Poem-A-Day/April 14
(Johnson 596)
When I was small, a Woman died —
Today — her Only Boy
Went up from the Potomac —
His face all Victory
To look at her — How slowly
The Seasons must have turned
Till Bullets clipt an Angle
And He passed quickly round —
If pride shall be in Paradise —
Ourself cannot decide —
Of their imperial Conduct —
No person testified —
But, proud in Apparition —
That Woman and her Boy
Pass back and forth, before my Brain
As even in the sky —
I'm confident that Bravoes —
Perpetual break abroad
For Braveries, remote as this
In Scarlet Maryland —
**
Again, we find Dickinson adapting her brilliant and weird sensibility to a mode not necessarily natural or suitable for her. This is very much in the vein (at least ostensibly) of sentimental, patriotic, rather weepy elegy. Note the sharp temporal juxtapositions of stanza 2, and the remarkable language in the second-to-last stanza (including "brain"--that most Dickinsonian of words!!)
(Johnson 596)
When I was small, a Woman died —
Today — her Only Boy
Went up from the Potomac —
His face all Victory
To look at her — How slowly
The Seasons must have turned
Till Bullets clipt an Angle
And He passed quickly round —
If pride shall be in Paradise —
Ourself cannot decide —
Of their imperial Conduct —
No person testified —
But, proud in Apparition —
That Woman and her Boy
Pass back and forth, before my Brain
As even in the sky —
I'm confident that Bravoes —
Perpetual break abroad
For Braveries, remote as this
In Scarlet Maryland —
**
Again, we find Dickinson adapting her brilliant and weird sensibility to a mode not necessarily natural or suitable for her. This is very much in the vein (at least ostensibly) of sentimental, patriotic, rather weepy elegy. Note the sharp temporal juxtapositions of stanza 2, and the remarkable language in the second-to-last stanza (including "brain"--that most Dickinsonian of words!!)
I think this poem is very telling regarding Dickinson's conception of death, and perhaps even faith. She begins the piece by discussing the woman and her son's deaths matter-of-factly, the first half mainly narrative. In the second half (or rather the last three stanzas) Dickinson muses on heaven, or perhaps even more broadly an existence beyond death. With Dickinson's complicated relationship with religion and with God itself, it's interesting to read this as perhaps a contemplation of what heaven would be like, what would be allowed and disallowed.
ReplyDelete"IF pride shall be in paradise"- Something she's unsure of, but perhaps pride can have different definitions- the pride she writes of here appears to be the pride of the mother in her son fighting in battle. "Proud in apparition" to me reads differently than the sin of pride, maybe a sin that Dickinson herself sees in the church. In prior classes we've spoken about how Emily's faith is more personal- her house, her yard being her church. The pride of the mother in this poem feels sanctioned within the church of her garden- there's no room for the sin of pride there.
Also, something interesting I found- in another version of this poem, "In Scarlet Maryland" is "In Yonder Maryland". "Scarlet" reads to me more focused on the battle/war aspect of the poem while "Yonder" feels more etherial, heavenly: the beyond.
On "Went up from the Potomac":
ReplyDeleteThere is a trend in all these Civil War poems that dead heroes "travel up"--or are flakes of snow that fly in reverse. It seems to me that E.D. is trying to incorporate the language of the local Evangelical religion, which certainly used the iconography of Christ rising and converts being reborn and taken up into heaven. As always, the weepy, typical war poem a bit of an ill fit for Emily, but its very like her to fixate on the very corporeal, physical movements of bodies up and down into the sky.