Precision and Indeterminacy in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson

Roland Hagenbüchle

Precision and Indeterminacy
in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –
Success in Circuit lies

Emily Dickinson's poetry has for the last two decades or so enjoyed an
increasingly high reputation. Still, quite a few readers of her work, including
some who most admire her, have repeatedly pointed to the ambiguities and
apparent inconsistencies of many of her poems as an indication of a certain
intellectual deficiency in the poet – in order, I suspect, to get around the
difficulties of interpretation presented by these obscurities.(1) That there is,
indeed, some peculiar indeterminacy in her manner of thinking can hardly be
denied. Much is made in particular of Dickinson's ambivalent attitude
towards death and immortality, but also of the seemingly contradictory
function of nature and of the poet's ostensibly insufficient understanding of
the process of perception.(2) Few critics will admit that this indeterminacy,
which recurs again and again alongside the greatest precision in presentation,
may be quite deliberate and could have an important, even decisive, role to
play in the text.(3)

Let us begin by considering what is one of Emily Dickinson's most often
anthologized poems:

A Route of Evanescence
With a revolving Wheel –
A Resonance of Emerald –
A Rush of Cochineal –
And every Blossom on the Bush
Adjusts it's tumbled Head –
The mail from Tunis, probably,
An easy Morning's Ride – (J 1463)

Since Dickinson adds no titles to her poetry, we are at first uncertain what
the poem is about. It seems to fall in two parts. The first four lines describe
sense-impressions or "sensations," while the second half is concerned with
what may be called reaction and "reflection." The sensations can further be
analyzed into movement, form, color, and sound.(4) It is interesting, though
probably accidental, that movement and form are primary qualities, and
                                                                                   1

color and sound secondary qualities. Because the prism of consciousness (J
1602) breaks the object in question down into its component parts, we may
speak of componential analysis. Parallel to this analysis we observe an
attempt at synthesis, above all by means of synaesthesia. It is through this
unified complex of sense data that we experience what Gerard Manley
Hopkins calls the "inscape" (or "individually-distinctive beauty") of the
object. Inversely, the object's "instress" can be interpreted as its effect or
impression on the soul.(5)

The pattern of Dickinson's poem may thus be diagrammed according to
these concepts (numbers refer to lines):

When we look at the various components, it is clear that they do not function
as synecdoches since we are here not dealing with particular elements (claws,
beak, or wing for bird) but with qualities per se. These qualities seem to be
detached from the object in much the same way that the color red might be
detached from an apple. What we observe, therefore, is a sort of
"phenomenological reduction." And, indeed, Emily Dickinson's method, not
unlike Husserl's, is a "bracketing" of reality.(6) The poet does not try to
account for what appears, but how it appears and affects the mind. Instead of
focusing on the world of objects, she concentrates on consciousness as such.
In our poem the impressions – partly visual, partly auditory – left by the
object have in common the element of a rapidly fading but nonetheless
intensive after-effect. It is made visible as well as audible in the Latinate
polysyllables "Evanescence" and "Resonance," and in the feminine endings of
the lines 1 and 3.

In other words, the poem describes effects, while the object which calls forth
these effects can only be inferred indirectly (metonymically) from the
impressions of form, movement, color, and sound. Our emotion "defines"
the object in much the same way that the movement of "the vane defines the
wind" (L 830). From various accompanying letters of the poet, we learn that
the object in question is a hummingbird. We might also guess it from the
similarity with an earlier poem (J 500) on the same subject. Without such
                                                                                 2

knowledge, it would be rather difficult to come to a decision. Obviously, the
occasion for the poem – and for most other poems as well – recedes into the
background and becomes dispensable or is even lost entirely.(7) This is
significant.

The poetic self experiences the effects of things, but nature itself remains an
enigma. The world can no longer be understood as a sum of separate entities
but is now seen as a process which eludes all attempts to grasp it.(8) Emily
Dickinson's poems, therefore, do not describe specific objects but rather
their impressions on the conscious mind; or if objects, then preferably
dissolved in pure movement. (The often anthologized poem on a cat is a case
in point.) As the bird flies by, it draws a line across the retina, which deletes
itself in the very process: "A Route of Evanescence." This tendency for pure
movement can also be recognized in Gerard Manley Hopkins' "The
Windhover": "Off, off forth on swing,/ As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a
bow-end." This simile (though not the poem as a whole) implies a lasting
trace, whereas Dickinson here, as well as in other poems, shows a
predilection for fading contours. The short pause above the blossom appears
as a turning wheel – the splendor of life, as it were. The movement tends to
melt the visual figure into the infinite – "circumference one is tempted to say
– which, moreover, corresponds exactly to the flight pattern of the bird
which does not even alight when drinking.

   The movement leaves no lasting trace in nature, for the blossoms soon
return to their original stasis (a readjustment that is suitably expressed in the
only syntactically complete sentence). Not so, however, the poet. In her
consciousness, "where the meanings are" (J 258), the experience of the bird
has left an impression that tries to find a satisfactory explanation, but the
closing metaphor remains tentative and noncommittal: "The mail from
Tunis, probably –". How can we expect a metaphorical relationship of
equivalence between bird and poet to take shape when one side of the
relation, the world as concrete reality, has become so problematic?

