Category: Emily Dickinson Archive

At One's Peril

3/3/2019

From our master grammarian & resident logophile, Angstrom Dickinson:

I was glancing through my Twitter feed this evening, and I came across this quote:

"A poet can survive everything but a misprint." ~Oscar Wilde

Very shortly after that, I came across Emily Dickinson's poem "Peril as a Possession" on Wikisource, and it appeared as follows:

Peril as a Possesssion
'Tis Good to hear
Danger disintegrates Satiety
There's Basis there –
Begets an awe
That searches Human Nature's creases
As clean as Fire.

Of course, I noticed the misspelling of "possession" – I supposed that that was not how Dickinson had actually written the word (although there are some distinctive misspellings in her poems) – but "'Tis Good to hear" just didn't sit right with me. Therefore, I checked my Johnson volume of Dickinson's poetry and my Franklin edition too. Sure enough, the line should be "'Tis Good to bear."

Here's the Johnson version:

Peril as a Possession
'Tis Good to bear
Danger disintegrates Satiety
There's Basis there –
Begets an awe
That searches Human Nature's creases
As clean as Fire.

Here's the Franklin version:

Peril as a Possession
'Tis Good to bear
Danger disintegrates satiety
There's Basis there –
Begets an awe
That searches Human Nature's creases
As clean as Fire.

Both the Johnson and the Franklin editions had "'Tis Good to bear" (vs. "hear"). To be honest, the only difference between the two versions was a capital vs. a lower case "s" for the word "satiety," certainly a minor difference (however, there can be major differences presented in Dickinson's poems in the two volumes).

I then checked the Dickinson Electronic Archives (HERE) for the poem just to see if they had a version of the lines in Dickinson's own handwriting. Here is what I found:

So Oscar Wilde was correct, I suppose, "A poet can survive everything but a misprint." I'll tell you what though – I'm not so sure how accurate Dickinson's poems would be if I were to be the one to transcribe them! Her handwriting is certainly a challenge to read!

By the way – that looks like a capital "S" for "Satiety" to me.

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Mechanical Engineering

12/23/2017

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From Jim Asher, the world's leading authority on Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request):

Recently I attended an Emily Dickinson birthday observance at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. At the event, literary critic and poet Sandra Gilbert discussed and recited some of Dickinson’s poetry on death and grief. Information and pictures are HERE and HERE.

Gilbert’s first selection was Dickinson’s “There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House,” and during her recitation, the word “mechanically” jumped out at me. It reminded me of the use of “mechanical” in “After great pain, a formal feeling comes.” I commented on the connection HERE.

That observation made me wonder -- in how many poems did Dickinson use the word “mechanical” (to include “mechanically” and “mechanic”)?

What’s your prediction?

I turned to the Emily Dickinson Archive (HERE) to find out. The answer is below.

According to the archive, Dickinson used some form of the word “mechanical” – to mean, “acting by the laws of motion, without intelligence or design” – in four poems. Well, maybe three depending upon how you count one of them.

The four poems are “There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House,” “After great pain, a formal feeling comes,” “From Blank to Blank,” and “She laid her docile Crescent down.”

Of course, I already discussed "There's been a Death, in the Opposite House" and "After great pain, a formal feeling comes" in previous posts.

Below on the left is "From Blank to Blank," and in both the 1955 Johnson edition of Dickinson's poetry and the 1998 Franklin edition, the poem is the same. However, the Dickinson archive included a version of the poem that showed
alternative word choices that Dickinson considered (below on the right).

From Blank to Blank –
A Threadless Way
I pushed Mechanic feet –
To stop – or perish – or advance –
Alike indifferent –

If end I gained
It ends beyond
Indefinite disclosed –
I shut my eyes – and groped as well
'Twas lighter – to be Blind –

From Blank to Blank –
A Threadless Way
I pushed Mechanic feet –
To stop – or perish – or advance –
Alike indifferent –

If end I (reached)
It ends beyond
Indefinite disclosed –
I shut my eyes – and groped as well
'Twas (firmer) – to be Blind –

When it came to "She laid her docile Crescent down," the Johnson edition version of the poem differed from the Franklin edition, and neither included the word "mechanic," "mechanical" or "mechanically."

JOHNSON EDITION:

She laid her docile Crescent down
And this confiding Stone
Still states to Dates that have forgot
The News that she is gone –

So constant to its stolid trust,
The Shaft that never knew –
It shames the Constancy that fled
Before its emblem flew –

FRANKLIN EDITION:

She laid her docile Crescent down
And this subjunctive Stone
Still states to Dates that have forgot
The News that she is gone –

So constant to its stolid trust,
The Shaft that never knew –
It shames the Constancy that fled
Before its emblem flew –

The Dickinson archive, though, included yet another version of the poem -- with the title "THE MONUMENT" -- and that version included the word "mechanic" (as wall as some alternative punctuation and capitalization). The "Publication History" in the archive stated, "Poems (1896), 157, as two quatrains, from the draft (A); in Poems (1930), 202, the text of line 2 became composite with the adoption of a variant ("confiding") from Higginson's copy" (if that makes any sense to you).

ARCHIVE VARIANT…entitled “THE MONUMENT”

She laid her docile Crescent down
And this mechanic Stone
Still states to Dates that have forgot
The News that she is gone –

So constant to it's stolid Trust
The shaft that never knew
It shames the Constancy that fled
Before it's Emblem flew –

So there you have it -- some "mechanical" engineering by Emily Dickinson. How do you think the word and/or the substitutes effect the meaning of the poems?

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At One's Peril

Mechanical Engineering

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