He who in Himself believes—

He who in Himself believes—
Fraud cannot presume—
Faith is Constancy's Result—
And assumes—from Home—

Cannot perish, though it fail
Every second time—
But defaced Vicariously—
For Some Other Shame—


    -Fr835, J969, Fascicle 40, 1864


This one starts off in a variation of the advice Polonius gives to Laertes in Shakepeare’s Hamlet:

“This above all- to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Abbreviate this and you get:

He who in Himself believes—
Fraud cannot presume—

There's a difference, it seems to me, between being true to yourself and believing in yourself. The first involves not fooling yourself. But to believe in yourself is different. It takes fortitude and will-power, but you also have to know what it is you are believing in. You have to know who you are and what you are about. Once you do, and will, fraud cannot “presume” anything different.

We get a sense of the difference in the turn-around presented to us inf the following line,

Faith is Constancy's Result—

Normally we would say that constancy is faith’s result. You have faith and therefore you are constant. But here we start with constancy. Faith is something earned through action. That’s a great twist. It’s not really faith though if it is the result of action, is it? It’s more like “knowing.”

In the sense of “knowing,” we are led to a very powerful word in Dickinson’s lexicon: Home.

Faith is Constancy's Result—
And assumes—from Home—

Dickinson has written elsewhere of the “infinite power of Home.” And though by Home Dickinson means something fundamental, we can’t help but remember that Dickinson died in the home she was born in. She was, indeed, very constant to her family, as well as to her friends.

The idea of assuming “from Home” is powerful too. Assume is an odd word, a contranym almost. It can mean to believe something without having all the facts (similar to faith,) but it can also mean to support, as in “assume a debt” and, even, to become, as in assuming a body.

I think of the beginning of Whitman’s Song of Myself. “What I assume you shall assume/ for every atom belonging to me as well belongs to you.” Whitman is talking about belief, but also about the idea of assuming a form. The two opposing meanings are mystically tied together. We end up becoming (assuming) what we believe (assume).

So, our faith is assumed from a constancy to our Home, and all that Home entails.

Cannot perish, though it fail
Every second time—

If you believe in yourself, and your home, you will eventually succeed, though you fail often. “Every second time” is funny. I like the odds though. Half the time you will fail. But half the time you will succeed too.

But defaced Vicariously—
For Some Other Shame—

“Defaced vicariously” is a pointed phrase. Vicarious, according to the Dickinson lexicon means, “Proxy; representative; substituting; acting on behalf of another; carried out in another's stead.” So, essentially, you are someone else, not your true self, when you are brought to “Shame.” You are “defaced.” Your face is taken away and replaced with someone else’s, someone who is not the true you “whom in himself believes.”

The poem ends in “Shame.” But the message seems to be to try, try again. It’s all about that constancy.

I don’t know what to make of it, but I find the slant-rhyme in this pleasing and curious. Presume/ Home/ Time/ Shame, with internal rhyme of Assume and Some. All of it seems to be honing into the sound of Home.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

That's Emily's Home. Hers is the window on the far right.

Fitter to see Him, I may be

Fitter to see Him, I may be
For the long Hindrance — Grace — to Me —
With Summers, and with Winters, grow,
Some passing Year — A trait bestow

To make Me fairest of the Earth —
The Waiting — then — will seem so worth
I shall impute with half a pain
The blame that I was chosen — then —

Time to anticipate His Gaze —
It's first — Delight — and then — Surprise —
The turning o'er and o'er my face
For Evidence it be the Grace —

He left behind One Day — So less
He seek Conviction, That — be This —

I only must not grow so new
That He'll mistake — and ask for me
Of me — when first unto the Door
I go — to Elsewhere go no more —

I only must not change so fair
He'll sigh — "The Other — She — is Where?"
The Love, tho', will array me right
I shall be perfect — in His sight —

If He perceive the other Truth —
Upon an Excellenter Youth —

How sweet I shall not lack in Vain —
But gain — thro' loss — Through Grief — obtain —
The Beauty that reward Him best —
The Beauty of Demand — at Rest —


     -Fr834, J968, Fascicle 40, 1864


In David Preest’s notes for this poem, we read: “George Whicher suggests that these difficult stanzas may be just the first draft of a poem never completed.” It’s not surprising to me that someone might think this, since men (and women) have questioned Dickinson’s style all along, but for Preest to perpetuate this offence is surprising. The poem is careful in its meter and rhyme, and not only that, but she copied the poem into a fascicle, a sure sign it was finished. If something at first seems amiss in a Dickinson poem, it is always best to give her the benefit of the doubt. You probably just missed her. In this case, I don't think George Whicher could be more mistaken.

