Broken Mirror

In the middle of the month, on 12/11 (HERE), I wrote about a poem by Joseph Rodman Drake called “The American Flag.”  The poem was set to music by Antonin Dvořák, and I had heard a portion of the piece at a recent concert. ​

In exploring Drake’s poem, I also discussed other poets from the 1800s, and ultimately I landed a list of American Poets from the 19th Century – an inventory with 800 names; I thought I’d pick a few of them at random to write about in subsequent posts, and a few days ago, I began my quick-studies of these writers with a look at Thomas Bailey Aldrich.  I decided to start with him because I knew I recognized his name, though it took me a bit of time to remember why:  he was the former editor of “The Atlantic” who panned early editions of Dickinson’s poetry and predicted “oblivion” for her.
 
For the last few days, I’ve shared and critiqued (somewhat snarkily) some of Aldrich’s poetry.  I was all set to move on to another poet from the list, but then I decided to read one last poem by Aldrich, chosen completely at random.  When I read this poem, my jaw dropped to the ground. 

When I read this poem, I believe I literally stopped and gasped audibly at line 21. 
 
“What is this?” I thought.  “This can’t be….could it be?” 
 
My eyes darted to the previous stanza,  “Oh my God, it is,” I yelled inside my head.  “This is a poem about Emily Dickinson.”
 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, who faulted Dickinson so harshly for her broken poetry, wrote this poem about Dickinson – I’m convinced.  Oh, he tried to throw off the scent with one small detail in line 7, “the London skies,” but every other aspect of this poem speaks of Dickinson.

Here's the lowdown:

1.. The poem might be called “Broken Music,” but “music” is just camouflage for “Broken Poetry,” and there it is in line 21, her “Book of Verses” – and guess how Dickinson described herself to Thomas Wentworth Higginson in a letter from July 1862.  She wrote, “I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the WREN….”
 
2. I then spotted “the white flame” at the start of the previous stanza and thought, “This is Dickinson” – an “impetuous spirit,” dressed in WHITE. I began to look for further evidence.
 
3. The final line of the poem, “Lies coiled in dark defeat,” indicates the woman is dead, and this clue fits the chronology:  Dickinson died in 1886; her poetry was published in 1890; Higginson wrote about Dickinson’s letters to him in “The Atlantic” in 1891; Aldrich published this poem in Scribner’s Magazine in 1893.
 

4. I re-read the poem and realized that in the first stanza, Aldrich is admitting he did not know the woman – which was true.
 
5. With these lines, “From out God's mystic setting plucked life's pearl / 'Tis hard to understand,” my mind flashed back to that scene in the movie “Amadeus” where Salieri glanced through some of Mozart's scores and began weeping:  “Why would God choose an obscene child to be His instrument?”

6. “Shy franknesses, blind gropings, haunting fears”:  Here Aldrich seems to be describing Dickinson and some of her frequent themes.
 
7. “At times across the chords abruptly floats / A mist of passionate tears”:  Aldrich seems to be alluding to Dickinson’s unexpected, “abrupt” rhymes. 

8. “Above her brow gray lichens blot her name / Upon the carven stone”:  These lines echo poems by Dickinson, particularly “All overgrown by cunning moss,” a poem about the grave and headstone of Charlotte Bronte written on the anniversary of her death.
 
9. The opening lines of the final stanza seem to describe Aldrich’s view of Dickinson:  “fragile,” “tensely keyed,” “broken music” (poetry); “weirdly incomplete,” “proud,” and self-made.
 
I think back again to “Amadeus,” when Salieri cried, “Your merciful God. He destroyed His own beloved, rather than let a mediocrity share in the smallest part of His glory. He killed Mozart and kept me alive to torture! 32 years of torture! 32 years of slowly watching myself become extinct. My music growing fainter, all the fainter till no one plays it at all, and his...”
 
Of course, “Amadeus” is a fictional telling of history with an invented rivalry based on creative jealousy between real people, and I don’t know enough about Thomas Bailey Aldrich to suggest he lived years of torture.

But what do you make of all of this?  I’m convinced that Aldrich recognized Dickinson’s greatness and wrote this secret tribute to her.