Perhaps, recalls the Man
Just measuring unconsciousness
The Sea and Spar between.
To fail within a Chance —
How terribler a thing
Than perish from the Chance's list
Before the Perishing!
-F927, J879, sheet 14, 1865
In the first stanza I see a man who is in a shipwreck and is holding onto the spar (the mast), about to go under. This might be the end he thinks. He’s measuring how long it will be until he loses consciousness. Each second could “Perhaps" be his last. But maybe there's still hope?
The second stanza is where the philosophical heft of the poem comes in:
To fail within a Chance —
How terribler a thing
To die while there is still a chance of survival is more terrible...
Than perish from the Chance's list
Before the Perishing!
To be on "Chance's list" means you're still among those who might survive, so to "perish from Chance's list" means possibility has ended. In other words, it is worse to die while still having a chance to live than to be doomed from the start.
To return to the metaphor of the sailor drowning: if he is going to die anyway, it would've been easier to go down with the ship than to stay alive a little longer struggling to live, dying of thirst or exposure, which are fates worse than drowning.
This metaphor could apply to love, or even faith. I think this poem can be seen as an examination of hope. The cruelty lies in being suspended between hope and loss. Hope is "terribler" because possibility intensifies suffering.
This metaphor could apply to love, or even faith. I think this poem can be seen as an examination of hope. The cruelty lies in being suspended between hope and loss. Hope is "terribler" because possibility intensifies suffering.
"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" it says on the doorway to hell in Dante's Inferno. But Dickinson might hang her sign on hell's exit: "Abandon all hope, ye who exit here."
"Be Mine the Doom" she says in F919.
I think if you read the poem backwards, you arrive again at that first line, "Each second is the last." That line, by itself, is powerful. There is no hope for the future in this line, but there is great emphasis on the present.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
Alfred Guillou, "Adieu", 1892
If I’m getting this reference right, Emily is identifying here with the witch of Endor; a medium who reveals the future (Saul's doom), no matter how uncomfortable this truth may be. The witch is working in opposition to Yahweh, but not, we note, without compassion for Saul. She feeds and comforts him.
P.P.S. I'm not sure I agree that hope is "terribler." Hope may intensify the pain, but it also motivates the struggle for survival. It can keep you alive. Things do, often, get better.
The man in the first stanza may be engaging in something similar to what is described in F917: "As One does Sickness over" and "As One rewalks a Precipice." He RECALLS the moments when he was drowning and felt sure death was coming for him. In the distance he saw a spar, but it seemed unlikely that the ship would reach him in time; he would lose consciousness and die. Turns out he was wrong; help did come in time, and he survived.
ReplyDeleteIn the second stanza, we are told that, objectively, there are two types of situations: either we have a chance to make it or we don't. The point may be that it is impossible for us to know which type of situation we find ourselves in, as shown by the example with the drowning man. If we are in the first type of situation, don't struggle hard enough and perish, it is our own fault. The tragedy lies in the fact that it was within our power to save ourselves. Admittedly, there are situations in which we are doomed. If this is the case, perhaps some comfort can be found in the thought that the outcome is not the result of our failure but of circumstances beyond our control.
There seems to be some connection with the previous poem where we read "I knew not but the next / Would be my final inch—"
Thank you for this.
DeleteYour take on "recall" is game-changer. I took it that the man was recalling that each second could be the last because he was drowning. In other words the situation recalled it to him. But your reading, that he is recalling this drowning incident later, after having been saved, is feasible and, if it is what was meant, changes the meaning of the second stanza of the poem significantly.
The call back to the "final inch" of F926 is perspicacious too.