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Emily Dickinson's Rhetoric of Temporality

1992; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 1; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/edj.0.0098

1096-858X

Donna M. Bauerly,

Rhetoric and Communication Studies

Emily Dickinson's Rhetoric of Temporality Donna Bauerly (bio) The signs of the season changing are slightly displaced for me, an Iowan in North Carolina. I know what to expect of the perennials in the berms of my garden back home. I can easily read the weather pointers there for a "killing frost" or an unusual warming trend. Here, with pansies in full bloom in December, signs are just different enough to make me "sit up and take notice." On a day such as today, almost frightfully clear and cool, a woman of a different time and clime might have gone outside, as I, to get a better handle on reality, particularly if that was a prized activity of her relentlessly questing mind. And, if that woman was day by day discovering that her power of thought was formidable, and that words came and came to express what she was thinking, isn't it just possible that eventually she brought her mind to bear on mind and language itself and just how (and if) language ever got anywhere near to the reality of experience? In my recent travels through the lands of language, I return over and over to the poems of just such a woman, Emily Dickinson. For weeks, like a catchy melody that will not let me alone, her poem (#130) "These are the days when Birds come back" teases my mind, draws me even more deeply into the contemplation of word and saying itself. This "Indian Summer" poem of Dickinson's recalls all the deceptive tricks that such a "season," not really a season at all, plays on the willing-to-be-duped. Indian Summer comes after the first frost, when we reluctantly have turned ourselves toward winter. Suddenly, [End Page 1] the days warm, the light catches the colors in the leaves and returns us to the bright hues of summer blossoms. Mindlessly, like an overwrought and eager Orpheus pursuing Eurydice, wanting to catch hold of what we fear we are losing, we turn back—foolish and fooled mortals! Dickinson tells the tale better: These are the days when Birds come back—A very few—a Bird or two—To take a backward look. These are the days when skies resumeThe old—old sophistries of June—A blue and gold mistake. Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee—Almost thy plausibilityInduces my belief. Till ranks of seeds their witness bear—And softly thro' the altered airHurries a timid leaf. Oh Sacrament of summer days,Oh Last Communion in the Haze—Permit a child to join. Thy sacred emblems to partake—Thy consecrated bread to takeAnd thine immortal wine! (#130) Emily Dickinson's poems are problematic on almost every level. Syntactically and linguistically alone, she can sometimes drive grammarians to the brink of suprasegmental madness. This poem in particular has always plagued my powers of interpretation, and during these months of intense scrutiny of the word itself, the very attempt to say, it has become a touchstone for looking into the heart of language. The title, "Indian Summer" (bestowed by someone other than Dickinson), may have brought some comfort to certain readers, a premature sigh of recognition and therefore less questioning of the unusual final stanzas. Remembering that she lived in the age of transcendentalism, even that troublesome "ending" could be easily explained by some [End Page 2] doctrine of correspondences: a last communing with this fleeting season and a nostalgic longing for a childhood faith, which might still allow the reader of the passing days to look forward to the possibility of an Eternal Season of Communion in a life after death. Such an interpretation reaffirms what seems to be a sacramental view of nature on Dickinson's part, and there are many who have been satisfied with such a reading of the text. I used to be. Now, standing in the middle of what seems to be a language in a land of nowhere and unsure of many more things than I was unsure of before, I am uncomfortable with such a reading. And, since I have begun to be more aware of epistemological problems and of the impossibility of expressing...