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In Ancestors’ Brocades, The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson, Mabel Loom Todd’s daughter Millicent Todd Bingham wrote this:
I have at times suspected that what we think of Emily’s poetry is more a measure of ourselves than of her. By our changing attitude toward it we can estimate our own growth. Many of the poems I have known by heart since early childhood. But as insight deepens, sentences whose tinkle always pleased me suddenly become heavy with significance. On rereading the words, familiar through a lifetime, their truth suddenly flashes:
For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.
It takes a lifetime of striving, and or failure, to comprehend that.
I have at times suspected that what we think of Emily’s poetry is more a measure of ourselves than of her. By our changing attitude toward it we can estimate our own growth. Many of the poems I have known by heart since early childhood. But as insight deepens, sentences whose tinkle always pleased me suddenly become heavy with significance. On rereading the words, familiar through a lifetime, their truth suddenly flashes:
For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.
It takes a lifetime of striving, and or failure, to comprehend that.
| Interestingly, this poem was written in 1859, when Dickinson was 28 going on 29 years old – with about 1700 poems to go in her lifetime. Plus, her family's most heartbreaking sorrows lie ahead, so I wonder what prompted this poem? At the right: The poem where it appears in the Franklin & Miller editions of Dickinson's poems |  |
Her brother Austin married her close friend Susan Gilbert in 1856, so certainly over time "ecstatic instants" between Susan and her diminished, likely causing extended periods of anguish. Could that have been it?
Interestingly, I found a version of the poem where someone had translated it into the South Indian classical language Tamil (below left), and I threw it into Google Translate to see how it would interpret the poem; the result (below right) provides a succinct analysis of the work.
 | Every moment of joy Must be paid with sorrow. At a trembling rate, For the sake of the joy that has been enjoyed! For a fleeting hour of joy, Years of bitter regret And agonizing pain, Chests of tears! Emily Dickinson 1859 |
| Below: The poem as it appears in the various editions of Dickinson's poetry. The only changes made throughout the years have been to capitalizations and punctuation. I've provided Dickinson's manuscript at the right so you can decide who formatted the poem most accurately. Red arrow top right: At first I thought all editions had missed a dash, but that mark is the cross of the "t." Red arrow bottom left: Compare the "c" of "contested" with the "C" of "Coffers." Are they both majuscules?* |  |
*LOL -- how's that for an obscure word! A majuscule is the technical term for a capital or uppercase letter -- derived from the Latin maiusculus (meaning "somewhat larger").
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