Ironically, though, this poem is, in part, about being unfinished, or, at least, not quite finished. 

Fitter to see Him, I may be
For the long Hindrance — Grace — to Me —

Who is Him? This question is a fraught one in Dickinson’s oeuvre. It could be a beloved. It could be Christ. It could be both. I take it, ultimately, as the consummation of Love that meets us on the other side of the veil. Dickinson has many poems that seem to be leading up to this moment when she shall see her “King.” But because Dickinson so often conflates her love poems with her spiritual poems, it is hard to say. At any rate, in these first lines she is saying something like, “I’m more fit to see the Beloved because of the long hindrance. The hindrance was Grace because it allowed me to become ready." The idea of a hindrance being a Grace is worth deep meditation. It gets a the core of Dickinson’s poetics. 

Another question: what is the hindrance? Is it life itself? Or is the hindrance self-imposed? Something to ponder. Did Dickinson choose her difficult life, or did it choose her?

With Summers, and with Winters, grow,

In both the joys of summer and the pains of winter we grow fitter for our connection to the divine. It’s all “grist for the mill.” The process is necessary. And eventually, if you trust the process deeply enough,

Some passing Year — A trait bestow
To make Me fairest of the Earth —

Some year ( “passing”!) the self will become “fairest of the Earth.” Quite a goal, fairest of the earth. The waiting is hard, but it is the prerequisite for true beauty, which can only come with age and dedication.

Again, it is worth remembering that it is the “hindrance” which bestows the “trait” of “fairest.” A lot hinges on the meaning of “hindrance” here.

The Waiting — then — will seem so worth
I shall impute with half a pain
The blame that I was chosen — then —

I hear a deep sigh in these lines. The poet, after all, is mid-process. She has faith it will all be worth it, but for now she is cursing (blaming) that she’s been chosen to take on the burdens of life. (And there is the further idea here of being “chosen” for some specific purpose, like being a poet.) If she does get there, then she will admit “with half a pain” that it was worth it, in other words, still a bit begrudgingly.

That’s funny and sad all at once, and richly Emily.

And how about the funny surprise in the next stanza?

Time to anticipate His Gaze —
It's first — Delight — and then — Surprise —
The turning o'er and o'er my face
For Evidence it be the Grace —

You need the hindrance of time to anticipate the Gaze of the beloved. The anticipation itself is important; the desire, the longing, the felt absence. Then when the beloved finally Gazes at you, He will be delighted to see that your ability to be patient and diligent has made you worthy of Him. Note that “He” wasn’t expecting you to succeed. That’s why it is a surprise. It’s so funny to think of Emily anticipating God’s utter surprise that she’s worthy of Him, and Him turning her face back and forth, sizing her up to make sure that the Grace is really there.

(There is another possible way to read this stanza, which carries further surprise. If “my face”...”be the Grace.” Then it is as if the eyes of the poet have become synonymous with His. Grace is staring at Grace.)

For Evidence it be the Grace —

He left behind One Day — So less
He seek Conviction, That — be This —

That idea that the Beloved “left” the poet “behind One Day” is intriguing. I suppose one could have the feeling that God left us behind, abandoned us, when we were born. But it's wonky. It’s as if the poet was abandoned and then had to work on herself to get back in God’s good graces. But it was “Grace/ He left behind” in the first place and why would God leave Grace behind? Maybe it just means that when you are born you have Grace, and it is surprising if you can keep it. He is seeking "Conviction, That — be This —”, that the innocent self is born again.

