Death had the same design;
But the success was his, it seems,
And the discomfit mine.
I meant to tell her how I longed
For just this single time;
But Death had told her so the first,
And she had hearkened him.
To wander now is my abode;
To rest, —to rest would be
A privilege of hurricane
To memory and me.
-Fr881, J718, 1878
When you read an Emily Dickinson poem line by line, as of course you must, then the meaning unwinds in the wiliest of ways. Take this one:
I meant to find her when I came;
This is what we “find” when we enter the poem. Her. The writer whom we meant to find. It's Her poem afterall. But the "her" we meant to find is in turn meaning to find "her." Notice the lower case “her.” Why?
There is something in the lowercase pronoun for me that is intimate. The “her” I knew and loved. This poem immediately sweeps me up into the regret of irretrievable loss.
Of course, as an Emily Dickinson lover you naturally want to know who she is talking about. She did attend a few good girl friends’ death beds in her life we know, including Sophia Holland. (See note #2 below.)
It is easy to read this poem’s death as metaphoric for a great loss of love, such as Sue, or Wadsworth, or what have you, people still very much alive when this poem was written. But I don’t think so. Death is TOO present in this poem to be metaphorical. You can see this played out in the following lines,
Death had the same design;
But the success was his, it seems,
Here the poem takes a twist. This Death is almost predatory. “Design” is a funny word. I asked my friend, an opera singer named Eric Jones, if he had designs on a waitress we both knew and liked. He bristled at the word “design.” No, he said, I don’t have any designs on Susan. I don't think of it like that.” I knew what he meant and why he rejected the word. But hey, they ended up getting married a year later. Was that by design? I leave that answer up to the floor.
Does death have a design? That’s an awesome question, Emily. Death is the law of life, no doubt, but does it have to be? Was it someone at Central’s design decision?
“Make it work!” Tim Gunn, Project Runway.
Like Project Runway, this is a competition, between the poet and Death. Death was faster with his “design” and so "the success was his, it seems."
Does death have a design? That’s an awesome question, Emily. Death is the law of life, no doubt, but does it have to be? Was it someone at Central’s design decision?
“Make it work!” Tim Gunn, Project Runway.
Like Project Runway, this is a competition, between the poet and Death. Death was faster with his “design” and so "the success was his, it seems."
IT SEEMS. I love when Dickinson slips an "it seems" in her poems. It throws everything into question.
“One day you’re in, and one day your out.” Heidi Klum, Project Runway.
Anyway, that’s where design gets you I guess. And death, like Michael Kors himself, is sitting there and smirking.
That leaves the heroine, the one left behind, who is berating herself for not coming faster to the aid of the dead with her potential love.
But the success was his, it seems,
And the discomfit mine.
In the Johnson version of this poem, the one actually written in the fascicle, 15 years before this one, the word for “discomfit” is “surrender.” This is worth noting. Emily made the change from surrender to discomfit some 15 years later! That’s quite a change of temperament, one that is befitting of age.
Surrender, the word she used in 1864 would’ve been more dramatic, and it also would've played more into the idea of competition with death. Discomfit is both less histrionic and, somehow, more resigned and sad.
I meant to tell her how I longed
For just this single time;
My best guess for this poem is that Dickinson went to see the body of deceased friend on her death bed, one whom she admired, and perhaps even had a crush on, and (da da daaaa) designs. Here she is regretting the love affair that could never be. That “one time” is, as all lovers know, all you need. One day and night can feel like an eternity in a love affair.
There is something romantic, in the new sense of the term romantic, about “just this single time.” It’s slightly suggestive. But also what it is suggestive of, which is a night of bliss, is also, itself, suggestive of something else, something transcendent, something fulfilling.
Imagine if Emily had gotten there first? What a difference it might have made. But the danger and the risk of making any such move both psychologically and socially would've been intense for Emily, and notice that, in the end, she didn’t make a move. She got there too late. She’ll never know now. But maybe, just maybe, if she writes a cautionary poem about it, at least, then future readers will not be so timid, nor will there be such a tragic ending.
“One day you’re in, and one day your out.” Heidi Klum, Project Runway.
Anyway, that’s where design gets you I guess. And death, like Michael Kors himself, is sitting there and smirking.
That leaves the heroine, the one left behind, who is berating herself for not coming faster to the aid of the dead with her potential love.
But the success was his, it seems,
And the discomfit mine.
In the Johnson version of this poem, the one actually written in the fascicle, 15 years before this one, the word for “discomfit” is “surrender.” This is worth noting. Emily made the change from surrender to discomfit some 15 years later! That’s quite a change of temperament, one that is befitting of age.
Surrender, the word she used in 1864 would’ve been more dramatic, and it also would've played more into the idea of competition with death. Discomfit is both less histrionic and, somehow, more resigned and sad.
I meant to tell her how I longed
For just this single time;
My best guess for this poem is that Dickinson went to see the body of deceased friend on her death bed, one whom she admired, and perhaps even had a crush on, and (da da daaaa) designs. Here she is regretting the love affair that could never be. That “one time” is, as all lovers know, all you need. One day and night can feel like an eternity in a love affair.