                                        I

To solve the problem here raised, we must try to understand more precisely
how Dickinson's poetic language functions. The critical approach of this
essay requires some technical concepts which will become clearer as the
discussion proceeds. In order to avoid making the argument unnecessarily
complicated, elaboration of certain points will be offered in the notes rather
than developed in the main text. Some preliminary definitions, however, are
here in order.
                                                                                    3

Metaphor can be defined in terms of an information transfer which is based
on a relationship of equivalence (similarity/dissimilarity). The relation of
similarity between the sets of semantic markers is customarily given the
name of tertium comparationis. This term is, however, deceptive since it
suggests a static relationship, whereas the dominant characteristic of
metaphor is its dynamic quality.(9) The violation of the semantic
compatibility(10) is accepted as figurative speech as long as there is an
intersection of semes (or a similarity of situation) conspicuous enough to
allow for a transfer of information which is still felt to increase the overall
meaning. While the paradigmatic metaphor effects a rather direct transfer of
information, syntagmatic metaphor (of which Shakespeare is the undisputed
master) is more indirect since the syntagmatic axis must first be projected
onto the paradigmatic one.(ll) In both types, however, the two or more levels
(or information subsystems) begin, as it were, to "speak" to one another and
to "exchange" information in the reader's brain.(12)

Ordinary language with its referential links to reality is used as a primary
system and remains a conditio sine qua non of metaphorical speech. If this
referential prerequisite is no longer fulfilled, then the different levels can
only with difficulty be brought into a relation of equivalence, and the
dialogue becomes impossible or, at least, hypothetical: "The mail from
Tunis-probably."(13) As a result the metaphoric method of comparison gives
way more and more to the metonymic method of inference. It is hardly
surprising, therefore, that the tentative equation of bird and mail seems
bewilderingly ambivalent. Common to both is, first, a quality of exotic
remoteness and rare excellence, as expressed in the genitive apposition of
"Emerald'' and "Cochineal"; then, the element of incomprehensibility and
even mystery, since the letter may be written in a foreign tongue; bird and
mail are, finally, connected by the element of speed, and this is further
underlined by the auditory and semantic bracket "Route”–"Ride": The poem
itself begins to turn round like the "revolving Wheel."

Let us now for a moment turn to the earlier poem mentioned above:

Within my Garden, rides a Bird
Upon a single Wheel –
Whose spokes a dizzy Music make
As 'twere a travelling Mill –

He never stops, but slackens
Above the Ripest Rose –
Partakes without alighting
And praises as he goes,

                                                                                  4

Till every spice is tasted –
And then his Fairy Gig
Reels in remoter atmospheres –
And I rejoin my Dog,

And He and I, perplex us
If positive, 'twere we –
Or bore the Garden in the Brain
This Curiosity –

But He, the best Logician,
Refers my clumsy eye –
To just vibrating Blossoms!
An Exquisite Reply! (J 500)

The thematic similarities are obvious: the turning wheel, the music, the
strange and fairy-like apparition, and the equally sudden disappearance; only
the element of color is missing. The question whether reality is outside or
only in the imagination is conclusively answered by the still trembling petals.
The poet herself, equally moved, finds her identity confirmed by the
emotion, moveor ergo sum, although she too must return from the ecstatic
experience to everyday life: "And I rejoin my Dog' – a marvellous example
of bathos. No doubt, this poem is inferior to the later (and apparently
independent) version both in economy and symbolic power; yet it provides
additional insights through its very explicitness. The synecdochic connection
of "Wheel" and "Gig" (reminiscent of Shelley's "Queen Mab"), for example,
is toned down to the metonymic link of "Wheel" with "Ride"; similarly, the
cliché "Rose" is replaced by the more precise though, paradoxically, more
generic synecdoche "Blossom." The general tendency is from common noun
to synecdoche, and from synecdochic to metonymic relationships. And this is
where the difficulties begin to arise.

The editor of Emily Dickinson's poems and letters, Thomas H. Johnson, has
already noted that "The mail from Tunis" is an allusion to Shakespeare's
Tempest: "She that is Queen of Tunis: she that dwells/ Ten leagues beyond
man's life: she that from Naples/ Can have no note, unless the sun were post-
" (II. 246-248). The guileless critic is usually delighted with such discoveries
till it dawns on him that additional information on subtexts or metatexts
(whether of a biographical, literary or other nature) invariably creates
additional problems. Rebecca Patterson, for example, has pointed out that the
allusion to The Tempest tends to "identify" the bird with the sun and also
with Ariel, who is actually called "my bird" by his master.(14) As a matter
of fact, the sun is, virtually at least, already present in the description of the
bird as "a revolving Wheel." This is borne out by another poem where the
sun appears as a "Wheeling King" (J 232). The suggested double entendre of
                                                                                     5

"mail"–"male'' finds additional support here. The inexorable advance of the
day-star (of time in general) evokes a feeling of overpowering ecstasy and
concomitant loss on a grand scale, which is not unlike the experience of the
hummingbird. In both cases the poet must come to terms with her loss.

Let us agree that the real difficulties in Emily Dickinson's poetry stem not so
much from metaphorical but from metonymical references.(15) With
metonymy the "cause" must be inferred from the "effect."(16) As a result,
the reader is now required to supply the figurative associations himself since,
contrary to the stated relationship of equivalence in metaphor, the specific
referent can no longer be found in the text. We are, therefore, forced to
search language for its store of metonymic relations, first, by determining
the potential of a word's primary meaning, but also by examining the
possible enrichments through literary or other subtexts, and finally by
exploring its archetypal implications. Although this has always been common
practice in literary criticism, metonymic tactics tend to impose especially
great, and occasionally excessive demands on the reader even though it must
be admitted that – as a result – he finally comes into his own. At the same
time, it becomes increasingly difficult to verify one's findings by a reference
to the text. It is true that language offers an almost inexhaustible wealth of
possible relationships, and what at first appears to be a mere juxtaposition of
disparate elements assumes by virtue of this contiguity in the text a meaning
of its own, as Aristotle already pointed out. Nevertheless, the old question
arises as to what kind of reality such a linguistic net of relations may possibly
correspond. A tentative answer, with implications for literary criticism in
general, will emerge toward the end of our discussion.