(There is another possibility here though, that the “He” is the reverend Charles Wadsworth. There are those that theorize that Dickinson made a pact with with the married Wadsworth that she would re-unite with him in heaven. I come back to this idea -which is not one I’m particularly fond of, but is one I have to contend with- because in Matty Dickinson’s recollections of her Aunt Emily she makes it clear that Dickinson was in love with Wadsworth, whom she met when traveling. Matty says that she heard this from her mother and father, as well as Emily’s sister, so it is likely true. In this reading of the poem being "left behind" has a different sense. The idea of being left and then spending a life making the self fit for the one who left has a tragic quality to it and is the opposite, to me, of the unconditional love of God. Or maybe it isn't tragic. Maybe it is a key ingredient of the kind of grit Dickinson needed to become a great poet?)

I only must not grow so new
That He'll mistake — and ask for me
Of me — when first unto the Door
I go — to Elsewhere go no more —

The idea of growing “new” turns on its head the idea of growing old. It carries that sense of becoming new like an innocent child. But here it is odd that you could become so new that God would no longer recognize you. It's as if God (or Wadsworth!) loves you not just for your innocence, but also because of your “experience.” If you become too new, do you lose your self?

“And ask for me/ Of me” Imagine God asking you when you get to heaven, “Where are you? Have you seen you anywhere?”

to Elsewhere go no more —

Death, or the afterlife, is the last stop. But also, there is the idea that there is nowhere else the poet wants to .
be.

I only must not change so fair
He'll sigh — "The Other — She — is Where?"
The Love, tho', will array me right
I shall be perfect — in His sight —

The poet wants to become worthy, but not so perfect she is unrecognizable. But, in the end, she trusts that "The Love, tho', will array me right." She doesn’t have to be perfectly innocent. She trusts that God will see her intentions and she will be perfect in His sight. We come back to a sense of forgiveness, an unconditional love. "The Love."

If He perceive the other Truth —
Upon an Excellenter Youth —

What “other Truth” is Dickinson speaking of here? The Truth of "Excellenter Youth," of who we essentially are, who we were as pure being before becoming tainted by the world. “Excellenter youth” is, again, a turn-around, like “grow new.” We don't become excellent, we become less excellent. It is a child-like state we want to return to. Dickinson did seem to achieve this. In Matty Dickinson’s book, “Face to Face,” which I couldn’t recommend highly enough, we see how much children loved Emily, and how much she colluded with them in pranks and secrets. 

How sweet I shall not lack in Vain —
But gain — thro' loss — Through Grief — obtain —
The Beauty that reward Him best —
The Beauty of Demand — at Rest —

There was some (purposeful) turbulence along the way, but Dickinson really lands this poem. This last stanza would work even without the rest of the poem. There is Beauty in loss, and in grief, the kind of Beauty that carries the truth of the divine. Death is sweet because for those, like Dickinson, who have demanded so much of themselves, there are not only the rewards of sacrifice, but also of rest.


       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff


P.S. This poem has a unique structure. First, it is in rhyming couplets, with mostly exact rhyme, which is fairly rare for Dickinson. It’s as if she is working to “rhyme,” both figuratively and literally here. The poem also has the odd quality of being in quatrains except for two couplets that are on their own, that have lost each other, as if, again, the form isn’t completely cohering yet, but almost! Almost finished.

The first page of Matty's memoir, Face to Face. 

Pain — expands the Time —

Pain — expands the Time —
Ages coil within
The minute Circumference
Of a single Brain —

Pain contracts — the Time —
Occupied with Shot
Gamuts of Eternities
Are as they were not —


   -Fr833, J967, Fascicle 40, 1864


The core of this poem is the seeming paradox that it presents.

On one hand, pain makes the moment seem to last forever. We’ve all experienced this. I’ll never forget sitting in a hospital waiting room with a kidney stone. Every minute waiting seemed to last hours.

On the other hand, the contraction of time is about how pain puts you so absolutely in the moment that the rest of time, the “Gamuts of Eternities,” becomes irrelevant. When I was feeling that kidney stone, there was nothing else but the moment.

It's a double whammy. The pain is so intense that it's all consuming and, moreover, feels as if it will never end. 

Dickinson was a philosophical poet and pain was often her subject. It makes sense that pain would be a starting point for thinking about existence, seeing as to how it is undeniably felt, and can take over the self. There are several Dickinson poems which are about pain. (See the notes below for a small sample). It was an important subject for Emily Dickinson, as it is, I suspect, for all of us.

