The Soul has Bandaged moments –
When too appalled to stir –
She feels some ghastly Fright
come up
And stop to look at her –
Salute her, with long fingers –
Caress her freezing hair –
Sip, Goblin, from the very lips
The Lover – hovered – o’er –
Unworthy, that a thought so
mean
Accost a Theme – so – fair –
The soul has moments of escape –
When bursting all the doors –
She dances like a Bomb, abroad,
And swings opon the Hours,
As do the Bee – delirious borne –
Long Dungeoned from his Rose –
Touch Liberty – then know no
more –
But Noone, and Paradise
The Soul’s retaken moments –
When, Felon led along,
With + shackles on the plumed
feet,
And +staples, in the song,
The Horror welcomes her,
again,
These, are not brayed
of Tongue –
+ irons – + rivets –
Link to EDA manuscript. Originally in Amherst Manuscript #fascicle 85. First published in Bingham, Ancestors’ Brocades (1945), 331, lines 1-2; Bolts of Melody (1945), 244-45, as three stanzas of 10, 8, and 6 lines, with the alternative for line 22 adopted. Courtesy of Amherst College, Amherst, MA.
This poem also appears in Fascicle 17, on sheet six, the next to the last poem in the in the group. Thus, Dickinson herself put it into relationship with “I would not paint – a picture –,” the second poem in the fascicle. It is also connected to the first poem in Fascicle 17 by the word “salutes,” which suggests the military discipline of wartime.
This poem in three parts narrates three experiences of the “Soul:”
1)“Bandaged moments” of intense wounding when it is paralyzed by Fright, a personified abstraction that becomes a horribly tactile gothic “Goblin” sipping—what?— from lips “The Lover – hovered – o’er –,” a line of immense linguistic craft.
2) Then, the opposite experience: delirious “moments of escape,” “liberty,” even “paradise,” expressed in one of the most memorable self-descriptions in a huge store of memorable imagery: “She dances like a Bomb, abroad …” We might recall that in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson written in August 1862, Dickinson uses similar imagery to describe her attempts to impose self-discipline in the process of writing:
I had no Monarch in my life and cannot rule myself, and when I try to organize – my little Force explodes – and leaves me bare and charred –.” (L271).
It is hard not to think of events of the Civil War as a context for this poem and its explosive imagery: the devastation of the siege of Fort Donelson and the raid on Harper’s Ferry discussed in this week’s post; and the death of Frazar Stearns, which will happen next week. This connection suggests that this poem is not about “the suspicion of infidelity,” as Helen Vendler asserts, or not only about that, but also about Dickinson’s experience of her genius, an explosive force that emanates from a deep wound or “terror,” which sometimes manages to escapes its captivity (in social convention, conformity, scrutiny, the gendered body). When it does, it is like the promiscuous and fertilizing “bee” finding its “Rose” and losing itself in bliss.
3) But bliss, paradise and “noon” cannot last. In the third section, the soul is “retaken” as a “Felon.” What crime has this female Soul committed against the world? “Perhaps,” as the speaker says in another poem in this Fascicle, “I asked too large – / I take – no less that skies–.” (F360A, J512). That the crime concerns the hubris of writing poetry seems borne out by the description of the recapture: “With shackles/irons on the plumed feet, / And staples (rivets), in the song …” and the rhyming of “along,” “song” and “Tongue.” The soul is feathered, like a bird, to soar (compare Margaret Fuller’s depiction of genius in the introduction) but its feet are crippled and crucified, its voice reduced to the “braying” of animals.
Sources
Dickinson, Emily. The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Eds. Thomas Johnson and Theodora Ward. 3 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958, 414-15.
Dickinson, Emily. Emily Dickinson’s Poems, As She Preserved Them. Ed. Cristianne Miller. Cambridge: The Belknap Press, of Harvard University, 2016.
Vendler, Helen. Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2010, 161-64.