If Emily Dickinson, as the poem on the hummingbird demonstrates, receives
no more than impressions from nature, this is also true for the reader who
only gets, so to speak, nudges in the right direction. The trext can thus be
understood as an allegory of its own reading. In other words, the poem
demonstrates its autonomy but, at the same time, entails the impossibility of a
definitive interpretation. We cannot here pursue the links with Imagism,
Symbolism, T.S. Eliot's "objective correlative" which, in contrast to
Dickinson's method of "inference" is a method of "projection" (l7) or with
William Carlos Williams' totalization of the principle of contiguity (with a
concomitant loss of the element of causality). It may be pointed out,
however, that the preferential vision of similarity in metaphorical expression
on the one hand and the stressing of dissimilarity on the other – an
opposition in which the philosophical contrast of positing ("Setzung") and
negating ("Negierung") is reflected – form one pole on the stylistic scale,
while pure contiguity forms the other. Between these two extremes we may
insert metonymy and what will be called pure deixis. It is at one end of the
scale in contiguity, where things become selfsufficient and, as in aphasia, free
of similarities and dissimilarities.(18) This very lack of comparison,
                                                                                    6

however, offers us a chance for a direct encounter with the objects which,
paradoxical as it may seem, become freshly available for metaphorical
speech.

We have referred above to the metonymic structure of the hummingbird
poem, where the mover, the bird, is only indirectly represented by the thing
moved, more exactly, by the impression left in the poet's consciousness. But
we do not find a lyrical "I" within the poem. This is noteworthy. The
tendency towards metonymy is normally accompanied by a concurrent
weakening of the organizing center in the mind.(19) The world rather
impresses itself on the poet's consciousness which is caught unawares: "Not
when we know, the Power accosts–" (J 1335). But this meeting is, strictly
speaking, rather a parting. What lasts is solely the feeling of loss. At the
same time, however, this loss turns out to be a gain: "We lose-because we
win–'' (J 21). What we gain in our mind by way of memory is taken away
from the fullness of experiential life. It is in this sense that the poet loves
"the Wound" of "a Withdrawn Delight" (J 379).

This curiously trade-like balance of gain and loss in human experience is a
characteristic of Emily Dickinson's work: "Perception of an object costs/
Precise the Object's loss-'' (J 1071). We may be capable of transforming an
object into a purely ideal state in our consciousness, but this power of
imagination is dearly paid for by the concomitant loss of the actual object. In
other words, ideal presence in the mind presupposes absence in actuality:
"absent, yet present in the highest, and truest sense" (L 72). The French
symbolists speak in this context of absence présente.

As the trembling petals regain their original state of rest, so the ecstasy of
the poet passes into the stasis of loss – itself a kind of gain, since, as Emily
Dickinson puts it, "absence only stays." This element of permanence is
expressed by "The mail from Tunis" since the written word possesses the
quality of stability. At the same time, the speed and exquisite beauty of the
experience and simultaneously the unbridgeable distance to the ecstatic
moment are evoked by the foreign place of origin: "Tunis." Furthermore, a
letter represents the absent writer and is thus itself a sign of absence. Indeed,
ecstatic experience for Dickinson is precisely a function of evanescence or
transitoriness: "Delight is as the flight-/ Or in the Ratio of it" (J 257), or as
she says elsewhere: "Rapture-first perceived/ By feeling it is gone –" (J
1468). To a former school friend she writes: "All we secure of Beauty is it's
Evanescences" (L 781) – or just "A Route of Evanescence." For such poetry
there can be no subjects in the traditional sense and consequently no titles
except in the very general form of "a raid on the inarticulate" (to use T. S.
Eliot's expression). Emily Dickinson herself mocks Higginson's inquiry –
and that of other naive readers – after the content of her poems: "All men
say 'What' to me but I thought it a fashion" (L 275). The fashion still
                                                                                    7

persists.

The following is a late version of a bird poem which well reveals the general
tendency of Emily Dickinson's style towards abstract and sceneless poetry.

Image of Light, Adieu –
Thanks for the interview –
So long-so short –
Preceptor of the whole-
Coeval Cardinal –
Impart – Depart – (J 1556)

These lines can almost be read as a commentary on "A Route of
Evanescence." The elements of movement, form, sound, and color are here
reduced to an indefinite "Image of Light." The whole poem is, as it were, an
expression of the peculiar dialectics of gain and loss, best seen perhaps in the
antithetical word pairs, but also in the polysemantic "Cardinal" signifying
(among other things) both "zenith" and "nadir." (Note also the contrast
between colloquial and rhetorical style.) Because it functions as a mediator
between the poet and eternity, the bird is a fit "representative" of God. But
although the departing cardinal bird is called a "Preceptor," the "message" it
"imparts" is a negative one since it informs the poet of her desire for
something ultimate but absent. The "interview" is at the same time an
"Adieu," and the fleeting experience turns into an enduring feeling of loss.

The feeling of loss is, of course, a profoundly Romantic element. If one
looks at the hummingbird poem from a historical perspective and compares
it, for instance, with Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale," Wordsworth's "Cuckoo,"
or Shelley's "To a Skylark," one is struck that in all these examples the birds
are out of the poets' sight when the poems begin; only their song can still be
heard. Unlike the Romantics, Emily Dickinson prefers not to mythologize
the bird into an "immortal bird" or "blithe Spirit," although for her, too, the
bird remains "a mystery." She evidently begins where the Romantic quest
ends and fails. The loss of the present moment, of time in general, is caught
by Dickinson in the dramatic event of the peripety itself. What previously
could be experienced as a sustained mood is now compressed into a single
moment; the myth is reduced to an act of pure consciousness. The closeness
to Husserl's concept of "phenomenological reduction" has been mentioned
before in connection with Dickinson's tendency to "bracket" reality and,
relatedly, with her technique of detaching qualities from objects. It would
even appear that the "phenomenological reduction" runs parallel to an
"aesthetic reduction," since the "bracketing" of reality clearly tends to
emphasize the autonomy of a work of art.(20)

The concentration on the "critical" moment is a crucial element in Emily
                                                                                   8