Though this poem is about pain, it is still a pleasure to read. The image and sounds are fantastic. “Ages coil within/ The minute Circumference/ Of a single Brain.” One gets the rather fantastic image of pain causing masses of time to coil themselves up inside a tiny round brain. A brain has the appearance of being coiled, too, which adds to the weirdness of the image, as if the brain were made up of coils of endless pain.

Dickinson wrote to T.W. Higginson, “My business is circumference.” She also wrote, “The brain is wider than the sky.” You can see both of these ideas echoed here. The minuscule brain’s circumference has expanded, through pain, to encompass the ages.

There is a pun on “minute” here too, perhaps. The ages are felt in “minute,” meaning both spatially and temporally small.

In the second stanza we see something subtle happen in the placement of the dash.

Pain — expands the Time —
...
Pain contracts — the Time —

The phrase "expands the Time" appears to contract into just “the Time.”

In the first stanza the reigning letter is "n," which has an expansive quality that carries the sound of moaning in pain: nnnnnnn. But in the second stanza we are presented with a scattershot of “t”s, which enacts a feeling of curtness, a tautening.

Pain contracts — the Time —
Occupied with Shot
Gamuts of Eternities
Are as they were not —

Gamuts of Eternities is very Dickinson. There can only be one eternity, right? But here there are Gamuts. Likewise, in a different poem, Dickinson uses the word “infiniter,” as if you could get more infinite than infinite. In another she writes “finallest,” as if you could get more final than final. Here we have not just a whole gamut of eternities, but gamuts. It’s an excess of infinite excesses.

Gamut, as Dickinson would have likely known, was originally a musical term for all the notes on a scale. So here we are presented with the idea of scales upon scales, as if eternities were notes in the music of the spheres.

The word “Shot” is a surprising one. “Occupied with Shot.” “Shot” is a compressed way of saying “the shot that killed me.” “Shot” is a single explosive word that contains multiple meanings. It brings to mind the suddenness and violence of gunfire. It suggests pain can strike in an instant, reducing vast swaths of time to a split-second trauma. There is the sense here of a shot piercing the body, cutting deeply into consciousness.

If we return to the musical idea of the gamut, a shot might be a single note in the broader symphony of time, a percussive sound that disrupts the flow.

A “shot” can also be a dose, a concentrated delivery, like a shot of whiskey or medicine. Pain, in this way, is like a compressed eternity injected into one moment, a “shot” of infinite feeling in finite time. The word cracks open the poem.

This poem predicts our post-modern sense of relativity. (Another writer who did this brilliantly is Ambrose Bierce in the amazing short story from 1890, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.”) It undermines our trust in “objective” time. Dickinson shows that our inner lives defy the idea of regular measurable time. Pain bends time to its own will, distorting the normal order of things.

So what is Dickinson trying to get across to the reader with this paradox then? It positions pain not as meaningless agony, but as an existential force, something sublime. Pain is a window into the moment, and simultaneously into the infinite. It’s not seen as a weakness, but as a profound capacity of the human soul.

By recognizing how enormous and pointed our private suffering can be, Dickinson is asking us to pay attention to the unseen pains of others, and to their own, too.


     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Bullet piercing an apple. Harold Edgerton. 1964

Notes:

Here are some more thoughts on pain from Emily Dickinson:

After great pain, a formal feeling comes--
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs--
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

***

There is a pain—so utter—
It swallows substance up—
Then covers the Abyss with Trance—
So Memory can step
Around—across—upon it—
As one within a Swoon—
Goes safely—where an open eye—
Would drop Him—Bone by Bone.

***

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

***

To learn the Transport by the Pain
As Blind Men learn the sun!

***

The hallowing of Pain
Like hallowing of Heaven,
Obtains at a corporeal cost—
The Summit is not given

To Him who strives severe
At middle of the Hill—
But He who has achieved the Top—
All—is the price of All—

'Tis Sunrise — Little Maid — Hast Thou

'Tis Sunrise — Little Maid — Hast Thou
No Station in the Day?
'Twas not thy wont, to hinder so —
Retrieve thine industry —

'Tis Noon — My little Maid —
Alas — and art thou sleeping yet?
The Lily — waiting to be Wed —
The Bee — Hast thou forgot?

