I felt a Cleaving in my Mind –

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind –
As if my Brain had split –
I tried to match it – Seam by Seam –
But could not make them fit.

The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before –
But Sequence raveled out of Sound
Like Balls – upon a Floor.

    -Fr867, J937, 1864

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind –
As if my Brain had split –

That word split is often used with visceral force by Emily Dickinson, as in the start of the the amazing poem of hers which begins, “Split the lark - and you’ll find the music-” Violence can be felt in the very sound of the word: SPLIT. Splat.

The meaning of the word is rich too. There is a doubleness to "split." Something breaks, but in breaking it also gains in possibility. (Read the post on Fr849 for a deeper discussion on the word).

Cleave is another interesting word because it has a doubleness too. Cleave is a contranym, meaning it can denote two opposite things at once. It can mean coming together as well as coming apart. In this case it seems to be the latter, a cleaving apart, but maybe that third line, “I tried to match it,” hints at the other meaning, two parts cleaving back together.

What could have split Emily’s mind? Loyalty to two opposing ideals? There is all of that push and pull between herself and marriage, or herself and religion, or (you fill in the blank.) There is the possibility that something badly wounded Emily, someone close to her, which fractured her mind. To feel betrayed by love might do it.

I tried to match it Seam by Seam.

A few poems back, in Fr860,  we had the phrase “Rime by Rime,” which was a pun of rhyme by rhyme, a sly reference to poetry. I think this is a further echo of the same idea. Seam by Seam is the brain trying to match itself at the seams, but it is also, perhaps, a stitching together in poetry. To sew together verses even as you are dealing with a torn-apart and tattered mind seems to be at the heart of this poem. And there’s the other echo here, which is the pun on "seem." 

“Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'” says Hamlet, as his mind is splitting apart.

Following the word “Seams” is another rich word that is often found in Dickinson’s poems: “fit.”

But could not make them fit.

Words in Dickinson function like planets around a sun. You can’t quite get to the sun, but the definitions and connotations orbiting around it create a solar system. "Fit" is one of those words. See Fr686 for a good example of the complexities of the word “Fit.”

But of course “fit” here goes in two different directions too. The content of the poem is about not fitting, but everything in the form fits perfectly. Just look how perfectly in this poem “fit” rhymes here with “split”!

The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before –

It is a mind divided. But what is the divide? The poem doesn’t answer that question. Perhaps the divide is between want and need? Or between reason and love? Or (you fill in the blank).

But Sequence raveled out of Sound

Not only do the thoughts not fit together, but they are, somehow, out of sequence.

The word “Sound” here has a few possibilities. Sound as in noise, as in, the thoughts went out beyond sound and into silence, out into no thought.

But Sound can also mean measurement, like sounding the depths of the water. The sequence goes out beyond measure.

Sound can also mean sense, as in, a sound mind. The mind is going out of the realm of reason. There is no more sequence because reason is gone.

Ravel is yet another contranym of sorts. Ravel seems like it would mean the opposite of unravel, and sometimes it does, but usually it means the same as unravel, as I believe it does here.

But again, like we saw with cleaving apart to cleaving together, and in not fitting being fitting, there is a raveling together here in the form of the poem itself. The brain may be unwinding like a ball of yarn, but there is a winding up the yarn too, you might say, in the tight form and perfect end-rhymes of the poem.

Like Balls – upon a Floor.

These balls must refer to balls of yarn, or thread, being used to try to seam the thoughts together. The startling image here is of a woman attempting to sew, but her mind being so out of sorts that she drops the balls off her lap, just lets them go, where they unroll themselves on the floor. Note that ball is plural here, as if several threads have been dropped. Ball made plural also makes you think of a juggler having dropped all of the balls at once.

There is a letting go of the balls of thought here. The poem, with its contranyms, “cleave,” and “ravel,” is itself a contranym. It can be read as pointing toward a loss or a gain, depending on how you look at it. You can read the poem, in the frame of its poetry, as call to drop the balls and just watch them roll. 