There is something romantic, in the new sense of the term romantic, about “just this single time.” It’s slightly suggestive. But also what it is suggestive of, which is a night of bliss, is also, itself, suggestive of something else, something transcendent, something fulfilling.
Imagine if Emily had gotten there first? What a difference it might have made. But the danger and the risk of making any such move both psychologically and socially would've been intense for Emily, and notice that, in the end, she didn’t make a move. She got there too late. She’ll never know now. But maybe, just maybe, if she writes a cautionary poem about it, at least, then future readers will not be so timid, nor will there be such a tragic ending.
Death is your enemy, and the enemy of your beloved too, so don’t delay, says Aunt Emily.
But Death had told her so the first,
And she had hearkened him.
At this point the poem goes full goth. Death had already seduced "her," is how I’m reading it. She “hearkened him," as if following the call of a lover.
The woman, to whom Emily wishes she had reached first, was seduced, instead, by the ease of death; she listened to it as if following a siren’s call. In other words, it was her own doing. But why? She must have been destitute. And so what if Emily had arrived there first. Would the call of the siren have been there at all? Would her friend's life have been saved? Those are the stakes of this poem. The cause of the hurricane to come.
To wander now is my abode;
In the earlier Johnson version of this poem, “abode” is “repose.” I have to say I like repose better here. The tension between wandering and repose is haunting. It means never resting. You want rest, which sets up the next line,
To rest,--to rest would be
The tension comes to a peak in between those two “to rest”s. You can feel the poet falter here emotionally (though perfectly prettily of course, in full rhythmic control).
To rest, —to rest would be
A privilege of hurricane
To memory and me.
It seems like I’m being long-winded here, I know. But the truth is that every line of Dickinson has something interesting it is doing and is worth looking at closely and expanding upon.
Like, for instance, the grammar of that last stanza for starters. I believe she is saying that rest would be a privilege to a hurricane. That makes most sense, in the context of this poem. It lets you know that the thoughts that she wishes to quiet are powerful and cyclical, looping through her head with mad emotion. This loss, and possibly her role in not preventing it, is like a tempest in her heart.
But Death had told her so the first,
And she had hearkened him.
At this point the poem goes full goth. Death had already seduced "her," is how I’m reading it. She “hearkened him," as if following the call of a lover.
The woman, to whom Emily wishes she had reached first, was seduced, instead, by the ease of death; she listened to it as if following a siren’s call. In other words, it was her own doing. But why? She must have been destitute. And so what if Emily had arrived there first. Would the call of the siren have been there at all? Would her friend's life have been saved? Those are the stakes of this poem. The cause of the hurricane to come.
To wander now is my abode;
In the earlier Johnson version of this poem, “abode” is “repose.” I have to say I like repose better here. The tension between wandering and repose is haunting. It means never resting. You want rest, which sets up the next line,
To rest,--to rest would be
The tension comes to a peak in between those two “to rest”s. You can feel the poet falter here emotionally (though perfectly prettily of course, in full rhythmic control).
To rest, —to rest would be
A privilege of hurricane
To memory and me.
It seems like I’m being long-winded here, I know. But the truth is that every line of Dickinson has something interesting it is doing and is worth looking at closely and expanding upon.
Like, for instance, the grammar of that last stanza for starters. I believe she is saying that rest would be a privilege to a hurricane. That makes most sense, in the context of this poem. It lets you know that the thoughts that she wishes to quiet are powerful and cyclical, looping through her head with mad emotion. This loss, and possibly her role in not preventing it, is like a tempest in her heart.
It's presented here as a terror. Maybe this is the terror she spoke of when she wrote to T.W. Higginson that she had a terror she could tell to no one?
But there are other ways I can see for taking those lines too, gramatically. If you take the line “A privilege of hurricane” by itself, there is a different idea that emerges. What is the privilege of a hurricane? Well, for one, it is to be wild and out of control. But two, there is the eye of calm in the center. I think that’s what Dickinson may be subtly getting at here, between the lines; the necessity to allow emotional release, yet keep a cool inner eye.
The memory and me.
We might ask here, why is "memory" separate from "me?" Is the memory a symbol for the "her" of this poem? Or is Dickinson emphasizing that memory and self are one and the same by presenting them together? Or is she suggesting that memory and self are quite different, yet the loss of the friendship affects both. I find it hard to get a precise reading of this line. But the feeling is that the self would be relieved of it's heartbreaking memory if only it too could rest.
\
The poet, like the deceased before her, is now being seduced by the promise of rest in death.
The narrative arc of this poem is intense. It goes from a kind of competition with death to see who can get to the beloved first, to a deep regret over not being quick enough to get there first, to having to wander for eternity in the restlessness of guilt and lost love, hoping for death. It's got Romeo and Juliet levels of tragedy.
No wonder Dickinson changed the word from “surrender” to “discomfit” 12 years after it was written. "Surrender" suggests giving up, surrendering. "Discomfit" is just...temporary.
