I'v e been discussing Al Salehi and Ivy Schweitzer’s Within Flesh, Poems: In Conversation with Our Selves & Emily Dickinson: the Introduction HERE, HERE, and HERE; the Foreword by Faleeha Hassan HERE; Dustin Pickering’s “Letter from the Publisher” HERE.
| Yesterday I touched on the first of five sections in the book, titled “All Hue Forgotten,” a phrase borrowed from Dickinson’s poem “Color – Caste – Denomination.” I also shared the entire poem, a work that opens and supports the section – if not the entire book – perfectly. Death does not discriminate based on color of skin, religion or class – and that turn of phrase, “All Hue Forgotten,” is – again – perfect. The opening two stanzas of the poem are powerful. Color, caste, and denomination are “Time’s Affair,” that is, matters of the living – but such classifications are unknown and irrelevant to Death. Such “tenets” are meaningless beyond life, for Death is more “Democratic” than we here in the land of the living. In Death’s hand, his fingers “Rub away the Brand.” And WOW – isn’t “Brand” an interesting and potent word to use? Perhaps used to denote a specific type of being, one's identity; however, it also carries with it a connection to a symbol burned into flesh with a branding iron – so a scar, an identification mark – perhaps an acknowledgement of the enslavement of others? Dickinson wrote the poem during the Civil War (i.e., the War of Southern Aggression to Conserve Slavery) in 1864. |  |
In the final two stanzas, Dickinson employs an extended analogy of metamorphosis where beings emerge from Death’s cocoon, each an “Equal Butterfly.”
I admit, I was unfamiliar with “Circassian” in line 9 – a native to Circassia, a region of the northern Caucasus Mountains (oh, so related to “Caucasian”) –but used here to signify “rare, special, striking" rather than "Caucasian."
I explored “Circassian” and discovered some odd stuff – like “The Legend of the Circassian Beauties”:
“Western visitors to the Caucasus mountains have long idolized the beauty of the area’s residents. Circassian women garnered the most attention, heralded by travelers such as Florence Nightingale as ‘the most graceful and the most sensual-looking creatures I ever saw.’ American statesman Bernard Taylor similarly remarked, ‘So far as female beauty is concerned, the Circassian women have no superiors. They have preserved in their mountain home the purity of the Grecian models, and still display the perfect physical loveliness, whose type has descended to us in the Venus de’ Medici.’”
I admit, I was unfamiliar with “Circassian” in line 9 – a native to Circassia, a region of the northern Caucasus Mountains (oh, so related to “Caucasian”) –but used here to signify “rare, special, striking" rather than "Caucasian."
I explored “Circassian” and discovered some odd stuff – like “The Legend of the Circassian Beauties”:
“Western visitors to the Caucasus mountains have long idolized the beauty of the area’s residents. Circassian women garnered the most attention, heralded by travelers such as Florence Nightingale as ‘the most graceful and the most sensual-looking creatures I ever saw.’ American statesman Bernard Taylor similarly remarked, ‘So far as female beauty is concerned, the Circassian women have no superiors. They have preserved in their mountain home the purity of the Grecian models, and still display the perfect physical loveliness, whose type has descended to us in the Venus de’ Medici.’”
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“Circassian Beauties” even became one of P. T. Barnum’s side shows:
“Furnished with exotic names, scandalous backstories, and voluminous hairstyles, these women offered a glimpse into an imagined Circassia.”
What Barnum did with the hair, though, is downright odd. Info is HERE ...and additional info is HERE.
But go beyond the legend of the "Circassian beauty" and the P. T. Barnum hype, and understand that genocide in Russia was also occurring in 1864, "the systematic mass killing, ethnic cleansing, and forced displacement of between 95% and 97% of the Circassian people during the final stages of the Russian invasion of Circassia"; info HERE.
Re-read line 9 of the poem: "If Circassian – He (Death) is careless –"
It gives me chills. I can only imagine what national and world news the Springfield Republican was reporting – and Dickinson was reading. It also calls to mind lines by Iranian poet Saadi Shirazi which appear just before the Introduction to Within Flesh:
"You who are not saddened by the suffering of others
are unworthy of being classified as human."
“Furnished with exotic names, scandalous backstories, and voluminous hairstyles, these women offered a glimpse into an imagined Circassia.”
What Barnum did with the hair, though, is downright odd. Info is HERE ...and additional info is HERE.
But go beyond the legend of the "Circassian beauty" and the P. T. Barnum hype, and understand that genocide in Russia was also occurring in 1864, "the systematic mass killing, ethnic cleansing, and forced displacement of between 95% and 97% of the Circassian people during the final stages of the Russian invasion of Circassia"; info HERE.
Re-read line 9 of the poem: "If Circassian – He (Death) is careless –"
It gives me chills. I can only imagine what national and world news the Springfield Republican was reporting – and Dickinson was reading. It also calls to mind lines by Iranian poet Saadi Shirazi which appear just before the Introduction to Within Flesh:
"You who are not saddened by the suffering of others
are unworthy of being classified as human."
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