Arid Flumadiddle

My recent posts have focused on Dickinson’s “There is an arid Pleasure,” a power-packed, two-stanza poem comparing “arid pleasure” to pure joy, “like elements,” but as antithetical as dew and frost.

I was intrigued by Dickinson’s choice of the word “arid” to describe “pleasure.”  It seemed so unusual – and brilliant – to me.  I know there are Victorian words and phrases we no longer use – check out this article, “Victorian Slang and Other Flumadiddle,” HERE, from Cape May Magazine – but was “arid pleasure” among them?  For example, “I attended Eulallia’s garden party in Newport with Ambrose and Absalom, but it was an arid pleasure.”

I looked up “arid” on the Dickinson Lexicon, and there on the page were more than a dozen meanings deposited all together like a bed of alluvium: “Dry; thirsty; scorched; barren; exhausted of moisture; parched with heat; [fig.] wry; ironic; warped; sardonic; [fig.] tedious; drab; dull; monotonous.”  I think Dickinson’s meaning, though, is among the cluster:  Barren.

I also checked to see how often Dickinson used the word “arid,” and it turns out that the word shows up in just two poems, this one, “There is an arid Pleasure,” and “Rather arid delight.”

Well great googly-moogly – will you look at that pairing of words in the first line, “arid delight”; they certainly echo “arid pleasure.”  And take a look at line 4:  “Not so good as joy.”

Hmm.   When were these two poems written – and what was going on in Dickinson’s life?

I saw the gist of this poem, “Rather arid delight,”  described as “the emptiness of a life lived for delayed gratification” – a satiric statement on those who live respectable, patient, and frugal lives, only to result in "contentment,” a kind of joy, but one that is ultimately sterile and dry.  Barren. 

And I love Dickinson’s dry – or should I say “arid” – sense of humor in the final lines, “With a tomorrow knocking / And the rent unpaid.”  

By the way, as I was exploring both of these poems, I chanced upon “the pleasure/unpleasure principle” (also known simply as the “pleasure principle”). 

What is the pleasure/unpleasure principle,” you ask?  Here’s some meaty food for thought:

“The pleasure/unpleasure principle is a psychoanalytic concept from Sigmund Freud describing the tendency of the psyche to seek pleasure and avoid unpleasure (discomfort or tension) by fulfilling needs immediately and discharging excitation. It is the governing principle of the id, the primal part of the mind, but is later counteracted by the reality principle, which governs the ego and promotes delayed gratification. The principle explains how the mind acts to minimize tension and seeks to discharge stimuli that are experienced as unpleasurable.”

You know, Steve Martin wrote an absurdist comedy about a fictional meeting between Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso.  Hmm…maybe I should pen a play about a conversation between Emily Dickinson and Sigmund Freud.  After all, many a Dickinson poem have been interpreted through a psychoanalytic lens, and I suspect she could have taught Freud a thing or two, no?

By the way, I also read that future developments in nanomedicine and neuroscience could allow for “precise control over emotional states, potentially minimizing suffering and enhancing well-being.”  And this: “This perspective envisions the pleasure-pain axis as not only a psychological drive but also a target for ethical and technical intervention.”

Yikes!  This all sounds more than a bit too scary – especially with control of politics, culture and all of humanity falling into the hands of the filthy rich (who are only getting filthier) and conspiracy theorists with no background or belief in science. 

Oops…have I climbed atop a soap box when I’m supposed to be discussing Dickinson?  But doesn’t the future sound rather…arid, barren?