My little Maid — 'Tis Night — Alas
That Night should be to thee
Instead of Morning — Had'st thou broached
Thy little Plan to Die —
Dissuade thee, if I could not, Sweet,
I might have aided — thee —


     -Fr832, J908, fascicle 40, 1864


This poem begins in morning, with the speaker wondering why the “Little Maid” hasn’t risen. She was never one to sleep in. She had a “station in the day,” something to do. But now she’s still. 

By noon, the poet is more worried. “Alas — and art thou sleeping yet?” We get the feeling this “sleep” is deeper than just a nap. The world continues without her. The lily is waiting “to be Wed,” and the bee is looking for her. These are metaphors for the promise of love. The world is going on without the “Little Maid,” but she hasn’t taken her place in it. 

Then we reach the last stanza, and it’s night. “Alas / That Night should be to thee / Instead of Morning.” This isn’t sleep. The “Little Maid” is gone, maybe dead, and worse, by her own hand. The poet wonders, if she had spoken of her “little Plan to Die,” maybe she could have been talked out of it? Or, if not, at least she wouldn’t have been alone. (I wonder what else Dickinson might have meant by “aiding” the “little maid” with her “little plan” to die?)

The repetition of the word “little” in this poem, used four times, stands out. Calling her "Little" signifies that the maid is young and vulnerable. Repeating the adjective in the last stanza, “Thy little Plan to Die,” gives us a sense of tragic irony. Death is not little. But to the Maid, perhaps it seemed like it, just a small escape. Dickinson’s use of "little" carries a sense of a stunned sadness.

The word also gives the poem the tone of a nursery rhyme, which makes it even more haunting. It sounds at first like something you'd say to a child reluctant to get up, but then becomes something more terrible when we realize the girl is dead, and even more so when we find out it was planned. 

By repeating "little," the poem keeps circling back to her lack of agency. The girl is little against the big world. 

The form of the poem is worth a close look. It is is divided into three stanzas, each corresponding to a different time of day; sunrise’s hopeful beginning, noon's missed opportunity, night's irreversible ending. This mirrors the arc of a life, from childhood, to a delay, then to death. The structure is the story.

Also notice how the stanzas begin to fracture as the poem progresses. By the third stanza the lines are choppier and the punctuation grows heavy with commas and dashes, mimicking the stumbling cadence of sorrow. There is a sense of observation giving way to collapse.

The repeated address “My little Maid” at the start of each stanza is repetitive, like a chant, but each time the tone behind the words shifts. First there is a mild correction, then concern and, finally, grief.

The poem says to the despondent reader, don't don't be afraid to talk to someone, especially if you have Emily Dickinson around. And don't forget the promise of the Lily and the Bee. 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes:

1. The poem reminds me of Blake’s “Little Lamb, who made Thee,” with its repetition, and its use of “Thou.”  There is also an echo of "maid" there in the word "made." I’m convinced, by now, that Dickinson read and subsumed Blake. And like many of Blake's poems, this one is about innocence lost. 

2. There is another echo here, the nursery rhyme,

Little maid, little maid,
Whither goest thou?
Down in the meadow
To milk my cow.

It's as if Dickinson took the maid's imperative to "milk my cow," and all of its innuendo, and rebelled against it. That was no life for her. That helps makes sense of "I might have aided — thee —"

3. I've noticed that Dickinson has used the endearment "Sweet" a few times in the poems written in 1864. In at least one of these, the word "Sue" was replaced with "Sweet. This makes me wonder if this poem was possibly for Sue too, though I'm not sure what to make of that. 

 

Till Death—is narrow Loving—

Till Death—is narrow Loving—
The scantest Heart extant
Will hold you till your privilege
Of Finiteness—be spent—

But He whose loss procures you
Such Destitution that
Your Life too abject for itself
Thenceforward imitate—

Until—Resemblance perfect—
Yourself, for His pursuit
Delight of Nature—abdicate—
Exhibit Love—somewhat—


     -Fr831, J907, Fascicle 40, 1864


I showed this poem to the poet Jennifer Moxley and her response was “Ouch! Dickinson is gnarly.” Yes! Gnarly is a good word for her.

Let’s take this poem stanza by stanza.

