My original plan for today was to move on to another poem, but look at this site I stumbled upon yesterday, “Emily Dickinson Riddles.”
Click the pic below to access the site:
In this case – for “Back from the cordial Grave I drag thee” – he “solves” the “riddle” by interpreting this poem as the story of Faust.
Beneath each poem, as with this one, he analyzes words, phrases or images line by line and explains how they fit into the riddle.
Again, in this case, concerning line 4, “That none can understand,” the blogger noted, “Faust wanted to ‘learn what it is that holds the world together in its inmost core,’ (Faust: A Dramatic Poem By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1859 Boston, the same version in Dickinson's family library). Mephistopheles was supposed to show Faust the world's ‘inmost core ' that none can understand.”
I first found it on Amazon, and this “reproduction of the original artefact (sic),” is listed as 476 pages! LOL – obviously this is not a “poem” which I can post a screenshot! Next, I actually found the entire work online where one can read it for free, HERE. I scrolled down to page 34 and read a bit of the “Prologue in Heaven” – the writing is so grandiloquent and Wagnerian – and (appropriately so) – look at this info I found: “The first operatic version of Goethe's Faust, by Louis Spohr, appeared in 1814. The work subsequently inspired operas and oratorios by Schumann, Berlioz, Gounod, Boito, Busoni and Schnittke, as well as symphonic works by Liszt, Wagner and Mahler.” |
Okay, so back to the site devoted to “Dickinson’s Riddles”:
It’s a fun site with an interesting premise; however, if you take time to peruse some of the other "solutions" to the "riddles," you'll find that some of them misfire -- or "don't stick the landing," as they say!
I'll provide a couple of examples tomorrow.