Dickinson's poetry and is closely connected with the shift from analogue to
digital thinking – itself responsible for the experience of life as a
discontinuous or "Angled Road" (J 910).(21) It finds expression, first
iconically, in the epigrammatic shortness of her poems, second thematically,
in the numerous descriptions of unstable phenomena in nature such as the
rising and setting of the sun or its precarious poise at the meridian hour of
noon, the changing of the seasons at the solstices, and certain fleeting effects
of light in general. It can further be observed in the elliptical and often
ambiguous syntax (including the hyphen),(22) and finally in the use of
polysemantic and therefore often (semantically) unstable words and
expressions. The world's drama is enacted before the poet's eyes as a process
or, to use her own words, as "God's experiment" (J 300). The reversal from
being into nothingness (and vice versa) takes place anew at every moment:
"each instant" is like "a gun . . . that touched goes off" (L 656). No wonder,
the ground on which the poet treads is seen as precariously brittle, even
volcanic and potentially explosive (J 1677). The poet experiences each
moment of life and, even more so, that of death (which functions as a sort of
antitype) as a "critical" turning point or crisis:

Crisis is a Hair
Toward which forces creep
Past which forces retrograde (J 889)

The nature of a turning point is such that it simply eludes all our attempts to
grasp it. After her father's death, Dickinson describes this strange
phenomenon in a letter to Bowles: "when water ceases to rise – it has
commenced falling. That is the law of Flood" (L 415). The pivotal moment
as it occurs is already past. It should be kept in mind that the experience of
this "critical" moment is closely connected with the aforementioned principle
of loss and gain in the process of perception. For Dickinson "the law of
Flood" is ultimately identical with the law of poetic inspiration and also
governs her relationship with God. Looked at in this way, the suggested
analogies of the bird with the sun and with Ariel (as well as the erotic
element of rape which can, however slightly, be felt in the relationship
between bird and flower, nature/God and poet) begin to acquire their deeper
significance. We remember that Shakespeare's poetic spirit and messenger of
beauty is called "the picture of nobody," a name or rather namelessness that
accurately echoes his elusive and evanescent nature.(23) If, indeed, existence
proves to be a continuous crisis, we begin to understand why the poet prefers
to portray moments of precarious poise between "advance" and "retrograde."
Since it is, strictly speaking, impossible to catch the "critical" moment itself,
Dickinson often tries to seize it immediately before (or after) the dramatic
reversal (J 140, J 304). Nature in particular, ominously called a
"necromancer," is the unequalled master in the art of conjuring things both
up and away as if by magic (J 628), being simultaneously creator and
                                                                                    9

created. This is particularly noticeable in the "spectral" formations of the
snow that "stills its Artisans-like Ghosts-/ Denying they have been-" (J
311).(24) In a sense, the poet would like to compete with nature in her own
creations.

To pile like Thunder to it's close
Then crumble grand away
While Everything created hid
This-would be Poetry – (J 1247)

The lightning or cause of the thunder is not mentioned in the poem. The
moment of inspiration or of love: "the two coeval come –" (J 1247) cannot
be grasped. It comes and goes like that strange light on winter afternoons:
"We can find no scar,/ But internal difference,/ Where the Meanings, are-" (J
258).

In the hummingbird poem, this simultaneous creation and self-effacement of
poetry, which comes to be an important aim of the Symbolist movement,
seems fulfilled to perfection. The technique somehow resembles the spider's
"unsubstantial trade" (J 605). A sense or sense impression is given but
immediately retracted again. Since metaphors, due to their relationship of
equivalence, presuppose a stable world in which, according to Graham
Hough, the theme can still be incarnated,(25) Dickinson does largely without
them and uses metonymically constructed metaphors, ambiguous signs, and
multiple (often hypothetical) analogies. She would, in fact, prefer to erase
what she sets down in one and the same expression. Thus, silence becomes
the sovereign ideal: "It is the Ultimate of Talk-/ The Impotence to Tell-" (J
407).(26)

As a musicienne du silence, however, Dickinson could not function as a poet;
so she tries by linguistic means to approximate this ideal as closely as
possible. Besides the suffix of negation which, like Keats, she uses very
frequently (coining numerous neologisms, such as "costumeless,"
"syllableless," "perceiveless"), we also find prefixes ("trans-"), negated
comparisons, abstract words of Latinate origin with an aura of
indeterminacy, and above all syntactically ambivalent genitive appositions
such as "A Route of Evanescence," "Landscapes of Absence" (Rilke's
"Gebirge des Nicht-mehr"), "streets of silence." The element of negation:
"'No' is the wildest word we consign to Language" (L 562) is of such
importance in Emily Dickinson's poetic oeuvre that one is tempted to speak
of a poesis negativa. Mimetic poetry, relying on concrete imagery, would be
"idolatry" to a poet who always tried to resist this "last temptation of the
spirit” – in much the same way that she resisted Otis P. Lord's offer to
concretize their relationship: "Save me from the idolatry which would crush
us both–" (L 560).(27)
                                                                                10

Dickinson occasionally uses oxymora like "sumptuous destitution" or
"confident despair," but on the whole she prefers – unlike Whitman –
asymmetrical relations to symmetrical antithesis. Generally speaking, some
established pattern – hymn, rhyme, level of style, intellectual, social, and
religious structure – functions as background or expectation horizon for the
reader whom Dickinson strategically disappoints in rhythmic, phonetic,
semantic and even philosophical respects. The following pairs may be
mentioned as examples of the semantic asymmetry with which we are
concerned: "Duke"/"dwarf" (instead of "giant"/"dwarf" or "duke"/
"beggar"), "black"/"gay" and "white"/"sombre" (instead of "white"/"black").
(28) One might legitimately ask why Emily Dickinson tends to prefer
asymmetrical structures. Probably because there is a nonsymmetrical
relationship between the finite and the infinite, between man and God, death
itself being the adamantine frontier. Let us, however, restrict ourselves to a
closer analysis of the stylistic implications. As soon as asymmetries of this
kind are more closely connected by syntax, they function as figures of
speech:

There's a certain Slant of light
Winter Afternoons
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes – (J 258)

After her mother's death, Emily Dickinson writes to Maria Whitney: "The
sunshine almost speaks, this morning, redoubling the division, and Paul's
remark grows graphic, 'the weight of glory'" (L 815) .(29) The qualifying
"almost" makes the "division" even more painful. In a poem written twenty
years earlier, Dickinson speaks of the strangely pellucid light of early spring
days: "It almost speaks to you" (J 812). Nature seems to have something to
say to us, and it is as though we were just touching the "hems" (J 37) of her
secret. But the curious light fades as suddenly as it came. The ray hits us as it
once hit Paul, but the voice which then accompanied it is now silent.

