In her book Ancestors Brocades, The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson, Millicent Todd Bingham spoke of Dickinson’s “grammatical vagaries” and “Emily’s idiosyncrasies” – “such as using ‘of’ for ‘by’; for example: ‘A clover’s simple fame / Remembered of the cow.’”
She also noted that “For the first editors, the perennial uncertainty was: which (of Dickinson’s grammatical errors) are mistakes and which are intentional irregularities with a definite function to perform.”
In his 1938 book This Was A Poet, Amherst College professor George F. Whicher argued that Dickinson’s grammatical errors were traceable to the fact that she followed the current spoken usage of her time.
In addition to the “of”/”by” peculiarity, what were some of Dickinson’s other quirks?
“Her chaos of singulars and plurals” – in Bingham’s words:
Examples: “We cannot put ourself away,” in the poem “I tie my hat” (changed to “ourselves” by editors Todd and Higginson); “And I for truth, themself are one” from the poem “I died for beauty” (changed to “And I for truth, the two are one”).
Also, Dickinson often used a plural verb with a singular subject, as in the poem “Air has no residence, no neighbor,” which ends as follows:
Ethereal guest at e’en an outcast’s pillow,
Essential host in life’s faint, wailing inn,
Later than light thy consciousness accost me,
Till it depart, conveying mine.
Bingham wrote, “To change the verbs to ‘accosts’ and ‘departs’ would defeat not only the meaning but the Miltonic surge of sound. This ‘mistake,’ my mother thought, was deliberate, as Emily’s use of ‘be’ for ‘is’ was deliberate:
Menagerie to me
My neighbor be.”
TBH: I tend to think that 99% of Dickinson’s “grammatical vagaries” were, indeed deliberate; there were lapses with “its” and “it’s” and other contractions too that I think were accidental – but most other “slips” were intentional.
Bingham concludes her (1945) discussion of Dickinson’s hallmarks and habits with this:
“Though these peculiarities were mere elision, they gave rise to much discussion half a century ago. Emily’s grammatical irresponsibility is well summed up in a line of an unpublished poem, 'This chasm sweet, upon my life,” which reads ‘Ourself am lying straight wherein.’”
She also noted that “For the first editors, the perennial uncertainty was: which (of Dickinson’s grammatical errors) are mistakes and which are intentional irregularities with a definite function to perform.”
In his 1938 book This Was A Poet, Amherst College professor George F. Whicher argued that Dickinson’s grammatical errors were traceable to the fact that she followed the current spoken usage of her time.
In addition to the “of”/”by” peculiarity, what were some of Dickinson’s other quirks?
“Her chaos of singulars and plurals” – in Bingham’s words:
Examples: “We cannot put ourself away,” in the poem “I tie my hat” (changed to “ourselves” by editors Todd and Higginson); “And I for truth, themself are one” from the poem “I died for beauty” (changed to “And I for truth, the two are one”).
Also, Dickinson often used a plural verb with a singular subject, as in the poem “Air has no residence, no neighbor,” which ends as follows:
Ethereal guest at e’en an outcast’s pillow,
Essential host in life’s faint, wailing inn,
Later than light thy consciousness accost me,
Till it depart, conveying mine.
Bingham wrote, “To change the verbs to ‘accosts’ and ‘departs’ would defeat not only the meaning but the Miltonic surge of sound. This ‘mistake,’ my mother thought, was deliberate, as Emily’s use of ‘be’ for ‘is’ was deliberate:
Menagerie to me
My neighbor be.”
TBH: I tend to think that 99% of Dickinson’s “grammatical vagaries” were, indeed deliberate; there were lapses with “its” and “it’s” and other contractions too that I think were accidental – but most other “slips” were intentional.
Bingham concludes her (1945) discussion of Dickinson’s hallmarks and habits with this:
“Though these peculiarities were mere elision, they gave rise to much discussion half a century ago. Emily’s grammatical irresponsibility is well summed up in a line of an unpublished poem, 'This chasm sweet, upon my life,” which reads ‘Ourself am lying straight wherein.’”
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