tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post5525533345868023500..comments2024-03-29T00:07:13.458-07:00Comments on the prowling Bee: Before I got my eye put out—Susan Kornfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05384011972647144453noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-23819425461373193102023-05-27T17:36:03.758-07:002023-05-27T17:36:03.758-07:00ED has decided to narrow her universe, not seek ex...ED has decided to narrow her universe, not seek experience outside her home, but look inward, at her soul, where she hopes to find more truth than outer world can offer. We’ll learn if she can do that, as time goes by.Larry Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02810899482852120751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-90758048300656772662023-02-23T09:25:51.721-08:002023-02-23T09:25:51.721-08:00Thank you Susan for your analysis and Jimmy for yo...Thank you Susan for your analysis and Jimmy for your comments! I am so moved by this poem since I also suffer from an eye disease and it resonates for me, but I'm especially grateful to you both for your 'insight.' They truly enhanced my understanding and appreciation of the poem all the more. Beckynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-75013874500146849882023-02-20T20:23:52.233-08:002023-02-20T20:23:52.233-08:00This is a late response -- just now discovered it ...This is a late response -- just now discovered it -- and I thank you, Jimmy, for your comments. They enrich the poem for me -- particularly in thinking about the use of other senses and in the 'supremacy of the imagination over visual sight.'<br />Susan Kornfeldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05384011972647144453noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-59326697933930573352020-06-12T06:19:22.059-07:002020-06-12T06:19:22.059-07:00Very interesting interpretation, Susan.
In addit...Very interesting interpretation, Susan. <br /><br />In addition to your insightful contextual information regarding Dickinson's failing eyesight, I wonder if the subject matter of the poem could also have been informed or inspired by Dickinson's reading of Shakespeare's 'King Lear'. <br /><br />Stylistically, the poem also has a number of striking features. On reading it aloud, I was struck by the witty play on words that Dickinson employs, especially in the first stanza with the words 'I' and 'eye' rhyming in line 1, and the words 'know' and 'no' rhyming in line 4. It suggests the speaker still retains some semblance of a humorous disposition despite her physical handicap, possibly as a way of making life tolerable, or even as a means of asserting her skill with poetic phonetics, a skill not strictly dependant on physical sight.<br />I also noticed the subtle allusion to other senses in the second stanza, senses on which the speaker of the poem now relies and which have the ability to inform or influence her, as much as her former physical sight did previously. The phrase 'But were it told to me' in line 5 suggests her fully functioning auditory receptivity, and the words 'I tell you that...' of line 7 evokes her power of verbal speech that is in no way diminished.<br /><br />In addition, the comparison of mental sight and physical sight is palpable in the poem. The ostensible ebullience and hyperbole with which Dickinson describes the natural landscape seen in her mind's eye emphasise the supremacy of the imagination over visual sight. The physical world can be conjured up in one's mind, away from the destructive or crippling dangers of the 'Sun', and experienced with a similar potency.<br />Jimmynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-46342922790212796872019-04-26T10:12:31.038-07:002019-04-26T10:12:31.038-07:00Thank you -- that's a good grouping to display...Thank you -- that's a good grouping to display Dickinson's meditations on the relationships of light and seeing and truth and the human psyche. I'm going to go reread those poems now!Susan Kornfeldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05384011972647144453noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-1235840696112492762019-04-26T09:36:23.576-07:002019-04-26T09:36:23.576-07:00I am wondering about the connection to her "T...I am wondering about the connection to her "Tell the Truth but tell it slant" / "the truth must dazzle gradually or else the world go blind." And her "We grow accustomed to the dark." There is some truth that the mystic sees only in darkness.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-75663088796575116342018-11-01T04:25:05.955-07:002018-11-01T04:25:05.955-07:00Hi Susan,