And yet, paradoxically, even as the mind is, for better or worse, coming apart, marvelously, the poem comes together.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

This Dust, and its Feature—

This Dust, and its Feature—
Accredited—Today—
Will in a second Future—
Cease to identify—

This Mind, and its measure—
A too minute Area
For its enlarged inspection's
Comparison—appear—

This World, and its species
A too concluded show
For its absorbed Attention's
Remotest scrutiny—


       -Fr866, J936, Fascicle 39, 1864

I first met Katy Lederer back in the early 90s when we were both at Berkeley and studying under poets like Thom Gunn, Lyn Hejinian and Robert Hass. Katy was one of the first poets to really draw my attention to Emily Dickinson's work. I remember listening to her talk about Dickinson's precise linguistic clarity in the realm of very abstract subjects like faith and eternity in amazement. "How does she do that?"  I still think about that conversation often. 

I've been an admirer of Katy's poetry and writing ever since and I'm very grateful she agreed to write a post for Prowling Bee. Her essay gives us a valuable new way to think about Dickinson's work that extends from the Latinate past toward the language of future. 

***

We are living in the era of the rise of what are known as the “large language models,” or LLMs. In this context, one might think of Dickinson’s poems, and this poem in particular, as a miniature language model. Though known as one of the foundational lyricists of the American tradition, Dickinson was also a technician; her hymnlike verses can be analyzed as spiritual machines.

In 2017, a group of eight technical researchers published a seminal paper in the field of deep learning titled “Attention Is All You Need.” In the paper, they introduced the transformer, a piece of technical architecture that made the modern incarnation of artificial intelligence possible. The etymology of the word “attention,” which appears in line 11 of Fr866, is worth considering here: from the Latin tendere, it means to reach for, to stretch or extend. Language itself is a tool for such extension; the M-dash, in the
Dickinsonian context, a kind of reaching for, or stretching toward, a phrase.

Latinate words are notably spatial, constructed as they often are of directional affixes and roots. As with “Attention,” the word “Accredited,” in line two of the poem, from the Latin credere, also implies a kind of reaching or extension, in this case of credit outward (ac-). “This Dust, and its Feature—” writes Dickinson in the first of the poem’s three stanzas,

Accredited—Today—
Will in a second Future—
Cease to identify—

The “Dust” in this case might be dust on a piece of furniture, or dust motes floating in the sunlight, or possibly even the dust – composed of sloughed off skin cells or grime –layered on a woman’s skin. One thinks of the expression “dust to dust.” “Dust” in this instance implies mortality, the ephemeral flesh; that which is “Accredited” – as in extended credence, a kind of credit – in the moment, but which will, in due time, “cease to identify,” to exist. What was once a “Future” inexorably transforms into a present; what was expansively alive will become dead. The credit – of life, love, time – will no longer be extended.

In the second stanza of the poem, Dickinson takes us from “This Dust” to “This Mind” –from the material flesh to the seat of cognition and awareness:

This Mind, and its measure—
A too minute Area
For its enlarged inspection’s
Comparison—appear

Here, once again, the poem becomes spatial – literally an “area,” and a measurable one at that. This area is “too minute,” too small to accommodate the “enlarged inspection’s/ Comparison.” As with “Attention” and “Accredited,” the word “inspection” is Latinate, from the root specere, which means to look, a looking into or inside (the prefix in-). Whereas “This Dust, and its Feature” were accredited, extended outward into the material body and into time, “This Mind, and its measure” try to extend inward; but, alas, its “Area” is “too minute,” not big enough. The divine mystery – of consciousness and its desire to in-spect, or look into, itself – cannot find adequate accommodation in the “measure” of the “Mind.” To return to the analogy with LLMs introduced at the beginning of this commentary, the “measure” of the material mind doesn’t scale, its processing power is inadequate to the task of full spiritual self-awareness.

In the third and final stanza of the poem, Dickinson pans out from the interior inspections of the Mind to the expansive vista of “This World” and “its species.” Here, one might imagine a kind of pastoral scene, of animals and plants – also material, a permutation of this “Dust” – grazing and gamboling along the countryside. Who or what made “This World,” full as it is of material, kinetic life? As with so many of Dickinson’s poems, a sense of divine mystery pervades. The poem functions as both a prayer and paean – a Platonic love poem addressed to a Creator. This Creator, unnamed here, is the locus of a remote, “absorbed Attention” that wishes to “scrutinize,” to inspect “This World.” But alas, “This World” is “too concluded,” too disappointingly finite.

