Pain — has an Element of Blank—

Pain — has an Element of Blank—

It cannot recollect

When it begun or if there were

A time when it was not —

It has no Future — but itself—
Its Infinite contain
Its Past — enlightened to perceive
New Periods — of Pain.


    -Fr760, J650, Fascicle 34, 1863


Dear reader,

For this poem, we would love to hear what it personally means to you.

It would be instructive to have a chorus of voices for this one. 

Afterward, check out the edifying commentaries by William Styron and BookishNerDan in the notes below. 

Affy,

/)dam Wade l)eGraff

notes:

1. There is an Emily Dickinson blog I love to read by a guy that goes by BookishNerDan. His take on this poem is brilliant. It really gets down to something essential about consciousness itself. Go here to read. It might help.  

2. This bit, from the great William Styron, in Lapham's Quarterly, is instructive too. (R.I.P. Lewis Lapham)

Darkness Visible,

1985

In depression a faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come—not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul. So the decision making of daily life involves not, as in normal affairs, shifting from one annoying situation to another less annoying—or from discomfort to relative comfort, or from boredom to activity—but moving from pain to pain. One does not abandon, even briefly, one’s bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes. And this results in a striking experience—one which I have called, borrowing military terminology, the situation of the walking wounded. For in virtually any other serious sickness, a patient who felt similar devastation would be lying flat in bed, possibly sedated and hooked up to the tubes and wires of life-support systems, but at the very least in a posture of repose and in an isolated setting. His invalidism would be necessary, unquestioned, and honorably attained. However, the sufferer from depression has no such option and therefore finds himself, like a walking casualty of war, thrust into the most intolerable social and family situations. There he must, despite the anguish devouring his brain, present a face approximating the one that is associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk, and be responsive to questions, and knowingly nod and frown and, God help him, even smile. But it is a fierce trial attempting to speak a few simple words.