Robbed by Death—but that was easy— (take 2)

Robbed by Death—but that was easy—
To the failing Eye
I could hold the latest Glowing—
Robbed by Liberty

For Her Jugular Defences—
This, too, I endured—
Hint of Glory—it afforded—
For the Brave Beloved—

Fraud of Distance—Fraud of Danger,
Fraud of Death—to bear—
It is Bounty—to Suspense's
Vague Calamity—

Staking our entire Possession
On a Hair's result—
Then—seesawing—coolly—on it—
Trying if it split—

    Fr838, J971, Fascicle 40, 1864

This is my second attempt at writing a post on this poem. My interpretation changed, in part due to reading the biography of Emily Dickinson by Alfred Habegger, and in part because of David Preest's reading of the poem. Here goes take two:

Robbed by Death—but that was easy—

When you read this line in isolation, it appears to be saying that being robbed by the death of someone was easy. But that can't be right, can it? That's a cold thing to say. It seems selfish. It's like, no big deal, you died. But that isn't like Emily Dickinson at all. She was someone who was extremely affected by the death of a loved one. 

So we read on to see how the poet will qualify this statement. 

To the failing Eye

This qualification of "easy" reads like: It may seem easy to be robbed by death to the eye that fails to see. In other words, it's not easy at all. Your eyes are failing you if you think this is easy. 

But then I quickly realized that failing here must refer back to death. We need the next line now to further qualify these two lines. 

Here we have an excellent example of the slipperiness of Dickinson’s use of dashes. If you take the first two lines together, then the failing eye could mean the "failing" eye of the one who is reading this poem. But then after I read the third line I could see, after having already processed the first two lines together, the dash at the end of line one better functions as a full stop, like this:

Robbed by Death—but that was easy.

To the failing Eye

I could hold the latest Glowing—

Now she appears to be saying, "I was robbed of a loved one by death, but that was made easier, because at least I could hold up the latest glowing to their failing eyes."

So, it wasn't easy, after all, but it was the easier of the two, because the poet could help the beloved die.

I had to work a bit for that reading, but it's such a beautiful idea that it was worth working for, and it is, somehow, worth more because of having to work for it. It sticks deeper.

There's so much in the idea of holding the "latest Glowing.” It's such a beautiful phrase. I want to burn it onto a stump of tree in the backyard of my mother's house.

Literally the phrase would mean that you are holding a candle to help the failing eye to see. A held "Glowing" could be glowing eyes too, as they hold the gaze of the dying, the warm flame of a present soul, or even, a poem. 

This poem is, for the reader, the latest Glowing. 

I connect this passage with one I recently read in Alfred Habegger's biography of Emily Dickinson, "My Wars Are Laid Away In Books." 

When Emily was 14 she had a friend/cousin named Sophia Holland. Emily described her in a letter as a "friend near my age & with whom my thoughts & her own were the same." 

When this friend died Emily was allowed to watch "over her bed." 

"It seemed that to me I should die too," Emily recalled, "if I could not be permitted to watch over her or even to look at her face."

This is from Habegger:

"Emily prevailed on the doctor to allow one last look. She took  off her shoes and quietly stepped to the sickroom, stopping in the doorway. There Sophia

lay mild & beautiful as in health & her pale features lit up with an unearthly - smile. I looked as long as friends would permit & when they told me I must look no longer I let them lead me away." Then, " I shed no tears, for my heart was too full to weep, but after she was laid in her coffin & I felt I could not call her back again I gave way to a fixed melancholy. I told no one the cause of my grief."

It stops your heart doesn't it? It gives a living dimension to the opening lines of this poem.

Now we are fully invested in this poem and want to read on, to see the full light of the candle, its glowing apotheosis. So we read on.

Robbed by Liberty

For Her Jugular Defences—
This, too, I endured—
Hint of Glory—it afforded—

When you pair the words "Liberty" and "Defences" and even "Jugular" (meaning deadly) you think of fighting, and war, and then, remembering the period, The Civil War.  

Indeed we know that a few years before this poem was written Dickinson lost her family childhood friend Frazar Stearns in the Civil War. And as she wrote this poem the war still raged. 

But Freedom, and its loss, is meta-mythically personal for the poet.  The idea of liberty, and the fight for it, was something that was central to her life. 

Robbed by liberty. How does liberty rob? How does freedom limit? Think about it from the point of view of a woman trying to maintain her vocation of a poet? That would be harder to do in the domestic expectations of a married life, or to one trying to survive in the world without a husband/father's earning power in 1864. 

The struggle for Liberty can even kill you. It goes for the jugular! 

For Dickinson liberty had its own special meaning. She was able to live at home, with her father's support, and unmarried. 

In Matty Dickinson’s charming memoir of Dickinson, Face to Face, she tells of how her Aunt Emily once mimed turning the lock on her bedroom door and said to her: “It’s just a turn— and freedom, Matty!”