Dickinson’s poetics are preternaturally algorithmic. One might describe her poems as linguistic equations, studded as they are by the quantitative dash. But there is a tragedy inherent in Dickinson’s intentionally composed poems – they seem to promise a summation, a kind of balance or totality, and yet there is always an unsettling remainder, an inability to tally the metaphysical reality. The flesh, including the mind and its cognition, is simply not equipped to make sense of the material context in which it finds itself, no matter how strenuously it extends itself outward or attends. Attention in this case – even that of a writer as sensitive and attuned to the subtleties of language as Dickinson – is simply not enough, or possibly too much.

      -Katy Lederer

         "In the temper and the tantrum, in the well-kept arboretum

         I am waiting, like an animal,

         For poetry."   

         from "That Everything's Inevitable" by Katy Lederer

Expectation — is Contentment —

Expectation — is Contentment —
Gain — Satiety —
But Satiety — Conviction
Of Necessity

Of an Austere trait in Pleasure —
Good, without alarm
Is a too established Fortune —
Danger — deepens Sum —


    -Fr865, J807, Fascicle 38, 1864

For some reason when I first read this I heard Julie Andrews as Maria Von Trapp, or maybe Mary Poppins, sing-saying it. “Children, repeat after me, "Expectation — is Contentment —…”

Come to think of it, there is something Governess-like in Emily Dickinson.

This one is tough syntactically from the very first line:

Expectation — is Contentment —

Is contentment the subject or object here?

Does this line mean that (our) Expectation is (to eventually have) Contentment?

Or does it mean that expectation itself, that is to say, anticipation, is where one finds true contentment?

Which of these two different ideas is meant by Dickinson? It seems like she must mean one or the other, right? But Dickinson does this kind of syntactically slippery thing all of the time, so we suspect she means both. This poem works either way that you interpret the line and both play into its meaning. 

In the two ways to read this line, we actually have one entire idea, which is this: 

We have the expectation that if we have what we want, then we will become content (first meaning). But anticipation is, ironically, where one may find true contentment (second meaning).

In the way that I processed the poem, the second meaning didn't kick in until I’d read it all the way through once. It’s like a coda, but one that you have to go back to the beginning of the poem to get. 

OK, let's work through the rest of the poem.

Expectation — is Contentment —
Gain — Satiety —

We have an expectation of contentment, and that if we gain we will be satisfied.

But Satiety — Conviction
Of Necessity

But satiety (feeling full) brings a conviction of a Necessity. Conviction and Necessity are both strong words. Necessity. Of what? 

Satiety brings a...

Conviction
Of Necessity

Of an Austere trait in Pleasure —

What does having an austere trait in our pleasure mean? Austerity means something like "restraint of luxuries", so I think an austere trait would be showing constraint.

The next lines comprise an aphorism:

Good, without alarm
Is a too established Fortune —

If there is no alarm in our good, then it’s too “established." Don't allow yourself to get too comfortable, the good Governess is reminding us. You mustn't rest too easily in your feeling of satisfaction, in your happiness. Stay alert to pain.  

Then she looks at the idea from a slightly different angle,

Danger — deepens Sum —

This is the third or fourth wisdom bomb she’s dropped on us in this poem. Danger deepens Sum. This could mean a couple things as far as I can figure it. One is that when we gain, the risk of loss makes our wholeness (sum) more meaningful. It “deepens” it.

Another possibility is that when we are are on the other side of gain, in expectation, the risk we take for that gain deepens it.

That all brings us back around to that first line again. Now that we’ve worked our way through the poem, the first line begins to take on its second meaning. Now we can see that because satiety is suspect, expectation (anticipation) is where true contentment lies.

The argument that Dickinson is making here is difficult for us to get because it's ironic. (I heard Elon Musk say in an interview recently that "fate is the ultimate irony maximizer." Hmm.) It’s not in gain that we find satisfaction, but in expectation. And if we, perchance, find ourselves in gain, well then, it is best to maintain a sense of austerity, which is to say, moderation.

This is the last poem of Fascicle 38. Emily perhaps wrote this poem to remind herself of what is “Necessary,"  but I'm convinced this is aimed for an audience who still needs to learn these lessons. I believe she wrote it for us, the Governess's charges. She’s helping us to understand the wisdom of valuing our desire over the satisfaction of desire, and once we have achieved our desire, the necessity of austerity. We are to keep in mind that danger “deepens the Sum.” 

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff