Emily Dickinson: An Interpretation

This line comes from one of my favorite (but despairing and chilling) Emily Dickinson poems, one I even put in a novel.

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 attended a lecture years ago on explicating Emily’s poem, and this was how the professor interpreted the third line. “Was it He, that bore” – Jesus was a bore who we keep hearing about as bearing our pain and suffering but we still feel pain and suffer, no less, so why do we keep talking about this boring person and this boring, ineffectual, inapplicable message.  (Some of this I added, but his point was that Emily was actually calling Jesus and his teaching and the cross boring, or worse).

That is a shocking argument, and I doubt he knew what he was saying. Emily could be irreverent, but I don’t think she’d go that far. Of course, she may not have wanted this poem published. On the other hand, I think a lot of our mythology about Emily is nonsense. She did want to be published; she just lacked certain qualities or interests that would make her pursue it wholeheartedly. Self-confidence, maybe, but also an unwillingness to let others edit her work, which would make it no longer her own. She worked extremely hard on editing these masterpieces. All we writers struggle with that.

So, while I doubt him, I can’t say 100% he is wrong, other than that her punctuation was often “wrong” (note the comma after ceremonious.) Or perhaps creatively utilized?

We would be shocked and angered if someone said we were bored with the cross, or that it was boring. Even worse, that we thought Christ was a bore. Perhaps bored is not the word, because it implies dismissal; numb to it, unengaged by it, might be more applicable for us today.