The Art of Making Sense

What to think of Judith Farr ? Being quoted by Wikipedia without mention of that all important metaphor, strongly suggests that she doesn’t mention it either. But Judith Farr knows a metaphor when she sees one. She does not mention a ‘”breathless immediacy” for nothing. If she fails to point at the metaphor, she therefore fails to point at it on purpose. And she wouldn’t be the only one to do so, because when “in the opening quatrain, Dickinson cleverly disguises the subject of the poem, a snake,” the attentive reader is made to read “…as a snake.” Or is that too much credit for an interpretation of a text, that is only useful to the reader who knows how to interpret a text ?

Seek, and you will find, and the metaphor is the poem’s key. Which defines poetry as an encrypted means of communication. The last thing a poetry lover, according to this definition, is waiting for, is the deciphering already been done. Meaning that Judith Farr, and literary criticism as a whole, is rather to be praised for avoiding the metaphor than rebuked. From which one may gather that there evidently is some wisdom in the expert’s habit of keeping a poem’s message obscured. And the same for avoiding the problem that, once known, the metaphor will be recognized whenever it occurs. A complication that in the long run is to make literary criticism completely redundant.

Nevertheless, this drawback is not going to leave this branch of science unoccupied, because, for a proper understanding, a text has to be read within context. Lays cannot be expected to figure this context out for each single piece of literature. And for that reason the encounters which Dickinson placed at the centre of her poem can make perfect sense to her countrymen only. If unbraiding whips are still common finds in the New England countryside, that is.

The identification of that linchpin metaphor is not always the easiest of jobs. In the next poem, for instance, it is too near for detection. Even if the poem offers its metaphor in full view. And thus Dickinson effectively denies access to all readers of her poem but the really attentive. Which makes its deciphering even more rewarding.

The previous poem came with a visitor’s guide. One that has been written by decyphering the message with the advantage of web searching. This learned me in the process that ‘A narrow fellow’ is in Dickinson’s Poems : Second Series (1891) enlisted in Section III ; ‘Nature’. Have you made that discovery in the final line, you may agree that Section I (‘Life’) would have been the better choice. And pending that discovery, the metaphor insists on Section IV ; ‘Time and Eternity’. The section that opens with :

Thine is the stillest night,                                  Thine is the stillest night
Thine the securest fold ;                                     Thine the securest Fold
Too near thou art for seeking thee,                  Too near Thou art for seeking Thee
Too tender to be told.                                         Too tender, to be told.

Read this a couple of times aloud. Which will make you experience what little impact the additions to the punctuation do make on the phrasing of the ‘melody’. And how awkward that final comma is placed, that the editor didn’t approve of. Dickinson’s dashes, on the other hand, are exactly where they, judged by ‘A narrow fellow’, are to be expected. So there is no reason to doubt that she put her second comma into position with good judgment. The missing punctuation marks may therefore be marking this comma out as important. And it indeed marks the spot where your respective word substitutions for the editor’s version and the original are going to fan out. Metrical ones at least. A substitution of English poetry for, say, Dutch prose, only does suggest that the editor knew his business. Something already made evident by the phrasing of the ‘melody’ :

edited version (1891)                                          original 

Laat neer het hek, O Dood !                               Laat neer het hek, Oh Dood —
De Kuddes trekken in                                         De Kuddes trekken in
Wier eind’loos blaten nu verstomt,                  Wier eind’loos blaten nu verstomt
Wier zwerven is gedaan.                                     Wier zwerven is gedaan —

The shepherd metaphor does not agree with using the opening words as a figure of speech. And where bars come down literally, a passageway gets blocked. Not always and everywhere, perhaps, but while the portcullis still is a familiar feature of American cattle pens, the concept of turning the grate into a threshold was in Dickinson’s days unheard of. The poem’s internal logic therefore forbids the use of present tense in the second line. That same present tense, however, is indespensable to the poem as a whole, which invites to explain the anomaly of a sloppy grammar away as a cosmetic necessity. A tempting option, because it avoids the problem of explaining why Dickinson tells The Shepherd of Souls to deny his flocks access to the night’s pen.

The metaphor in the stray line opens the eyes for the key to correct interpretation (in case you have given up ; the stray line does not fit in with the shepherd metaphor, but refers to another personification of Death, one to which this line’s entire stanza is tailored). And because the equation ‘shape equals contents’ goes a long way back as the central dogma of Western Art, the poem actually opens with this key (haven’t found the stray line yet ? it is the key to this key, therefore try the other central dogma : ‘balance’). In its original version at least, because the editor has once again managed to alter the meaning of the entire poem. This time by interfering with the melody of the ‘spoken music’ :

O body, he thinks of his own.
Oh body, when he’s thinking of hers. 

Kimberley Grey 
from : The Difference Between Oh and O 

The opening exercise of rehearsing the ‘music’ was not principally prescribed to get the feel of Dickinson’s phrasing. It rather offered you the key to a perfect interpretation directly from the composer’s hand. And no matter how badly a romantic sound agrees with the opening stanza, it fits the first line’s figure of speech like a glove. Like it fits the second stanza throughout.

This implies that the poem’s composition as spoken music in a single move disqualifies the glaring metaphor as a mere cover story, and establishes the covered one as the linchpin. But the real value of interpreting Dickinson’s poetry as a love song is in the resulting melody of speech : it makes the designed rest halfway the final line to sound perfectly natural. By which means Dickinson has once more underlined the comma’s importance, and, if we want to understand her message, we better make sense of it. Even if there is no way to do so without disqualifying the newly identified linchpin metaphor as just another cover story.

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analyze this

There is no harm in checking things out by doing some word substitution, but if a conclusive result involves leaving no stone unturned, the deployment of logic is the more practical option. And because all the necessary information is by now provided for, deploying logic also is the only way to get Dickinson’s message. With the right starting point, you will surely manage :

if                                ‘Oh’    =    the key to correct interpretation
and                            ‘Oh’    =    the key to turn down a metaphor of death
then                           ‘Oh’    =    the key to turn Death himself into a metaphor 

Death is quite common as love’s metaphor, and under such an elaborate cover it has to be the love song’s one and only linchpin metaphor. No question about it. But it still covers something up, and Dickinson’s comma is the key to find out that

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You can’t be much wrong. Provided that you haven’t been tempted into explaining the second line’s (in)consistent grammar away as a cosmetic necessity. That would have got you on the wrong foot from the start. And if you have thus been prevented from regarding ‘too tender’ with the appropriate distrust, give it another try. If necessary by rewriting each single line in the light of that sneaky detail :

– Let down the Bars, Oh Death      :  …………………………………………………………………………….

– The tired flocks come in               :  …………………………………………………………………………….

– Whose … repeat                             :  …………………………………………………………………………….

– Whose wandering is done            :  ……………………………………………………………………………

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– Thine is the stillest night             :  …………………………………………………………………………….

– Thine the securest Fold                :  …………………………………………………………………………….

– Too near … seeking Thee             :  …………………………………………………………………………….

– Too tender, to be told                   :  …………………………………………………………………………….

Only when you have abandoned all hope to advance without a guide, time has come to consider the discovery route alongside these dotted lines. In case you have cracked the riddle, this route is as interesting as the solution of last week’s crosswords in today’s newspaper. Therefore follow the arrows of preference :

– – – – – — – – – V                                                                               V

– – – to the next part of this paper                                   to the discovery route

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