The Soul’s Superior / instants (F630, J306)

The Soul’s Superior
instants 
Occur to Her – alone – 
When friend – and
Earth’s occasion 
Have infinite withdrawn – 

Or she – Herself as –
cended 
To too remote a Hight 
For lower Recognition 
Than Her Omnipotent – 

This Mortal Abolition 
Is seldom – but as fair


As Apparition – subject
To Autocratic Air – 

Eternity’s disclosure 
To favorites – a few – 
Of the Colossal
substance 
Of Immortality

                    Emily – 

Link to EDA original manuscript: Page 1, Page 2. This copy was found as two loose sheets with Dickinson’s signature at the bottom, but other copies appear in Packet 17, and multiple fascicles. First published in The Single Hound by Martha Dickinson Bianchi in 1914. Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

The Azarian School is a fitting context for this poem because it exhibits the school’s so-called “florid style,” which was resistant to narrative realism, the mode coming into fashion. Though Spofford and Cooke ultimately gave in to criticism and changed their style to match the interests of publishers, Dickinson was not subject to the same critical pressure. Dickinson continued to employ elements of the “florid style” in poetry and prose even when the Azarian writers gave it up.

According to Cody, “Dickinson seems to have been particularly fascinated by Azarian descriptions of spiritual or psychological crises—’The Soul’s Superior instants,’ as she herself describes them—and she distilled these lengthy passages of exuberant, exotic periodical prose into terse, gnomic, and extraordinarily intense poetic essences.”Cody also remarks that “The Soul’s Superior instants” might have been another of Dickinson’s responses to reading Spofford’s story, “Circumstance,” as the poem mirrors the plot of Spofford’s harrowing tale by capturing a response to the protagonist’s “utter anguish.”

He argues:

This unorthodox poem provide a detailed recapitulation of the orthodox process of purification—a sort of spiritual alchemy—by means of which Spofford’s heroine finds salvation. Her crisis conversion emerges naturally from her ordeal—a ‘Circumstance’ or trial of faith arranged by the same autocratic God who had arranged a lion’s den for Daniel and fiery furnace for Shadrach, Mesach, and Abednego.

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Sources for this poem