"After great pain, a formal feeling comes", poem 341, Emily Dickinson (1955)

Résumé du document

The poem, "Under Scrutiny' is strongly reminiscent of 'Pain has an element of blank' in the way it describes a state of numbness, a sort of in-betweenness placing the subject at the limit between consciousness and oblivion. The two poems echo each other perfectly in their evocation of the timelessness of pain.

Extraits

[...] Letting go is understood as dying of hypothermia in the context, but in the metaphor, what does it relate to? Letting go can, in a Christian concept, be seen as a positive things as it is a release into a more pleasant afterlife. Or dying in the cold might be equated with letting go of the pain, which gives the reader another perspective: the cessation of pain brings no true relief because pain is held in fact as a sign of life. [...]

[...] The “Quartz contentment” is thus already connoted as an oxymoron, an impression which is underscored by the less than harmonious sonorities of the line (alliteration in and : quartz contentment, like a stone”). The simile “like a stone” completes the neutralisation of “contentment” with its weight, which is echoed l.10 by that of the “Hour of Lead”. However, as often with Dickinson, a second interpretation can be ventured: pain as sign of life, which would play on the ambivalence of “letting (letting go as dying and letting go of a negative memory/feeling). [...]

[...] The presence of a comma between the subject and the verb l.12 produces much the same effect. Furthermore, the ambiguous construction of the second stanza adds to that impression as it can be construed as round Ground, or Air, or Ought” (direct object) with Wooden way ( ) like a stone” as attributive noun phrase of the object, or the reader can choose to see l.6 on the one hand, and l.7 down to 9 as variants (for the object function) introduced by the dash after round.” In addition to syntactic equivocations, Dickinson also plays on semantic ambiguities. [...]

[...] There is no transcendence either that could remedy the isolation of the subject. Indeed, no explicit mention of spirituality can be found in the text, only physical elements body parts are used to evoke the individual, and the survival of the soul after death does not appear. Only tombs, the repository of the dead material body, appear, and the nearly clinical description of the symptoms of death by hypothermia. The subject is also alienated from himself/herself: there are no positive signs that the poetic voice speaks of its own experience (the articles in Nerves,” Heart,” feet” contribute to distancing the voice from the object of its discourse). [...]

[...] "After great pain, a formal feeling comes", poem 341, Emily Dickinson (1955) Introduction The poem under scrutiny is strongly reminiscent of “Pain has an element of blank” (poem 650) in the way it describes a state of numbness, a sort of in-betweenness placing the subject at the limit between consciousness and oblivion. The two poems echo each-other perfectly in their evocation of the timelessness of pain, for instance cannot recollect when it began, or if there was a time when it was and Yesterday, or Centuries before”). [...]