Months ago I registered with a site called Academia.edu so that I could read a paper on Dickinson. TBH at this point I don’t remember the focus of that particular paper, but since that date, I have received countless emails from the site with recommendations about other Dickinson-related papers to read. At one point I thought about unsubscribing from the site, but I haven’t yet – I like to see the titles of the various works, see what might pique my interest – and though I end up deleting most of the emails (I just don’t have the time to read them all) it’s fun to see all the Dickinson-related research and revelry going on out there in the real world!
For this week, I thought it might be interesting to share a few of the emails I’ve received recently.
First up is info on a paper entitled “Portrait or Picture: Some Thoughts on a Dickinsonian Conundrum” by Paul Scott Derrick, “a Senior Lecturer, retired, in American literature at the University of Valencia” (more info about Derrick is provided on the page link I’ll include later in this post).
Here’s how the paper starts:
“Emily Dickinson’s forty fascicles contain and are surrounded by a large number of mysteries.
One of the most intriguing of these is the repetition of the same poem, with one variant word
and a few orthographic differences, in Fascicle 8. It first occurs as the seventh poem in the fascicle:
Portraits are to daily faces
As an Evening West,
To a fne, pedantic sunshine –
In a satin Vest! (Fr174/J170, 1860)
This could well be the most problematic poem in Fascicle 8. It raises a host of questions that probably have no satisfactory answers. In the first place, why did Dickinson repeat this quatrain (substituting “Pictures” for “Portraits”) later in the same fascicle?”
That’s right; the poem first appears on Sheet 2 of Fascicle 8 with the word “Portraits.” It then appears on Sheet 5 of the same fascicle with the first word of the poem now “Pictures.”
If you want to know more, click HERE.
For this week, I thought it might be interesting to share a few of the emails I’ve received recently.
First up is info on a paper entitled “Portrait or Picture: Some Thoughts on a Dickinsonian Conundrum” by Paul Scott Derrick, “a Senior Lecturer, retired, in American literature at the University of Valencia” (more info about Derrick is provided on the page link I’ll include later in this post).
Here’s how the paper starts:
“Emily Dickinson’s forty fascicles contain and are surrounded by a large number of mysteries.
One of the most intriguing of these is the repetition of the same poem, with one variant word
and a few orthographic differences, in Fascicle 8. It first occurs as the seventh poem in the fascicle:
Portraits are to daily faces
As an Evening West,
To a fne, pedantic sunshine –
In a satin Vest! (Fr174/J170, 1860)
This could well be the most problematic poem in Fascicle 8. It raises a host of questions that probably have no satisfactory answers. In the first place, why did Dickinson repeat this quatrain (substituting “Pictures” for “Portraits”) later in the same fascicle?”
That’s right; the poem first appears on Sheet 2 of Fascicle 8 with the word “Portraits.” It then appears on Sheet 5 of the same fascicle with the first word of the poem now “Pictures.”
If you want to know more, click HERE.
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