Here’s an interesting passage from Judy Jo Small’s “Positive as Sound, Emily Dickinson’s Rhyme” about Dickinson’s clever prowess and playfulness with language (although the passage does contain its fair share of blasphemy -- LOL):
“Analysis of and inference from such linguistic intricacies is laborious, too, and at times Dickinson’s cryptic, elliptical procedures can seem wearisome. Sometimes the trouble really does not seem worthwhile (LOL – this is the blasphemous part). Her fascination with the ‘wiles of words’ and with the labyrinthine secrets of the lexicon, though, lies close to the core of her poetic magic. Nearly every devoted reader of Dickinson has found that passages that seem exasperating at one time can later flash with meaning hitherto hidden. As she mulled over the enigmas of life and the subtleties of language, she writes primarily for those readers who enjoy doing that, too.”
Small then discusses the wordplay involved in the poem “My life closed twice before its close.”
“Analysis of and inference from such linguistic intricacies is laborious, too, and at times Dickinson’s cryptic, elliptical procedures can seem wearisome. Sometimes the trouble really does not seem worthwhile (LOL – this is the blasphemous part). Her fascination with the ‘wiles of words’ and with the labyrinthine secrets of the lexicon, though, lies close to the core of her poetic magic. Nearly every devoted reader of Dickinson has found that passages that seem exasperating at one time can later flash with meaning hitherto hidden. As she mulled over the enigmas of life and the subtleties of language, she writes primarily for those readers who enjoy doing that, too.”
Small then discusses the wordplay involved in the poem “My life closed twice before its close.”
Here’s what Small had to say about the word “disclose,” a variant for “unveil” in line 3:
“’Disclose’ is a synonym for ‘unveil,’ and both words mean ‘to uncover’ or ‘to reveal.’ ‘Unveil’ has the advantage of drawing in connotations suggesting the world ‘beyond the veil’ or mortality, connotations obviously relevant here. In juxtaposition to ‘close,’ however, ‘disclose’ has a different advantage: it attracts attention to itself as an antonym for ‘close’ and to it own literal sense as ‘open,’ which in this context is an arresting paradox. That is, it compounds the paradox in the opening line, which pushes the reader’s imagination to discriminate between two kinds of ‘close’ – the literal ending of life, or death, and some metaphorical ending comparable to death yet prior to death and capable of recurrence an indefinite number of times. ‘Disclose’ demands a further stretch of the mind toward conceptualization of an immensity that is simultaneously an opening and a close, a revelation or uncovering that is also a covering, a conclusion that does not conclude, thus doubly ‘hopeless to conceive.’”
“’Disclose’ is a synonym for ‘unveil,’ and both words mean ‘to uncover’ or ‘to reveal.’ ‘Unveil’ has the advantage of drawing in connotations suggesting the world ‘beyond the veil’ or mortality, connotations obviously relevant here. In juxtaposition to ‘close,’ however, ‘disclose’ has a different advantage: it attracts attention to itself as an antonym for ‘close’ and to it own literal sense as ‘open,’ which in this context is an arresting paradox. That is, it compounds the paradox in the opening line, which pushes the reader’s imagination to discriminate between two kinds of ‘close’ – the literal ending of life, or death, and some metaphorical ending comparable to death yet prior to death and capable of recurrence an indefinite number of times. ‘Disclose’ demands a further stretch of the mind toward conceptualization of an immensity that is simultaneously an opening and a close, a revelation or uncovering that is also a covering, a conclusion that does not conclude, thus doubly ‘hopeless to conceive.’”
| The Miller edition of Dickinson’s poems includes the word spelled as “befell” in line 6. Miller includes this note: “The spelling ‘befel’ may be MLT’s mistake (it was emended by RWF), but it may also be ED’s anachronistic spelling: it is used by Shakespeare and by Issac Watts, albeit rarely.” Pictured at the right: The poem as it appeared when first published in 1896. |  |
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