vesuvius at Home," recounts the following:
[Dickinson's] niece Martha told of visiting her in her corner bedroom … and of how Emily Dickinson made as if to lock the door with an imaginary key, turned and said, “Matty: here’s freedom.”

The poet's locked room becomes a metaphor for the mind, the enclosed space figures as the skull, the poet as the soul. Freed from outside care by the confinement, the soul may boldly venture beyond earthly realms and quotidian concerns. Consciousness emerges from the captivity; Consciousness whose liberty gains the Sky – and Dickinson often uses 'Sky' in place of 'heaven', 'cosmos', and even 'God' (ED Lexicon). 
        An interesting insight comes from Boston University's Thomas Finan who in 2015 wrote "'Captivity is Consciousness': Consciousness and its Revisions in Dickinson’s Poetry," The Emily Dickinson Journal, vol. 24 no. 2, pp. 24-45. Finan refers to the mid-1800s and the "major philosophical and literary themes involved in the rise of 'consciousness' [as] a concern with the way in which consciousness could imprison through its mediating and unifying capabilities." Finan is convinced that despite this concern, Dickinson found that "the walls of consciousness" could provide a barrier "behind which the self can withdraw." The confining barriers "can provide the prospect of liberty." Yes, much like turning the key in the lock of the door.
But besides all of that, the ambiguously anchored phrase, "Except Thyself may be / Thine Enemy –", remains of interest. Beyond the notion that we can defeat ourselves, there is Lucifer's definitive exclamation in Paradise Lost: "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."(John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, lines 254-5). Surely, the mind that turns a heaven into a hell is its own enemy; the one that does the reverse achieves the Sky.

Dickinson has written about this self-enmity before:
    • in "One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted – " (J670 / Fr407), it is "Ourself behind ourself" that should scare us more than any ghost;
    • in "They shut me up in Prose" (J613 / Fr445), it is as laughable to put a bird behind a fence as to command a poet to stick to prose or a child to stay quietly in her room;
    •  in "A Prison gets to be a friend – " (J652 / Fr456), the 'Geometric Joy" of prison is of our own making and Liberty avoided "like a Dream."

But perhaps her most in-depth examination is yet to come. In J642/Fr710, Dickinson asks, "But since Myself – assault Me – / How have I peace / Except by subjugating / Consciousness? This seems contrary to the current poem where Consciousness is the desirable face of both captivity and liberty. Here, Dickinson wants peace at the expense of Consciousness yet cannot imagine how to abdicate herself of herself. The question is almost one of transcendental meditation. The whole poem is worth reading here:

Me from Myself — to banish —
Had I Art —
Impregnable my Fortress
Unto All Heart —

But since Myself — assault Me —
How have I peace
Except by subjugating
Consciousness?

And since We're mutual Monarch
How this be
Except by Abdication —
Me — of Me?
                             J642,  Fr710  (1863)

11 comments:

  1. Buddhist meditation involves the paradox of how we can come to realize no self. Who becomes enlightened? The paradox is answered because enlightenment is "realization" of something that already exists. Meditation involves a process of subtraction rather than addition -- it is a letting go rather than an act of creation.

    I don't think that ED is talking about meditation or no self in these poems. But there is a similar process of letting go in artistic creation -- dropping the process of editing in favor of seeing what can arise. Self-consciousness can be an impediment to art. This may be part of what these poems are about.

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    Replies
    1. I have heard that the active 'monkey brain' is an impediment to meditation -- and, as you point out, would also impede creative acts from an artist wanting to transcend. Thanks for your insight -- it adds to my understanding of the poems, particularly the later one.

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  2. What poems are similar or give the same message as this one

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  3. In her book The Effects of Incest on the Life and Poetry of Emily Dickinson Wendy Perriman uses this poem as an example of dissociation and compares it to testimonies of trauma survivors. Dissociation as survival technique serves four purposes: it offers an escape from reality; it keeps damaging memories outside the realm of normal consciousness; it alters the sense of self so the trauma appears to have happened to someone else; and it deadens the pain. No matter how tortured the speaker’s body she claims that her “Soul” is “at Liberty” because it can fly to another place.

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  4. From David Porter’s book Modern Idiom:
    Ellipsis conceals the nub of poem 384, but the argument addressed to the reader once again is unmistakable, a tight circle. Your soul is as free as the eagle to escape the body’s torture, except that the body’s mind is the soul’s captor, and thus enemy. The soul remains captive because consciousness depends upon the captivity, and consciousness knows (this is rue Dickinson) that the soul’s “liberty” involves its own death.

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  5. It is interesting to compare poem Fr710 with experience of a DID patient (from H. L. Schwartz: Dialogues with Forgotten Voices):
    „When I go to work some real cool guy comes out and takes over and he is incredible at what he does. Not the insecure, incompetent, overly sensitive guy sitting before you. He is so masterful that no one would know anyone else is in here. The nights before work I can feel so much anxiety, all the time, from what I do not know. But then when I go to work, somehow, and I don’t know how, he just takes over. Work itself is the best single reinforcer of my dissociation. When I come to therapy from work I can not just shift out of this mode. When the cool work guy is out there are simply no feelings to feel. For him therapy gets in the way. For me, it feels like my only chance.”

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  6. No Rack can torture me —

    What a bold, defiant line! Imagine truly being able to declare this. It is almost unfathomable to little mortal me, so often swayed by this discomfort and that. But it is inspiring to hear it declared here so confidently by Emily.

    My Soul — at Liberty —

    These first two lines together sing, and I feel as if I've been thrust into a hymn.

    Behind this mortal Bone
    There knits a bolder One —

    These next two lines create a linguistic magic, the way the sounds are KNIT together so tightly.

    "BehiND THiS MoRTaL BoNe
    THeRe kNiTS a BoLDeR oNe.

    It feels like a spell with those bold Bs. So pleasurable to say. Meanwhile the content of the lines mirror what they are doing. The thing that is stronger than bone is the poem that we knit with spirit. The form of the lines carry the content.

    As if to emphasize the point the following lines are also beautifully knit together.

    You cannot prick with Saw —
    Nor pierce with Cimitar —

    These lines are practically asking to be sung.

    I see the slipperiness of the final stanza, and since one of ED's techniques is to say two things at once with a slippage of syntax, that slippage may well be there on purpose and worth teasing out. But it's enough for me to take the simpler reading, that I may fly, free of torture, if only stop fighting against myself. We are held captive in our consciousness all the while possessing a the key to a liberty bigger than the sky.

    This poem sings like an eagle soaring, showing the way.

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    1. Nobody is truly being able to declare this because we are only human. Even great Emily Dickinson was like the rest of us susceptible to both physical and mental pain.

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  7. Wikipedia spends 12,000 words discussing consciousness without concluding anything.
    ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness )

    ED Lex limits definitions to three:

    1. Cognizance; mental awareness
    2. Conscience; perception of right and wrong
    3. Being; existence

    Many scientists argue that study of consciousness lies outside the domain of science
    ( https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/zsr78 )

    My take on Stanza 4:

    If we are open-minded,
    We can mentally consider ourselves
    In captivity or at liberty,
    One at a time or both at the same time.

    Reminds me of a German ditty popular since 1810, “Die Gedanken sind frei”.

    Translation of Stanzas 1 and 4:

    “Thoughts are free, who can guess them?
    They fly by like nocturnal shadows.
    No person can know them, no hunter can shoot them
    and so it'll always be: Thoughts are free!”

    “And if I am thrown into the darkest dungeon,
    all these are futile works,
    because my thoughts tear all gates
    and walls apart: Thoughts are free!”

    ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Gedanken_sind_frei )

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