Till Death—is narrow Loving—
The scantest Heart extant
Will hold you till your privilege
Of Finiteness—be spent—

Loving someone only until death (“Till death do us part”) is shallow. Even the smallest heart can manage that and will hold you (keep you going) until your time as a finite being runs out.

But He whose loss procures you
Such Destitution that
Your Life too abject for itself
Thenceforward imitate—

But He (possibly Christ) whose loss leaves you so completely desolate that your life becomes too empty to sustain itself, you start to imitate,

Until—Resemblance perfect—
Yourself, for His pursuit
Delight of Nature—abdicate—
Exhibit Love—somewhat—

Until you resemble Him perfectly and give up your own self, abandon the joys of life and the natural world, and in doing so, finally show what love truly is.

The “But” of the second stanza marks a sharp contrast between ordinary and extraordinary love. Loving until death is common, but there’s another kind of love that begins after death, and it’s so powerful that it unmakes you. That “But” is the turning hinge of the poem. It shifts from finiteness to something that begins where death ends.

Another aspect worth exploring is the idea that “He” is Christ. A couple points about this. “Destitution” caused by loss of Him mirrors what St. John of the Cross called "the dark night of the soul." The poet's life becomes “too abject for itself,” like the soul without divine purpose, or maybe like one who has become overwhelmed because of the horrors of the world. The words “perfect” and “imitation” are clues too. “Thenceforward imitate—/ Until—Resemblance perfect—” "Imitatio Christi" is the basic idea of becoming more like Christ, imitating His life and even death. “Delight of Nature—abdicate—” Giving up the pleasures of nature sounds a lot like Christian asceticism. Finally, ending with “Exhibit Love—somewhat—” points to the realization that after all the self-erasure and abandoned joy, the poet only somewhat exhibits love. That humility mirrors Christian teachings. No love can fully match Christ’s love.

But all that said, it’s still difficult to get underneath this poem. First of all, it’s ambiguous whether or not the He in this poem is a lover (not necessarily a man) or Christ. But even if it is about Christ, and I suspect it is, one wonders at how devastating the cost of “perfect love” can be. To abdicate the "Delights of Nature" is a tall order for a nature lover like Emily Dickinson.

Let’s turn our focus to that term in the first stanza, “privilege of finiteness.” At first I took this phrase as earnest, as in, it’s a privilege to be alive, to experience the finite. But upon further reflection, I’m not so sure. I think she is being ironic here. The privilege here seems to be your mortality, the fact that you only have to endure until death. You’re spared the burden of forever. So it’s a dark kind of privilege, a relief by limitation.

But true love begins where that privilege ends, when the beloved is gone and you aren’t allowed to stop. That’s what the second stanza leads to, love that transforms in grief, without the escape hatch of death. This irony draws a sharp contrast between an ordinary and easy finite love and a radical love which is all consuming, and therefore not a privilege, but a burden or a calling.

Finally, let’s take a closer look at that “somewhat” at the end of the poem. After all that self-erasure and imitation, what does the poet say she’s done?

Exhibit Love—somewhat—

That “somewhat” undercuts everything that came before. After describing an act of self-abandonment in love, the poet minimizes it. It’s as if she's saying, even after all this, I only barely approach real love. After the poet gives everything, herself, her joy, her identity, she hesitates. It feels like a sigh. Maybe I’ve shown love. A little.

It also leaves the poem open-ended. The “somewhat” leaves the reader in tension. Is Dickinson being humble, or expressing futility?

Mourning can completely overtake a person, not just emotionally, but existentially. The real exhibition of love isn’t found in loyalty during life, but in the transformation of the self after loss.

This poem offers no easy comfort, but it does offer witness. It tells us that our grief isn’t just pain, it’s transformation. It points to the way that grief consumes you until your whole self becomes a sort of love-offering in return. 

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff 

A gnarly pine reveals the heat of thousands of seasons

The Admirations—and Contempts—of time—

The Admirations—and Contempts—of time—
Show justest—through an Open Tomb—
The Dying—as it were a Height
Reorganizes Estimate
And what We saw not
We distinguish clear—
And mostly—see not
What We saw before—

'Tis Compound Vision—
Light—enabling Light—
The Finite—furnished
With the Infinite—
Convex—and Concave Witness—
Back—toward Time
And forward—
Toward the God of Him—

      -Fr830, J906, fascicle 40, 1864

The reality of death puts things into perspective. There is a raw truth in this poem that most of us can understand. A confrontation with death can change your priorities. This is one reason why a thinker like Emily Dickinson spends time meditating on death. It helps one to see the “Light.”