I have said it before and am saying it ...Hi Susan,<br /><br />I have said it before and am saying it now... without your website I would have missed on the many interpretations of ED's poems. Thanks for this wonderful effort and my utmost gratitude to you for the immense joy you have enabled through these interpretations... Thanks once again...Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17012415206219659510noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-25911892738453905882016-02-18T22:27:57.545-08:002016-02-18T22:27:57.545-08:00Thanks! On re-reading the poem I see the killing j...Thanks! On re-reading the poem I see the killing joy in it. There's a sort of ecstasy in the seeing she describes, but it is piercing (like that first daffodil, I think it is). I'm reminded of how she refused to come greet her beloved Samuel Bowles when he returned from some time abroad. She wasn't angry, just, I think, feeling the joy of his return all to strongly. It was Higginson who said that being with her for an hour or two left him exhausted.Susan Kornfeldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05384011972647144453noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-67153729779673886492016-02-17T22:09:52.724-08:002016-02-17T22:09:52.724-08:00I wonder if there is another reading to this poem,...I wonder if there is another reading to this poem, one in which Dickinson longs for sights that she has lost by reflecting that, though she used to enjoy visual pleasures, she didn't really appreciate them like she would now (ironically, given her physical inability to do so). It's a fairly conventional take on blindness--as spiritual insight, but yet as a tragic loss of sensory experience. Although it's "safer" not to look at the sun, I take the danger to be not "truly" seeing, not literal danger (and safeness in other Dickinson poems seems to be a state that is scorned, not embraced).<br /><br />I'm legally blind, and I am particularly interested in representations of disability & bodily impairment in literature (what my dissertation will be on), so I tend be kind of harsh on or sensitive to negative valences in these kinds of things. And the fear of blindness is so great in our society that I can understand Dickinson's "terror" but also wish that more people thought of it as something that doesn't have to be scary, but simply a part of life (albeit one that requires some adjusting, admittedly).<br /><br />Thanks for cluing me in on Sewall's theory about Dickinson's eye condition. Gerald W. Jackson claims it was iritis (which the Emily Dickinson Museum seems to think is the most plausible). I don't know enough about the various conditions to tell which seems more plausible. Your blog in general has been invaluable in helping me think through Dickinson's often mysterious poems.<br /><br />Your interpretation makes sense, and I want the poem to reflect that idea along with the one I've gleamed, as often I think conflicting sentiments exist within Dickinson's work. But given Dickinson's "terror" of blindness, it's hard to not to "see" that here.Andrew Sydlikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01486872749376015924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-76237346461733523582015-01-17T08:28:57.302-08:002015-01-17T08:28:57.302-08:00I think so, too. Thanks for the comment.
I think so, too. Thanks for the comment.<br />Susan Kornfeldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05384011972647144453noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-84669000456688425072015-01-17T07:28:56.077-08:002015-01-17T07:28:56.077-08:00To finish: the window pane, pane being both bounda...To finish: the window pane, pane being both boundary and pain of that boundary.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-8474478908091038122015-01-17T07:27:09.884-08:002015-01-17T07:27:09.884-08:00Thank you for the historical context of ED's v...Thank you for the historical context of ED's visual issues, which are surely the leaping off point for her musings and insights into her mystic vision.<br /><br />In Tibetan Buddhism, boundless awareness, impersonal, is enlikened to the sky. One has to die to the limited self or the identification with that self in order to embody it. <br /><br />I think ED knows this truth and in poem after poem writes out of that knowing. And she expresses the mystic's slant view and the challenge of mystic experience by contrasting the that boundlessness of "my Heart would split, for size of me to the ordinary condition of the the soul oponAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-28736121610016141472014-05-24T08:24:42.613-07:002014-05-24T08:24:42.613-07:00Susan,
I just found your site. Thank you so much...Susan,<br /><br />I just found your site. Thank you so much for helping me to understand and appreciate Emily Dickinson. My heart and soul resonate with her words and images, but my brain can be slow to understand her meaning. You are a wealth of knowledge to assist me. Bless you!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com