If the "suspense" in the last part of this poem is the suspense of whether or not there is an after-life, then Dickinson may also be referring here to her liberty from a marriage with Christ. This is something else we see looming largely in Dickinson's life. You can read all about it in Habbeger's biography.

Anyway, however you read "Liberty" in this poem, Dickinson's sacrifices for liberty, and the pain she endured for it, did afford her "Hint of Glory."  She "endured" freedom for it. The Glory, the direct result of Dickinson’s pursuit of liberty, are these poems, which have indeed held, and are still Glowing, for our own failing eyes.

For the Brave Beloved—

(Brave Beloved = Sophia Holland, Frazar Stearns, ultimately, the reader)

Fraud of Distance—Fraud of Danger,
Fraud of Death—to bear—

The poet is being brave in this poem, facing danger, prison and death, and she is doing it for the sake of a brave beloved.  

I originally read the last section of this poem one way and then when I read David Preest's take on the poem I doubted my own take. I think Preest (in his priestly way) may have gotten a better fix on this poem. 

My initial take was that the end of this poem was about a lover leaving the poet in suspense. Dickinson has written on this theme before. 

Here's the ending I originally wrote: 

"It is Bounty—to Suspense's
Vague Calamity—

All of that difficulty of danger and death is “Bounty” compared to being in suspense.  Difficulty in love is Bounty because at least you will grow from your efforts and sacrifices. I presume Dickinson is speaking of the suspense of whether or not the beloved will return her love, or even can return it.

To know is to respond decisively. But if the initial act is a maybe, is "Vague," then that’s true Calamity because then the love is in limbo. We are in stasis. There is no growth, no Life.

Staking our entire Possession
On a Hair's result—

If we are in love, then we are ready to give all of ourselves, our “entire Possession” to our beloved. But what if the beloved is indecisive, and could go either way? Just a hair's breadth, the smallest detail, could change the whole deal. It’s unfair that for one party the stakes should be complete surrender, while for the other the result is neither here nor there, fifty-fifty, iffy.

But then Dickinson makes an imaginative leap and now the hair's difference between yes or no is one the beloved is swinging on, as if glibly testing it. 

Then—seesawing—coolly—on it—
Trying if it split—

The thought of the beloved seesawing “coolly” on her decision, back and forth, is coolly devastating, and we can see just what is so painful about this suspense for the author. The poet is a “soul at white heat,” but the beloved is cool, indifferent. And not only that, but almost seems to be wanting the hair to split, by swinging so carelessly on the decision. If the hair breaks though, it is the poet, not the beloved, who drops into oblivion.

Dickinson has written about the agony of suspense before, most notably in Fr755, which makes a similar claim, "Suspense is-hostiler-than-death." Here, she makes the word suspense come to life by imagining the beloved suspended in the air, holding onto a hair between her decision of yes or no.

Also, hair is such a personal physical connection to the beloved.  

The last word of the poem, the violent "split," is confusing at first. We think of the phrase splitting hairs here, in the sense of a vertical splitting of a hair, as in making small and unnecessary decisions, and maybe Dickinson was playing with that idea as well, how we argue our points until we are lost, but here she is talking about the hair splitting horizontally, as if the future is in the balance, and just holding on by a thread.

In the first part of this poem we are privy to Dickinson’s brave love, as one who would take on any threat to her life, happily, for the beloved, and then, in the last section of the poem, there is a turn-around, and Dickinson shows us what it means when all of that devotion and bravery is undermined by an indecisive partner.

I would be willing to die for you, the poet says, and you can’t even bother to let me know if that’s good enough for you?

Well, ours may not be the voice Dickinson was hoping to hear from, when she wrote this poem, but still, as its belated recipients, we can answer that her love was not just good enough, it's still the latest Glowing."

I still think that reading can work, but Preest's take is compelling too. He writes, "Indeed to be deprived of a friend by the specific danger of distant battle or by death is sheer ‘Bounty’ compared to the calamity of the vagueness of the suspense over life after death (lines 9-12). For the chances of immortality or annihilation are so evenly balanced that only a hair separates them, and we seesaw in suspense between them, trying to split the hair so as to come firmly down on one side or the other (lines 13-16)."

Preest's take is that Dickinson is talking about the suspense of there being an afterlife or not. I would add to this, piggy-backing off of Preest, the idea that the suspense is of qualifying for the afterlife. The swinging back and forth suddenly takes on immense precariousness. In your hands you hold your own redemption, and you are glibly swinging around and risking the possibility of heaven? 

As of this writing all three readings seem possible. What do you think?

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Girl with candle. Jean Baptiste Santerre. 1678

P.S. All the reproductions of this poem I could find online have the word “stalking” instead of “staking.” I assume one bad transcription of the poem has led to all of those others. I was sure “stalking” must be wrong and so I looked it up in Christanne Miller’s “Poems as She Preserved Them,” and sure enough, the correct word is “staking." Hopefully this blog will serve as a corrective.