Oh thou Celestial Host —
Bride of the Father and the Son
Bride of the Holy Ghost.
Other Betrothal shall dissolve —
Wedlock of Will, decay —
Only the Keeper of this Ring
Conquer Mortality —
-Fr818, J817, sheet nine, early 1865
What to say about this poem? It is a fairly straight-forward poem of faith in the Christian trinity, a kind of wedding vow. The narrator, which we assume to be the poet, has given herself in marriage to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. She feels it is the only true marriage, one that will not decay, and will "conquer mortality."
I think if you lined up all of Dickinson’s poems that explicitly concerned Christian faith and doubt, there would be a few hundred of them. It would make for a great book. Together they must comprise one of the most deeply felt, honest and intellectually nuanced explorations of a spiritual journey on record. What emerges from all of it is almost impossible to pin down. You have to go to the source, and, even then, the tenor shifts from poem to poem, sometimes dramatically.
If you are not careful, it is easy to back up your own views on religion using Emily Dickinson’s poems. If you are an atheist, you can find Dickinson poems that will corroborate your lack of belief. But if you are a believer, you can do the same. This poem falls into the latter camp. As far as I can see, it is without a shred of doubt. Usually you can find some little way to read a Dickinson poem against itself, some thread that when pulled will unravel what you think the poem is all about, some tricky ambiguity.
Perhaps there is a tension in this one in the word "Will." Dickinson says that a “Wedlock of Will” shall dissolve and decay. To marry yourself to Trinity you must believe “Thy will be done,” not “my will be done.” There is a lot of weight on that word "Will." What does it mean for a willful poet like Dickinson to submit?
Dickinson’s will was quite strong, (in a later letter, she would call herself the witch of Endor, a biblical character that defied God’s wishes), but there was a noble ideal that Dickinson aspired to beyond her own desires. There is, at the heart of Christianity, the idea of sacrificing the desires of the self for the sake of others, and that idea, I think, deeply appealed to Dickinson. (See, for instance, the poem preceding this one in the Franklin order, Fr816.)
Dickinson's thoughts on Christianity were far from simple, which is why this simple statement of faith is all the more astonishing.
In looking online at various articles on Dickinson and her reckoning with faith, I found a letter to Joseph Lyman, written a year before this poem,
“Some years after we saw each other last I fell to reading the Old & New Testament. I had known it as an arid book but looking I saw how infinitely wise & merry it is.
Anybody that knows grammar must admit the surpassing splendor & force of its speech, but the fathomless gulfs of meaning—those words which He spoke to those most necessary to him, hints about some celestial reunion—yearning for a oneness—has any one fathomed that sea? I know those to whom those words are very near & necessary, I wish they were more so to me, for I see them shedding a serenity quite wonderful & blessed. They are great bars of sunlight in many a shady heart.”
We know that there are two copies of this poem, one of which was given to Sue Gilbert Dickinson, who was a professed believer. So it is possible that this poem was written for Sue, and reflects her beliefs, not Emily's. But I take this poem as a declaration on Dickinson's part that she was, in her own idiosyncratic way, making a vow to the "lasting" Christian values. It wasn't long after this that she began to wear a white dress, and become cloistered in her own home, and did, in appearance at least, begin to look like a bride of Christ.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
John Singer Sargent, Fumée d'Ambre Gris, 1880
No comments:
Post a Comment