If we consider the figure of speech as such, we immediately notice that there
is, strictly speaking, no literal or figurative sense here at all. Neither the
light nor the hymns possess the quality of (concrete) heaviness, so that "Heft/
Of Cathedral Tunes" ("the weight of glory") cannot properly be called a
metaphor, because a relationship of equivalence cannot be established except
through the metonymic "effects" or impression in the mind. The synaesthetic
effect of a "heavy (or light) tone" is disturbed by the emphatically concrete
and colloquial "Heft." Accordingly, the first publishers struck the word out
and replaced it by "weight," which produced a conventionally attractive half-
rhyme with "light." The combination of the verb "oppress" (itself a faded
metaphor and no longer used for concrete weight) with "Heft," though only
                                                                                 11

in the form of a comparison, tends to reactivate the metaphorical element.

From these examples, we can see that the tendency towards metonymy runs
parallel to an increasing deconstruction of metaphorical style and, ultimately,
of imagery as such. It becomes increasingly difficult to visualize tropes like
those quoted above. Dickinson's partiality for nonrepresentational poetry is
obvious. As the common element is no longer connected synecdochically (by
relation of inclusion) to the two terms, but metonymically (by relation of
cause and/or association), we may speak of a transition from synecdochic to
metonymic metaphor, and further, owing to the asymmetry, of "slant
metaphor."(30) Other metonymically constructed metaphors would be, for
instance, "piles of solid moan" or "I can wade Grief – / Whole Pools of it."
Whereas the intersection of semes is still relatively easy to find here ("tears"
as effect of grief), it often becomes difficult, sometimes indeed impossible,
since the associations must be tracked down or inferred ex eventu, and
frequently have the tendency to become completely personal. In extreme
cases the relation only exists in the author's consciousness:

Lay this Laurel on the One
Too intrinsic for Renown-
Laurel – vail your deathless tree –
Him you chasten, that is He! (J 1393)

Without a knowledge of the accompanying circumstances (her father's
death?), and without familiarity with Emily Dickinson's attitude towards
self-identity, fame and immortality, this poem would almost be
incomprehensible. Difficulties of this kind are a positive challenge to hunt
for "supporting" subtexts.

                                        II

We shall now try to use the opposition "synecdochic"/"metonymic" for a
more accurate distinction of the terms "symbolic" and "symbolist." The
symbol is, as Jacques Derrida points out,(31) synecdochically related to the
thing symbolized. Synecdoche as actual presence (sail for ship) on the one
hand, and sacramental presence (including myth understood as metaphor of
identity not similarity, i.e. a metaphor which is believed in) on the other may
be considered as the two borderline cases of the symbol as a literary term.
The emblem, which is defined by tradition, appears then as a reduction of the
symbol since the tension between being and nothingness that underlies the
symbolical mode is here eliminated. With certain reservations, we might say,
for example, that Yeats uses symbols and Whitman emblems. The symbolist
pendant, by contrast, is metonymically related to what is meant and only
                                                                               12

refers to it without being part of it. We may, therefore, call it a "sign" or
"clue" to use Dickinson's terms. Because it transcends its own range of
meaning, one might also speak of a transcend.(32)

Symbol and transcend may be compared to synecdochic and metonymic
metaphors respectively. The two pairs seem to represent different layers of
deep structures (the first, of course, being the deeper of the two). Metaphor
as a primarily syntagmatic element has already undergone certain
transformations which bring it nearer to the surface structure than the
symbol. Symbol and transcend, however, are largely free from contextual
controls or limitations. That is precisely why Yeats could speak of symbols
as "the only things free enough from all bounds to speak of perfection.''(33)
It can hardly be denied that the symbol has an archetypal universality which
is based on a relationship of equivalence between language and world. This
allows for an "incarnation" of thoughts in symbols which is largely missing
in transcends where we can observe a break between the world of objects and
the poet's consciousness; the tendency of the transcend is towards mere
reference or pure deixis – Rilke's "reiner Bezug" – without any
corresponding referent whatever. Thus the transcend ultimately becomes
what Dickinson calls an "Asterisk."(34)

                                   Zeichnung

The decrease of metaphorical imagery from left to right has also a limited
historical relevance. It should further be noted that the brackets "language"
(system) and "parole" (actualization) must be interpreted as tendencies only,
since even an emblem is part of the parole. The terms "reduction" and
"perspective" are borrowed from Kenneth Burke‘s A Grammar of Motives
(Berkeley & Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1969), pp. 503–509.
The chart is, of course, only a suggestion towards a possible terminology. I
would like, here, to thank Prof. Siegfried Wyler and Privatdozent Dr. K.
Ringger for their interest and criticism during the completion of this essay. I
am also grateful for the encouraging support from specialists in the field,
particularly from Prof. Richard Sewall and from Prof. Inder Nath Kher (via
Prof. Sewall).

While the range of meaning of a symbol finds its limits in the concrete
object, the transcend remains essentially indeterminate. Outward reality is, so
we have found, more and more "bracketed," and the only focus where the
relations still meet is finally the poet's consciousness. A comparison of
Emerson's "Correspondences" with Baudelaire’s "Correspondances" may
illustrate this. Contrary to Emerson's trust in the phenomenal world (as an
analogia entis of sorts), Baudelaire treats things as totally exchangeable. The
relationship between man and the object becomes an arbitrary one because
                                                                                13

the world has lost its innate meaning and merely functions as a copia rerum
for Baudelaire’s – and even more so for Mallarmé's – art of poetic montage.
The text begins more and more to refer back to itself and thus becomes its
own frame. The above chart may sum up the terminological details.

