Yesterday, I shared Dickinson’s “There is an arid Pleasure,” a power packed poem comparing “arid pleasure” and pure joy, “like elements,” but as antithetical as dew and frost (“one – rejoices Flowers / And one – the Flowers” abhor”). I find it interesting to note that Dickinson did not explore the opposite of joy, say misery or despair, but instead, she reflected on a similar feeling, pleasure – and the difference all boils down to that word “arid.”
 | Of course, the poem highlights a “curdled” experience, something that was pleasurable but is now destructive to the spirit, no longer joyful – so “arid.” That choice of word was so curious to me, I explored how and how often Dickinson used the word “arid,” and I uncovered some interesting things. One involves a weird typo (today’s topic); one involves a second poem (which I’ll share on Saturday); and one involves James Joyce (which I should get to on Sunday). First, the typo. |
When I ran a search for “arid” on the Dickinson archive, five entries popped up representing three different poems. I checked “A train went through a burial gate” first, the fifth entry, because I wondered why it was shown as being only in the Johnson 1955 edition of Dickinson’s poems and not in Franklin’s 1998 edition.
 | I looked at the text, and sure enough, there in line 6 was the word “arid.” I noticed too that the grammatical structure of the line was a bit awkward: “And bowed arid sang again.” Hmm. Well, I suppose the bird in the poem which “broke forth and sang” ended up a bit dry in the windpipe; after all, he “shook his throat” in line 3. I then checked my Franklin edition to see what Dickinson substituted for “arid” in that version of the poem. In Franklin, line 6 reads, “And bowed and sang again.” That seemed odd that “arid” became “and” – although grammatically it worked much better – so I checked my Johnson edition (i.e., not the text online, the actual book). It also read “And bowed and sang again.” Huh? What was going on here? I checked the online version again. Line 6 most definitely reads, “And bowed arid sang again.” |
Okay, so look at the word “arid” in the online copy of the poem. It dawned on me – as I stared at the word – that if you connect the top of lower case “r” with the top of the lower case “i,” you end up with a lower case “n.” LOL. Sooo…I suspect that whoever typed this poem into the archive had blurred vision, and in reading the word “and” saw the word “arid.”
I don’t think it was quite a traditional typo, like typing “in” for “on,” where neighboring keys are struck by accident, but I think someone read the word “and” as “arid.” I suppose. I dunno – what do you think?
This didn’t seem to be one of those proofreading errors where your brain sees what it thinks it should see:
“A proofreading error where your brain ‘sees’ what it expects to see is often due to a cognitive bias called perceptual set, specifically a type of selector error, or typoglycemia, where the brain automatically fills in missing or incorrect letters to make sense of a word based on context and prior knowledge.”
What do you think? Could the person who typed this have thought “arid” made sense, and therefore left it as “arid”? OR – upon proofreading the poem, they knew the word was supposed to be “and,” so their brain saw the word “and” instead of “arid”? (Am I making sense here? LOL – or should I say, “Am I making cents?”)
I tried to locate a picture of the original manuscript just to see how Dickinson’s handwriting looked; however, for that poem, it has either been lost or destroyed. I did look at the word “and” in a few random poems from 1862 (when this poem was written) just to see if any versions suggested the word “arid.” Hmm…that first one, top left, maybe?
I don’t think it was quite a traditional typo, like typing “in” for “on,” where neighboring keys are struck by accident, but I think someone read the word “and” as “arid.” I suppose. I dunno – what do you think?
This didn’t seem to be one of those proofreading errors where your brain sees what it thinks it should see:
“A proofreading error where your brain ‘sees’ what it expects to see is often due to a cognitive bias called perceptual set, specifically a type of selector error, or typoglycemia, where the brain automatically fills in missing or incorrect letters to make sense of a word based on context and prior knowledge.”
What do you think? Could the person who typed this have thought “arid” made sense, and therefore left it as “arid”? OR – upon proofreading the poem, they knew the word was supposed to be “and,” so their brain saw the word “and” instead of “arid”? (Am I making sense here? LOL – or should I say, “Am I making cents?”)
I tried to locate a picture of the original manuscript just to see how Dickinson’s handwriting looked; however, for that poem, it has either been lost or destroyed. I did look at the word “and” in a few random poems from 1862 (when this poem was written) just to see if any versions suggested the word “arid.” Hmm…that first one, top left, maybe?
So proofreading – hmm – I’m at a loss for words about what to say concerning another site I found that discusses this poem. It’s not that it let a misspelling slip by, like “arid” for “and,” but it puts forth completely false information. I assume this is another example of AI gone bad? But I mean – this is beyond bad. Who runs this site? Does anyone read the information to see what they’re putting out there? LOL. I’ll talk about this tom0rrow.
UPDATE: I found out that the issue (i.e., confusing "and" for "arid," was an OCR. What's an OCR? Find out HERE.
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