Maybe by 1978 the hurricane of Emily Dickinson’s heart and soul had finally begun to quiet down and she took the privilege of resting in the calm eye in the center.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
1. compare this poem to Fr813, which has the same idea as this one, in miniature.
How well I knew Her not
Whom not to know has been
A Bounty in prospective, now
Next Door to mine the Pain.
2. From Marco Ordonez's Facebook page:
Three months after her fifteenth birthday, Emily recalled this loss when writing a note of condolence to Abiah Root.
Yesterday as I sat by the north window the funeral train entered the open gate of the church yard, following the remains of Judge Dickinson's wife to her long home. [The Amherst cemetery could be seen from the second story of the Dickinsons' house on North Pleasant Street.] His wife has borne a long sickness of two or three years without a murmur. She relyed wholly upon the arm of God & he did not forsake her. She is now with the redeemed in heaven & with the savior she has so long loved according to all human probability. I sincerely sympathise with you Dear. A. in the loss of your friend E. Smith. Although I had never seen her, yet I loved her from your account of her & because she was your friend. I was in hopes I might at sometime meet her but God has ordained otherwise & I shall never see her except as a spirit above. . . . I have never lost but one friend near my age & with whom my thoughts & her own were the same. It was before you came to Amherst. My friend was Sophia Holland. She was too lovely for earth & she was transplanted from earth to heaven. I visited her often in sickness & watched over her bed. But at length Reason fled and the physician forbid any but the nurse to go into her room. Then it seemed to me I should die too if I could not be permitted to watch over her or even to look at her face. At length the doctor said she must die & allowed me to look at her a moment through the open door. I took off my shoes and stole softly to the sick room.
There she 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 I must look no longer I let them lead me away. I shed no tear, 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, though it was gnawing at my very heart strings. I was not well & I went to Boston [to visit Aunt Lavinia] & stayed a month & my health improved so that my spirits were better.*
Sophia Holland had died on April 29, 1844, when Emily Dickinson was thirteen years old. To a twentieth-century reader, unaccustomed to the presence of death in the home, Dickinson's persistence and curiosity may seem morbid, but the vigil over Sophia Holland constituted a part of Emily Dickinson's training for womanhood in mid-nineteenth-century Amherst; and if the confrontation with death inspired horror, as it seems to have done in this case, there was no adequate remedy. Dickinson's parents sent her away to Boston so that she might put the episode out of mind; however, death knew no boundaries of city or town, and she understood as much. Thus the event lingered in her imagination, crying out for redress or at least explanation.
How well I knew Her not
Whom not to know has been
A Bounty in prospective, now
Next Door to mine the Pain.
2. From Marco Ordonez's Facebook page:
Three months after her fifteenth birthday, Emily recalled this loss when writing a note of condolence to Abiah Root.
Yesterday as I sat by the north window the funeral train entered the open gate of the church yard, following the remains of Judge Dickinson's wife to her long home. [The Amherst cemetery could be seen from the second story of the Dickinsons' house on North Pleasant Street.] His wife has borne a long sickness of two or three years without a murmur. She relyed wholly upon the arm of God & he did not forsake her. She is now with the redeemed in heaven & with the savior she has so long loved according to all human probability. I sincerely sympathise with you Dear. A. in the loss of your friend E. Smith. Although I had never seen her, yet I loved her from your account of her & because she was your friend. I was in hopes I might at sometime meet her but God has ordained otherwise & I shall never see her except as a spirit above. . . . I have never lost but one friend near my age & with whom my thoughts & her own were the same. It was before you came to Amherst. My friend was Sophia Holland. She was too lovely for earth & she was transplanted from earth to heaven. I visited her often in sickness & watched over her bed. But at length Reason fled and the physician forbid any but the nurse to go into her room. Then it seemed to me I should die too if I could not be permitted to watch over her or even to look at her face. At length the doctor said she must die & allowed me to look at her a moment through the open door. I took off my shoes and stole softly to the sick room.
There she 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 I must look no longer I let them lead me away. I shed no tear, 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, though it was gnawing at my very heart strings. I was not well & I went to Boston [to visit Aunt Lavinia] & stayed a month & my health improved so that my spirits were better.*
Sophia Holland had died on April 29, 1844, when Emily Dickinson was thirteen years old. To a twentieth-century reader, unaccustomed to the presence of death in the home, Dickinson's persistence and curiosity may seem morbid, but the vigil over Sophia Holland constituted a part of Emily Dickinson's training for womanhood in mid-nineteenth-century Amherst; and if the confrontation with death inspired horror, as it seems to have done in this case, there was no adequate remedy. Dickinson's parents sent her away to Boston so that she might put the episode out of mind; however, death knew no boundaries of city or town, and she understood as much. Thus the event lingered in her imagination, crying out for redress or at least explanation.
Emily Dickinson, by Cynthia Griffin Wolff, Part One, III, «School: Faith and the Argument from Design», pp. 76-77; Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988.
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