That Emily Dickinson herself tends toward the transcend (or Symbolist
mode) can already be seen in one of her earliest poems (J 13) where the
word "Morn" is not only used as a synecdoche for "Day" but (like "East") as
a metonym for "sunrise" or "Aurora." The latter, in turn, functions as a
transcend in much the same way as the "Transatlantic Morn" (J 262), both
pointing towards death as a potential metamorphosis into "Costumeless
Consciousness" (J 1454). The same tendency can be noticed in the following
poem: "Go thy great way! / The stars thou meetst / Are even as Thyself-/ For
what are Stars but Asterisks / To point a human Life?" (J 1638). The lines
appear to be inspired by Shelley's "To Wordsworth" and even more so by his
"Adonais" but also by Wordsworth's Lucy Poems. The person addressed
could be Otis P. Lord. But we are here concerned only with the last two
lines. The stars are-comparable to the typographical sign of the asterisk-
marks of reference. Since, however, there is no discernible referent, we can
speak of pure deixis. (A similar function of pure reference may also be
noticed in "daisy," "disk," "crescent.") Another instance of pure deixis can be
found in Dickinson's "absolute" use of the pronoun: "Him you chasten that is
He." (Since the allusion is often to infinity, one might also call it "the mythic
use" of the pronoun.)

In the above poem, the element of remoteness assumes great significance and
even seems to become a sort of "condensed" (L 587) or ideal presence for
the poet. On the concrete level, it refers to the distant star; on a second level,
however, it points to the irrevocable absence of the dead person, death being
the cardinal instance of absence présente. As a result, the ideal becomes
totally personal, if not arbitrary: "The whole of Immortality/ Secreted in a
star" (J 1616). Dickinson chooses here the distant star as a transcend which,
like the asterisk, best approximates total absence.(35) As such it is the last
step before nothingness – or immortality, since total absence (death), in a
dialectical reversal, would become total presence, though invisible to the
human eye: "For None see God and live –" (J 1247). Both these elements,
invisibility and distillation or condensation, are implied by the verb "to
secrete." For Dickinson, death is the final secret, the ultimate "beyond," and
as such the overpowering sign of transcendence (J 1616).

Keats once remarked of Byron: "Lord Byron cuts a figure, but he is not
figurative." Emily Dickinson's life certainly is, and so is her poetry, though
not in Auerbach's definition of the term "figural," where both poles of the
figure must lie within time as actual events. For Dickinson, by contrast, one
pole – death – radically falls out of the linearity of time "into degreeless
                                                                                 14

Noon" (J 287). Still, one could in analogy to Rilke's "reiner Figur" speak of
"pure figurality," where the antitype which corresponds to the type has been
lost or may be found only in the poet's consciousness or, ultimately, in God
himself. The ambiguity of the antitype results from the fact that the figura
par excellence, Christ, has been replaced in Dickinson's thinking by the
impenetrable mystery of death. To characterize her life and work as figural
may still be justified since even for Auerbach the events tend to lose their
merely historical significance and finally appear "als ein immer schon
Gewesenes und ein sich in Zukunft Erfüllendes; und eigentlich, vor Gottes
Augen, ist es ein Ewiges."(36) In this sense, one might indeed speak of
figurality or figurativeness, for the poet seems to expect that her existence
"fulfills" a plan whose meaning will eventually be "identified” by history and
– possibly – by "immortality." The element of absence evoked by the
"asterisk" further calls to mind an essential characteristic of Dickinson's
style: ellipsis. Indeed, it is hardly accidental that the tendency towards
metonymy is accompanied by an increasing ambivalence on the semotactic
level. Finally, it should be noted that Dickinson's predilection for the
transcend links her art with that of the Symbolists whose program she
anticipated in many ways.

The shift from synecdochic to metonymic metaphor is evidently paralleled
by the tendency away from the symbol towards the transcend. In both cases
the element of indeterminacy is increased. Dickinson's hesitation to establish
metaphorical relationships of equivalence has already been pointed out in the
poem on the hummingbird: "The mail from Tunis, probably –". We are
somewhat disinclined to speak of a metaphor because the semantic anomaly
characteristic of metaphorical language is missing. One is tempted rather to
speak of an analogy. And, indeed, metaphors always tend to grow into
analogies – often multiple, hypothetical or even negated analogies(37) as can
best be verified by a look at some of the definition poems: "Publication is the
Auction of the Mind," "Doom is the House without the Door," "Presentiment
– is that long Shadow." Dickinson even makes fun of the synecdochic
metaphor as used at that time, because the border between equivalence and
identity was often blurred: "That's what they call a metaphor in our country.
Don't be afraid of it, it won't bite" (L 34). By contrast, the analogy which
can be considered a developed comparison keeps the two sides of the
equation neatly apart. As a result, the hypothetical character of the
relationship (note the frequent use of the subjunctive) is brought increasingly
into focus and Dickinson's poetic experiments often strike the reader as
model cases or hypotheses.

We play at Paste –
Till qualified, for Pearl –
Then, drop the Paste –
And deem ourself a fool –
                                                                              15

The Shapes – though – were similar –
And our new Hands
Learned Gem-Tactics –
Practising Sands – (J 320)

Although man looks back with scorn at the games of his childhood, the
exercise was still useful in preparing him for more serious ventures. It is,
however, by no means clear what meaning ought to be attributed to "Pearl"
and "Gem-Tactics." One is inclined at first to think of the poet's creative
work or of some other decisive enterprise, possibly of life as such which,
compared to pure being, is but a "moment of preface" or a "sterile
perquisite" (J 1754). The Bible, too, speaks of the pearl in this sense.
Looking more closely at the chiasmally built analogy, we soon recognize that
there is an unknown on both sides of the equation, which makes a solution
obviously impossible. Although the second stanza seems to serve as a key to
the first, it becomes apparent that this is mere "tactics," for the deciphering
element "Gem-Tactics" is in turn encoded by a reference back to "Pearl."
The method of analogy is thus used by the poet as a deliberately self-
defeating strategy.

