Enclosed ’twas not of Rail
A Consciousness it’s Acre, and
It held a Human Soul -
Entombed by whom, for what offense
If Home or Foreign born -
Had I the curiosity
’Twere not appeased of men
Till Resurrection, I must guess
Denied the small desire
A Rose upon it’s Ridge to sow
Or take away a Briar -
-Fr852, J876, Fascicle 38, 1864
Here follows the 3rd of Anthony Madrid's four commentaries for Prowling Bee:
This one’s riddling. She’s talking about her body. Paraphrase:
It could be considered a grave, though there was no tombstone nor surrounding railing. This grave’s border was the edge of consciousness and sensation. Its tenant was my soul.
Who entombed this soul in this body, and as punishment for what crime (committed on earth or elsewhere)—nobody knows. If I were to ask around, no one could tell me.
I’ll just have to guess, ’til Resurrection, when all questions will be answered. Meantime I’m denied the desire to improve this “gravesite,” either by adornment or by getting rid of bad parts. I’m stuck with it. (Which is the real reason I’m calling it a grave.)
She doesn’t say anything about changing her sex, but the poem easily bears that reading. It could just as easily mean she wanted to grow wings or a tail but couldn’t.
At any rate: Dissatisfaction with the body.
Thank you Anthony. That angle is insightful. Dissatisfaction with the body is something most of us can relate to in one way or another. Perhaps in Dickinson's case it was tied in with her physical well-being. I know she was "sickly" through long bouts of her life.
It leaves me with a question though. If the body is the encapsulating "it" of this poem, then why wouldn't the poet be able to adorn it with roses, or soften the sting of the briars with salves?
There exists something referred to as "soul murder."
ReplyDeleteCompare with Whitman's "O Living Always, Always Dying!"
ReplyDeleteHe gives us a funny way out of Emily's body. All it takes is continuous soul death and resurrection. Easy!
Also, Adam, come on. The soul doesn't chafe for lack of lotions. Anthony's right. What the soul craves is a tail.
ReplyDeleteIt's a problem more with the analogy maybe. You can adorn a grave, so you should be able to do it with a body too, right?
DeleteBut I agree that these are semantics and that she is talking about a kind of pain that transcends the body. It appears here that the soul just wants out of the body and any beautifying or balm would be beside the point.
But maybe I am missing the point?
I think about Keats and the Beauty he left behind, his ridge of roses, and, also, about how desperately he wanted to stay in the body and live. The soul is served both by beauty and by balm. The body seems a little less like a prison then, even if the soul is cramped in there.
Maybe if we read the poem backward, the point is that just as the soul wishes to escape the body, so the soul wishes to escape the grave, and therefore there is no point in adorning a grave, at least no point for the dead, who has escaped any such confines as fast as it could.
I agree, therefore, about the soul craving a tail.