What are the "Contempts" of time? Well, today I read that there are plans to build a new $200 million gold ballroom in the White house. Perhaps when you hold that idea up to people struggling and starving, this may, upon reflection through the "Open Tomb," be considered one of the “Contempts” of time? (Of course it is pretty easy to point the fingers elsewhere, but much harder to go inward, to go "concave." I have plenty of my own "Contempts" to worry about.)

I like that phrase “Open Tomb” in the second line. The adjective “Open” can be read both literally and figuratively here. If you are looking into an open tomb, you see the body for the last time, life-like but lifeless. It’s an unforgettable sight. But “Open” also has the connotation of truth being “Open.”

We are also reminded of the stone rolled away from Christ’s tomb, leaving it open and... empty. Evoking Christ points us back toward the “Admirations” in the first line, the sense of sacrifice for others, but it also helps us make sense of that odd phrase at the end, “the God of Him,” since “Him” may well be referring to Christ, He of the empty open tomb. 

The Dying—as it were a Height

Dying as the apex of life is something I have seen in Dickinson before, though I can’t recall the specific poem. Can anybody help me here? There is this one, in which it is the wounded deer that leaps highest, which carries a similar idea, but its not the one I'm thinking of. At any rate, death is seen as a height toward which you climb, and from which you can clearly see the life below you. This vantage point “reorganizes estimates” of what we focused on in life.

Reorganizes Estimate
And what We saw not
We distinguish clear—
And mostly—see not
What We saw before—

What we “saw not,” which might be, for example,  the incomparable worth of love and generosity, becomes more clear to us with death at hand. And, likewise, we no longer look at the objects of our own desires, with which we were so obsessed, in the same way, if at all.

'Tis Compound Vision—
Light—enabling Light—

This is a kind of double vision, more than ordinary sight, one kind of illumination (divine?) helps make sense of another, such as the light of eternity casting meaning onto the light of life.

The Finite—furnished
With the Infinite—

Our limited mortal experience is “furnished” with the eternal. The moment of death brings the two together. The idea of the Infinite being a "furnishing" is an interesting way to imagine it. It reminds me of Dickinson’s poem from earlier in this fascicle, in which she is getting bulletins from immortality all day.

Convex—and Concave Witness—
Back—toward Time—
And forward—
Toward the God of Him—

Convex and Concave Witness. What an interesting way to put it. This is another angle on Dickinson’s famous statement, “Circumference is my business.” Reviewing your life may be seen as a concave looking (inwardly round), with your furthest memories forming the furthest edge of the arc. Meanwhile, looking ahead, convexly, bubbles outward toward the “God of Him.” It’s a lens looking both ways at once.

The “Him,” at the end of this poem, could refer to anyone who has died and brought our attention to what really matters, but it could also refer to Christ. The two possibilities are suggestively conflated.

I’ve been to a few open-casket funerals and the experience does wake one up to life. Once, though, I encountered a dead homeless man in a park in San Francisco. The experience helped me realize that I didn't want to end up dying alone, without family or friends. Up until that time in my life I had notions of becoming an independent loner, with Whitman as a kind of model, but after witnessing this lonely death, my ideas changed. 

In a similar manner, by reminding us of the "Open tomb," this poem attempts to help us reorganize our estimations of the worth of things.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes: This poem has a strange meter and rhyme scheme. The iambic meter goes 5/4/4/4/3/3/3/3 in the first stanza, with an AABBCDCD rhyme scheme, and then the second stanza is essentially a broken-up iambic pentameter, with regular rhyme at the end of each pentameter. I don’t know what to make of this, but its fascinating to watch what Dickinson does compositionally from poem to poem. 

Also, there is something about the short taught lines of the broken pentameter that enacts compound vision, seeing both sides; human and divine, temporal and eternal, Admiration and contempt, “saw not” and “distinguish clear”, convex and concave, back and forward, like a see-saw.