Patience—Look within—
Is an Insect's futile forces
Infinites—between—
'Scaping one—against the other
Fruitlesser to fling—
Patience—is the Smile's exertion
Through the quivering—
-Fr842, J962, sheet 3, 1864
This poem is a meditation on patience, but it's a bleak one. Patience does not help one overcome one's predicament in this poem. All one can do, it tells us, is attempt to smile through the ever worsening struggle. There is, however, an immense grace in the effort.
The poem starts by letting us know that patience has a quiet Outer. If someone is quiet, then that stillness may well be hiding an inner storm. It's interesting the way the adjective “outer” gets turned into a noun here. And it's almost a verb. Dickinson often weirds language to great effect.
The second use of the word "Patience," emphatically repeated in the second line, seems to be moving from definition to imperative. Because patience has a "quiet outer" and is therefore hard to see, have patience! Look within. Look within here means look within yourself to find the fortitude, but also means look within the quiet outer of the other. What you will see behind the smiling face before you may be someone engaged in an incredible epic struggle.
Patience…
Is an Insect's futile forces
Infinites—between—
The second use of the word "Patience," emphatically repeated in the second line, seems to be moving from definition to imperative. Because patience has a "quiet outer" and is therefore hard to see, have patience! Look within. Look within here means look within yourself to find the fortitude, but also means look within the quiet outer of the other. What you will see behind the smiling face before you may be someone engaged in an incredible epic struggle.
Patience…
Is an Insect's futile forces
Infinites—between—
We are compared to an insect, and our struggles are like the tiny, restless motions of the insect as it is caught between two obstacles, like a fly trying to escape from a windowpane.
Dickinson, through her signature hyperbole, makes the struggle appear even greater by pointing to those Infinites—between— our exertions. When we are struggling, it is painful, but the moments of collapsed exhaustion between each effort can be even worse. When the “monster futility” (as Robert Smith of The Cure puts it) becomes too overbearing, time crawls to a stop and the moment feels infinite. Dickinson deals directly with this idea in another aphoristic two syllable poem, Fr833, “Pain — expands the Time —”
'Scaping one—against the other
Fruitlesser to fling—
The insect’s “futile forces” describe how it flings itself over and over in its attempt to escape, yet remains stuck, its efforts fruitless. Just as the insect struggles in vain between barriers, escaping one just to hit another, back and forth, so patience struggles between human suffering and endurance. Our exertions, our patience becomes more and more fruitless, “fruitlesser,” with each attempt.
“Fruitlesser to fling.” That line has an onomatopoeic quality. It sounds like an insect flinging itself back and forth against the pane.
Patience—is the Smile's exertion
Through the quivering—
Here is the third mention of "patience," in this short poem, as if the poet is patiently remembering to invoke the word over and over again. This one offers us another definition. Patience—is the Smile's exertion. Patience is the effort of a smile.
There are two alternate words that Dickinson left us in the original MS sheet for the phrase "Smile's exertion." One is "Mouth's exertion," and the other is "Love's exertion."
Sometimes all of the word choices Dickinson leaves us can work together to form a more complete poem. If it were "Mouth" here, instead of "Smile," I would take that to be a metanym for expression through poetry, or song. If it were "Love," that would be more abstract, but it would more clearly show the reason for such exertion. It clues us in that "Smile" is a product of Love here, not duty, just as "Mouth" tells us that this "Smile" is akin to the words sung by the poet. The music of this poem, its beauty, may be seen as Emily Dickinson's love, her smiling exertion through quivering pain.
Once upon a time there was a bomb threat at my school. The teachers, including myself, were all afraid to go back into the classrooms, yet we tried our best to put on brave faces for the sake of the students. I remember having to physically force a comforting smile onto my face. And of course I've done the same for my children during times of illness. In the midst of heartbreak a smile can take everything you have.
One takeaway for me here is to remember to be aware of the extreme difficulty that comes with “grace under pressure.” Yesterday, for instance, I watched a friend, one who used to be extremely impatient, shut his eyes and wait out a difficult situation. There was a time when he would have been screaming and freaking out in this same set of circumstances. This “exertion” on his part, which was only barely discernible to any observer, carried with it immense unseen struggles. And yet this kind of gargantuan effort, so often hidden from us, can make a huge difference in the lives of others. It's worth remembering this next time we find ourselves impatient with someone. The person we are dealing with may well be struggling with something far worse than we are.
David Foster Wallace's commencement address,
"This is water," presents a similar idea
Dickinson tells us to “Look within,” Remember what others may be dealing with. She is imploring us, and perhaps herself too. “Look within.”
Though this poem carries a sense of hopelessness, it also carries grace in its small act of resistance. The smile in the poem, which is to say, its beauty, lifts us up, even as the poet herself may be going down.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
Smile through the Pain/ K Kroese
Notes: A study could be made of Dickinson's aphoristic poems. This poem is written in the form she most often used for her aphorisms; a two stanza structure in 4/3 hymn meter with a trochaic rhythm. Other examples of these include Fr835 and Fr879.
It's worth paying attention to the intricate internal rhythms of these poems, which are part of their hidden beauty, part of the exertion of their "smile."
This one's emphasis goes like this.
BA dum BA dum BA dum BA dum
BA dum BA dum dum
BA dum BA dum BA dum BA dum
BA dum dum dum BA
BA dum BA dum BA dum BA dum
BA dum dum dum BA
BA dum BA dum BA dum BA dum
BA dum BA dum dum
See the way the 2nd line's rhythm is repeated in the 8th, and the 4th line in the 6th? It's a subtle dance.