The contrast between "Pearl" and "Paste" (paste diamonds) emphasizes the
opposition between artificial values and something ultimate. A study of
further texts only confirms the impression that "Pearl" points to a supreme
but rather indefinite value. That jewel imagery is largely confined to the
earlier half of her poetic oeuvre only proves how free Dickinson is in her
use of suitable vehicles. Obviously, the "Pearl," too, functions as a sort of
"Asterisk" or "Sign" which transcends its own meaning by alluding to some
sphere which can best be circumscribed by her own terms "infinity" and
"mystery." We shall now focus on this sphere.

                                      III

The Admirations – and Contempts – of time –
Show justest – through an Open Tomb –
The Dying – as it were a Hight
Reorganizes Estimate
And what We saw not
We distinguish clear –
And mostly – see not
What We saw before –
'Tis Compound Vision –
                                                                                16

Light – enabling Light
The Finite – furnished
With the Infinite –
Convex – and Concave Witness –
Back – toward Time –
And forward –
Toward the God of Him – (J 906)

    The significance or insignificance of life is best revealed from the
vantage point (J 740) of death. The grave is, like a door or a window, a place
of transition from which one can look on two sides. This "prospect" of the
grave is accordingly called a "Compound Vision." In human consciousness,
which is primarily a consciousness of death, the finite continuously verges on
the infinite in much the same way that the advancing and retracting forces
meet in the critical turning point of each moment. The poet – following
Shakespeare and Shelley – therefore understands herself as a lens or mirror
that simultaneously focuses and spreads the light of the times "disseminating
their circumference" (J 883). The image goes back to Nikolaus von Kues,
and ultimately to antiquity.(38) In this way, Dickinson both records the
transient world, "Back – toward Time," and looks forward into eternity:
"Toward the God of Him." In the last analysis, man's nature is "Finite
Infinity" (J 1695). The non-equivalence of the two spheres (reminiscent of
the stylistic element of asymmetry mentioned above) excludes metaphorical
language based on the relationship of equivalence. The conspectus in the
poet's consciousness, however, "Light – enabling Light" or, in the words of
the psalmist: "In thy light we see the light"(39) allows the poet to relate by
inference the two incommensurable realms: "The infinite we only suppose
while we see the finite" (L 389). As a result, the vision becomes double-
sided and ambiguous since a non-mediate relation always tends to become
pure contradiction, as Rilke unforgettably expressed it in his epitaph.(40)
Dickinson's transcends, therefore, cannot be pinned down to specific
referents, whether of a biographical, poetical, or metaphysical nature,
although all of them contribute towards the total structure of her poems. A
language that constantly faces the finite as well as the infinite must
necessarily appear Janus-faced: precise with regard to the world of time and
space, but indeterminate and suggestive in view of the timeless realm of
"God." This double aspect is characteristic of all of Dickinson's major
poems.

It is in this sense that the poet everywhere meets God: " The Only News I
know/ Is Bulletins all Day/ From Immortality" (J 827). Therefore, it is
hardly by chance if Dickinson chooses the model of the hymn as a basic
pattern from which she, however, deliberately deviates. After all, "God's
Right Hand – . . . is amputated now/ And God cannot be found –" (J 1551);
Jacob's ladder between heaven and earth has broken off: "The Master's
                                                                             17

Ladders stop" (J 453). Whereas for Whitman the "letters from God" are still
"sign'd by God's name" (Collected Writings, IX, 33), this signature has been
lost to Emily Dickinson. For her God can no longer be found in the world of
things. The objects only mediate – like Rilke's angels – between man and
God. And like the angels, they exist in this function only for the addressee
and, strictly speaking, solely during the experience of the ecstatic moment
itself (J 702). In her memory, however, she almost remains in doubt whether
the meeting ever occurred. The news is like "The mail from Tunis,"' hardly
intelligible anymore. Just as the impression of the bird is still felt after its
disappearance, so Dickinson's often dark poems remain a lasting message of
Beauty, even though the messenger has long left "this land": "The Poets light
but Lamps – / Themselves – go out –" (J 883).

It is hardly surprising if the musical element begins to play an increasingly
important role. Pater's dictum (borrowed from Schopenhauer) that "all art
constantly aspires towards the condition of music" is at the basis of much of
modern poetry. " 'Tis this – in Music – hints and sways – . . . Distils
uncertain pain – "
'Tis this – invites – appalls – endows –
Flits – glimmers – proves – dissolves –
Returns – suggests – convicts – enchants –
Then – flings in Paradise – (J 673)

Music is the metonymic element par excellence; it precludes all certainty and
gives free play to the method of inference and projection. No wonder that
(under the influence of Poe) it has assumed such importance for the
Symbolists who prefer "les délicieux à peu-près" and the musicality of the
"precisely vague."(41)

Dickinson once said of her work: "This is my letter to the world that never
wrote to me" (J 441). Her letters, too, remain ambiguous, for she does not
know whether there is some transcendental power behind the world of
appearances (J 293). There is no certainty in "this timid life of evidence":
"I'm finite/ I can't see –" (J 696). "If Other News there be – / Or Admirabler
Show – / I'll tell it You – " (J 827). Instead of an answer, we have the poems,
whose perfect beauty intrigues our minds like Keats' Urn. Their very silence
teases us "out of thought / As doth eternity." Poet and reader both "baffle at
the Hint / And cipher at the Sign/ And make much blunder" till they can
"take the clew divine –" (J 1099). This final ignorance of man is, however, at
the same time the deepest need of the projecting mind: "The unknown is the
largest need of the intellect'' (L 471). While for Coleridge the destination is
still as important as the way (Biographia Literaria, Ch. 14), for Dickinson
the quest as such, not its completion, becomes now the ultimate value. Small
wonder then that for this poet "Faith is Doubt" (L 912). The following lines
call to mind Lessing's refusal of truth in favor of the eternal desire for
                                                                                18

truth.(42)

It's finer – not to know –
If Summer were an Axiom –
What sorcery had Snow?
So keep your secret – Father! (J 191)

"The seeing not" is "blesseder" (J 555, L 853). That is why Emily Dickinson,
despite all precision, also throws a veil of indeterminacy over her poems; not
because she wants to mystify the reader but because

