The Soul's distinct connection

The Soul's distinct connection
With immortality
Is best disclosed by Danger
Or quick Calamity—

As Lightning on a Landscape
Exhibits Sheets of Place—
Not yet suspected—but for Flash—
And Click—and Suddenness.


    -F901, J974, 1865


This poem points us to a revelation. Since the landscape is dark, though, we don't know what that revelation is. All we have is the finger pointing into the dark. This poem bears witness to an experience of Truth. The revelation is best described by this witness as "the soul's distinct connection with Immortality."

This revelation, she tells us, is best disclosed by danger and calamity. Dickinson is like Dante returning from hell, albeit with far more brevity in her poetry. What our wizened witness reveals to us in this poem, in the fewest words possible, is just the word Immortality and the realization of our Soul's distinct connection to it. Since these words "Immortality" and "Soul" are quite slippery ones, everything hinges on how you interpret them. 

What is a Soul? What is Immortality? (And how can Emily wield these words with such impunity?)

For most people Immortality means the self goes on forever. Immortality, though, is impossible. It is a self-negating paradox. To be mortal is to have flesh and blood, so one cannot be not mortal. 

The only way one could be immortal would be to live beyond the confines of the body. And for that to be there would have to be some way for the memories of the self to remain beyond the body. Something would have to carry the memories. One wonders, is there a back-up storage for the brain, like memories stored in the Cloud? Perhaps, who knows. Belief in this kind of perpetual self is a mere matter of Faith. 

If Immortality is not some kind of living-forever of the self, then what is it? What kind of immortality is it that Danger and Calamity Reveals? What is this "distinct connection"?

According to this poem, those who have experienced intense Danger and Calamity would best know the answer to this question. I don’t think I have ever quite felt this myself. I’ve felt terror, and have experienced some horrible things, but none of them made me see a flash of Immortality lighting up the landscape. On the contrary, Danger and Calamity have the opposite effect on me. They make me want to cling tighter to the temporal.

What I feel in moments of Danger and Calamity is a deeper sense of what is real and meaningful to me, a deeper connection to loved ones and to the earth and stars beyond. Perhaps love comprises a kind of immortality then? 

Yesterday Tom C, faithful Prowling Bee reader and writer, was in Queens and paid a call. We had a talk about this poem, since I had been thinking about it. He told me his experience of going through grief and how it gave him a real sense that Love is permanent. Love doesn't diminish, said Tom.  

There is something immortal in that feeling of human connection. In one of my favorite Dickinson poems she states that the smallest human heart’s extent reduces Infinity to nothing:

The Life we have is very great.
The Life that we shall see
Surpasses it, we know, because
It is Infinity.

But when all Space has been beheld
And all Dominion shown
The smallest Human Heart’s extent
Reduces it to none.

I’ve long been fascinated by Dickinson's conception of immortality.  It goes beyond the usual definition of the word. In one of her letters she writes, "It may be she came to show you Immortality." I suspect she was speaking of a young one who died. But she might just as well be speaking of herself too. So what is it she came to show us? The following quotes are all taken from her letters.

"No heart that break
but further went than
Immortality."

"Emerson's intimacy with
his "Bee" only
immortalized him."

"The 'infinite beauty' of
which you speak comes
too near to seek."

"Show me eternity, and
I will show you Memory-
Be you - While I am Emily -
Be next - what you have ever been -
Infinity."

"There is no first, or
last, in Forever-
It is Centre, there,
all the time."

"The risks of immortality
are perhaps its charm."

"A letter always seemed
to me like Immortality,
for is it not the Mind
alone, without corporeal friend?"

"Dear friend, can you walk,
were the last words that I wrote her.
Dear friend, I can fly-
her immortal reply."

"An hour for books
those enthralling friends
the immortalities"

"The immortality of flowers
must enrich our own."

"Show me eternity, and
I will show you Memory-
Be you - While I am Emily -
Be next - what you have ever been -
Infinity."

"Amazing human heart-
a syllable can make
to quake like jostled tree-
what Infinite - for thee!"

What do you make of all that? Immortality is tied in with a broken heart, with intimacy with a bee, with the cycles of nature, with memory, with what you have always been, with the eternal moment, with risks, with the written word (letters and books), with flight, flowers, and the power of the human heart.

She’s getting at the circumference of something profound here, and this poem is just another clue: Danger and Calamity.

***

Okay, all that said, and that was a lot, one thing we haven't broached yet is the word "distinct." Distinct means "identifiable, separate, clearly different from others." So then, Immortality, in this poem, is either about our distinct selves going on forever into the future, or its about the way we hold the distinction of each other in a forever way in our heart. I suspect for Dickinson, it is about the latter.

***

Another thing worth mentioning here is the amazingly cool imagery of this poem, the way it conflates lightning and photography and spiritual insight together into one thing. It’s an awesome way to conceive of something larger than what it is we can ordinarily perceive. The lightning flash is like a 3D photograph, but of a temporal landscape of Immortality! Whoa. 

     -/)dam Wade DeGraff