After great pain, a formal feeling comes -
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs -
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?
The Feet, mechanical, go round -
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought -
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone -
This is the Hour of Lead -
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow -
First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -
I studied this poem last semester with Dr. Fuller in Major American Writers and I fell in love with Dickinson’s poetry. This poem in particular resonates strongly each time I read it. The way she incorporates dashes implies much more meaning than if she had simply used commas or periods. For example, the dash at the end of the poem can signify different things to different readers based on how their experience or how they read the poem. Throughout the poem Dickenson describes her grieving process and at the end of the poem the reader could interpret chill as the chill of death and “the letting go” as the ultimate release in death. However it could also be interpreted as a chilling of the heart, the numbness that comes after severe pain, and the eventual letting go of those feelings and moving on. If she had used a period at the end of the poem I would interpret the ending only as death, but because of her use of the dash the poem has greater depth. There is also great power in her imagery. At the beginning of the poem she calls the heart stiff, which is still living but uncomfortable. Then the next image is wooden, again still alive but not motile like the heart. It then turns into quartz, a rock without life. Then it becomes the “Hour of Lead” a substance harder and more devoid of life than all the other images. Throughout the poem her images become harder and with each transition they loose more life. This poem has great worth in that so much is left up to the reader. Dickenson describes her experience with grief, but she does it using such abstract terms that anyone can interpret it to fit their own experience. Pain and grief are relatable experiences and this poem enables a deep connection to the reader because of this common experience. I find comfort when reading this poem in some ways because I usually interpret the ending as a release of hope. No matter what kind of pain I may be experiencing, I am not alone and there is hope for the future.
I agree that the dash at the end seems to signify a release, though I'm not sure that this is a release into hope or into some other state of being. Maybe something like abandonment.
ReplyDeleteI tend to read the poem as an account of what happens after a relationship (a passionate one, in the vein of "Wild Nights") ends, rather than about a death, which is clearly the subject matter of "Because I Could Not Stop for Death."
But I really don't know where this poem fits into her larger body of work, so there may be other limiting elements I am ignoring.
But that idea of "outliving" this particular moment of time suggests to me that the speaker thinks she may go beyond this event. Although the "if" is pretty strong in that same line (l.2 in stanza 3).
I'm probably overreaching here, but this sense of the devastation of a love lost or missed or broken is part of what make Dickinson such a compelling writer. She negotiates both the spiritual and the sensual realms equally powerfully.