"As large as I"—relate the Sun
To One who never felt it blaze—
Itself is all the like it has—
-Fr812, F826, early 1864
It is helpful when reading this poem to put a full stop after the "I" in line two, so that it reads as two separate sentences.
This poem is describing something indescribable -Love. Love is not comparable to anything else. It can’t be measured against anything else. It “reckons by itself.” To reckon means to describe. So Love defines itself. (much like "beauty" does, see Fr797.)
There is an interesting move at the end of line one, that “alone” sitting there after the dash — alone. If love is about connection with another, then what is that “alone” doing there? This tension is in the next line too. “As large as I.” It doesn’t say as large as We. That I, like the word “alone,” has a solitary feel to it. This continues throughout the poem. You have the word “One” and then “Itself is all the like it has.” In this last phrase you can hear an echo, “Itself is all…it has.”
You are left with the feeling that Love is actually solitary, which is insightful.
That “One” “Alone” “Self” though? It blazes like the sun. When one feels its true measure, it is like emerging from a dark room and experiencing the sun for the first time.
The most powerful line for me here, set off in quotes, is “As large as I.” I hear in this God telling Moses in Exodus, “I am who I am.” I-consciousness is awareness itself. Mystics say the universe is pure awareness. That’s how large “I” is. We are all “I.” I know I am! And, conversely, “I” is all. We are together, then, in this One Alone Self. This is true Love.
This poem invites us to come out of the cold and dark and feel the blazing heat and light of this Love. You are that large, "As large as I."
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
The sound of the sun is comparable to cathedral bells
according to this article from NPR
Notes:
David Preest points out that "Emily also used the impossibility of explaining the Sun ‘to Races – nurtured in the Dark’ in poem Fr436. It's worth going back to that Prowling Bee entry to read Susan's terrific take on it, as well as the comments, but it's also worth restating the poem here,
I found the words to every thought
I ever had – but One –
And that – defies me –
As a Hand did try to chalk the Sun
To Races – nurtured in the Dark –
How would your own – begin?
Can Blaze be shown in Cochineal –
Or Noon – in Mazarin?
David Preest points out that "Emily also used the impossibility of explaining the Sun ‘to Races – nurtured in the Dark’ in poem Fr436. It's worth going back to that Prowling Bee entry to read Susan's terrific take on it, as well as the comments, but it's also worth restating the poem here,
I found the words to every thought
I ever had – but One –
And that – defies me –
As a Hand did try to chalk the Sun
To Races – nurtured in the Dark –
How would your own – begin?
Can Blaze be shown in Cochineal –
Or Noon – in Mazarin?
This poem and your commentary made me think of the extraordinary film, “I Am Love” (2009), directed by Luca Guadagnino (the same director who made the more widely known “Call Me By Your Name”). The experience of love represented in this movie is so powerful, so incandescent, that it destroys and isolates as much as it brings together. It is not safe.
ReplyDeleteThere is something in this poem by Dickinson that similarly speaks to that terrifying, alienating potential of love. “‘As large as I’— relate the Sun” is not safe. Comparisons keep us in check, keep us connected to others. Who knows where love, unbounded, incommunicable, might lead? (See Romeo, Juliet, Tristan, Isolde, et al.)
I am Love. I'll look for it. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteIf you are talking about romantic love, then yes, I can see losing a sense of self in other, but there doesn't seem to be any "other" in this poem. I'm reading Love here though as pure being, based on that phrase "as large as I." Sun-like."
Comparisons keep us in check, keep us connected to others." But might they not do the opposite as well?
I read this poem as a kind of invitation to come into the greater sense of being/love. In my experience there is no danger of losing self in that state. Rather, you are more yourself, and have a deeper empathy with others.
Adam posits: “. . . there doesn't seem to be any "other" in this poem. I'm reading Love here though as pure being, based on that phrase ‘as large as I’. Sun-like."
DeleteD'accord, and for that reason, it seems to me the “full stop” (period) goes at the end of Line 2, which is a specific example of ED’s truism in Line 1.
Line 3 reinforces the absence of “other” by introducing two riddles: Why is “One” capitalized, and what is the antecedent of “it”?
The “Sun” in Line 2 “blaze[s]” and is the grammatical antecedent of “it”, but “Love” in Line 1 is also a logical antecedent. Perhaps ED intended both.
The more difficult riddle is why the capitalized “One” of Line 3. Capitalized “One” functions as a personal pronoun, and ED honors only God and Charles Wadsworth with that distinction. Clearly, we can rule out God.
These musings create two more pronoun riddles: What are the antecedents of “Itself” and “it” in Line 4? To me, the only logical answer is “One” in Line 3, which leaves me with one take-home conclusion: If I am right, in Line 3, ED is saying “Wadsworth never felt the blaze of Love”.
That conclusion is the opposite of universal, but why else is “One” capitalized?
Yes, I read this poem as focused on romantic love, even though the “other” in this case is never made explicit. For when Dickinson discusses “love,” it is almost always in the romantic context, is it not? In other poems, of course, she explores infinity and “circumference” and the like, which suggest a loss of ego, a transcendence of self. But when she uses the term love in her poems I believe it is usually in the context of a personal connection, that is, eros not agape. There is often an element of self-effacement, or even self-sacrifice and willful suffering involved (“Calvary”). But the self remains very present.
ReplyDeleteThat’s why I find it hard to read this poem as concerning love as “pure being,” or a deeper empathy, as you do. I agree that it isn’t necessary to see this “alone,” reckoning-by-itself nature of love as threatening. That’s just one angle in (which she takes in other poems, to be sure, when she explores betrayal or despair). But I do think Dickinson’s definition of “love” usually arises in a romantic context. Are there other poems you are thinking of in which she explores love as a pure being or the discovery of a deeper empathy?
No, I suspect you are right that the "blaze" here is meant to be the heat of passion. But still, that "alone" and "large as I" seem to lead toward the idea of agape. But it could be that a shared love becomes a singular thing...
ReplyDeleteLike Adam, I feel the aloneness of the speaker. The poem is I-oriented, not we-oriented. Knowing her preference for isolation in her bedroom and her inclination for self-absorbtion, Lines 3 and 4 seem pseudo-wise words based on limited personal experience.
ReplyDeleteSewall (1974) put it bluntly:
[ED’s] failures, certainly, were with people. Throughout her life, she never achieved a single, wholly satisfying relationship with anybody she had to be near, or with, for any length of time. Vinnie was the closest, perhaps; but even she spoke of her family as living together like "friendly and absolute monarchs" (Higginson, we recall, likened them to federated states in a commonwealth, where "each member runs his or her own selves"). . . . .
All her life she demanded too much of people. Her early girl friends could hardly keep up with her tumultuous letters or, like Sue, could not or would not take her into their lives as she wanted to be taken. They had other concerns. The young men, save for a few who had amusing or edifying intellectual exchanges with her, apparently shied away. Eliza Coleman's fear that her friends in Amherst "wholly misinterpret" her, was a polite way of saying, perhaps, that they would not respond with the intensity she apparently demanded of everyone. She seemed unable to take friendship casually, nor could she be realistic about love. The result was excessive tension at every meeting, so that meetings themselves became ordeals. One such meeting was enough for Higginson ("I am glad not to live near her"); in her own economy, she found that she had to ration them very carefully. And when she fell in love, all this was further intensified. The one meeting recorded in this letter, when she asked her Master for Redemption, spelled at once her joy and her tragedy. It exalted her-she bloomed like the rose, she soared like the bird-but it plunged her into "Chillon," the captive of her own soaring fantasy about love.
Sewall, Richard B., 1974. The Life of Emily Dickinson, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 517-518