The thought beneath so slight a film –
Is more distinctly seen –
As laces just reveal the surge –
Or Mists – the Appenine – (J 210)

Dickinson herself offers a prose version of this poem: "the inferential
knowledge the distinctest one" (L 685). Like Mallarmé, she loves veiled
meanings and things merely surmised: "Nommer un objet, c'est supprimer
les trois quarts de la jouissance d'un poème qui est faite du bonheur de
deviner peu à peu: le suggérer, voilà le rêve. "(43) Surmise is, of course, an
important element of all Romantic poetry. "What is not too explicit" is to
Blake "the fittest for Instruction because it rouses the faculties to act."
Wordsworth defines imagination as "hope, effort, desire/ And something
evermore about to be." Keats, in particular, is ever on the verge of a "wild
surmise." (44) Jorge Luis Borges even believes that the "imminence of a
revelation" that is not yet produced is, "perhaps, the aesthetic
phenomenon."(45) For all of them., surmise or inference is the neutral or
middle ground that frees imaginative activity and makes the soul aware of its
own faculties.

Emily Dickinson, too, prefers to evoke but a presentiment and to leave some
leeway, where object and consciousness can meet halfway, as it were. This
veiling or screening thus appears as a preliminary step towards total absence.
As a sort of absence présente, it brings the power of the imagination into
play, which moves the barely visible object further into the ideal presence
within the realm of consciousness. In Dickinson's poetry objects tend to
disappear as if swallowed up into "circumference" or what Rilke calls
"Weltinnenraum." In other words, the centrifugal movement towards
absence turns, by a sort of dialectic reversal, into a centripetal one:
"Circumference" becomes "Center." Among the stylistic devices used to
denote the new status of the object are prepositions ("beyond," "further,"
"within"), adverbs ("abroad," "nowhere"), adjectives ("different," "new,"
''royal") and verbs "pass," "flee," "transport"). The final absence would, of
course, be death. Therefore, in ever new variations, Dickinson can say: "I
                                                                             19

see thee better – in the Dark – . . . And in the grave – / I see Thee best – . . .
What need of Day – / To those whose Dark – hath so – surpassing Sun – " (J
611). The "surpassing Sun" is obviously the superior light of the imagination
for whose activity the night or absence of outward reality becomes almost a
prerequisite.

That external forms are likely to impair the power of the imagination is
frequently stressed by Blake and Wordsworth: "Natural Objects always did
and now do weaken, deaden, and obliterate Imagination." (46) Dickinson,
too, knows that "To feed upon the retrograde" of outward reality, "Enfeebles
– the Advance" of the imagination (J 904). This insight is also behind
Whitman's dictum that "facts are showered over with light" (namely, the
light of the imagination). That is why both Emerson and Whitman avoid
looking directly at the objects. In order to see a star clearly, one must "gaze"
at it "off one side," as Whitman says (Collected Writings, VII, 292).
Similarly, it is through ''indirection" ("drift") and "circuitous style" that one
is able to see what Emerson calls the "penumbra of things."(47) Poe's
concept of "indefinitiveness" (and "effect") pushes the strategy of inference
to its logical extreme.

Unquestionably, for such poetry the proper means of expression can no
longer be metaphorical but metonymic references. It furthermore becomes
evident that indeterminacy has a crucial function to fulfil in Emily
Dickinson's work.

To tell the Beauty would decrease
To state the Spell demean –
There is a syllable-less Sea
Of which it is the sign –
My will endeavors for it's word
And fails, but entertains
A Rapture as of Legacies –
Of introspective Mines – (J 1700)

Could beauty be expressed in words, then its magic spell would be lost and
beauty no longer be beauty; for "The Definition of Beauty is/ That Definition
is none –'' (J 988). Language can only be a sign, a reference to that "syllable-
less Sea" which the philosophers, for want of a better name, termed "being"
("Sein"), while Emily Dickinson never found a word for it. It is the only gap
in her vocabulary – Whitman's "word unsaid" which " is not in any
dictionary" (Collected Writings, IX, 188) – that defied remedy as the poet,
both proudly and resignedly, confessed elsewhere. But the failure proves
once more to be a gain, for it is precisely due to this impotence of expression
that the soul becomes aware of its potential (J 983, J 1200):

                                                                                 20

If I could tell how glad I was
I should not be so glad –
But when I cannot make the Force,
Nor mould it into Word
I know it is a sign
That new Dilemma be
From mathematics further off
Than from Eternity (J 1668)

The inability to word becomes a promise that man is moved by something
beyond himself, "Eternity," itself the greatest possible contrast to all that is
describable with mathematical precision: "By intuition, Mightiest Things/
Assert themselves – and not by terms –'' (J 420).

In the following lines, indeterminacy almost assumes an ontological
significance and appears as a main characteristic of the conditio humana .The
poem is, moreover, still the best introduction to T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock"
whose "overwhelming question" has amused and irritated a whole generation
of scholars.

Elysium is as far as to
The very nearest Room
If in that Room a Friend await
Felicity or Doom –

What fortitude the soul contains,
That it can so endure
The accent of a coming Foot –
The opening of a Door – (J 1760)

Elysium, according to Homer, lies at the very end of the earth and, perhaps
even more important, cannot be reached before death (such at least is
Hesiod's opinion). It is here indirectly related to an adjoining room where
some "Friend" awaits an unspecified but evidently final decision. The
infinitely far away is, as often in Dickinson's poems, correlated to what is
nearest, just as the infinitely great is sometimes dialectically related to the
infinitely small. The element that connects the two places in the mind is
expectation. The opposition "Doom" – "Felicity" accentuates the two
alternative possibilities of fulfillment and disappointment respectively.
"Doom" furthermore implies that the decision will be of an apocalyptic
fatality, while ''Felicity" alludes to the pre-Christian "Isles of the Blest."

That this suspense between "Felicity" and "Doom" is strongly reminiscent of
the Puritan uncertainty between salvation and rejection can hardly be denied.
One might even argue that Dickinson's refusal of all mediation and,
                                                                                   21