by EMILY DICKINSON
Second Series
Edited by two of her friends
MABEL LOOMIS TODD and T.W. HIGGINSON
PREFACE
The eagerness with which the first volume of Emily Dickinson'spoems has been read shows very clearly that all our alleged modernartificiality does not prevent a prompt appreciation of thequalities of directness and simplicity in approaching the greatestthemes,—life and love and death. That "irresistible needle-touch,"as one of her best critics has called it, piercing at once the verycore of a thought, has found a response as wide and sympathetic asit has been unexpected even to those who knew best her compellingpower. This second volume, while open to the same criticism as toform with its predecessor, shows also the same shining beauties.
Although Emily Dickinson had been in the habit of sendingoccasional poems to friends and correspondents, the full extent ofher writing was by no means imagined by them. Her friend "H.H."must at least have suspected it, for in a letter dated 5thSeptember, 1884, she wrote:--
MY DEAR FRIEND,-- What portfolios full of versesyou must have! It is a cruel wrong to your "day andgeneration" that you will not give them light.
If such a thing should happen as that I should outliveyou, I wish you would make me your literary legateeand executor. Surely after you are what is called"dead" you will be willing that the poor ghosts youhave left behind should be cheered and pleased by yourverses, will you not? You ought to be. I do not thinkwe have a right to withhold from the world a word ora thought any more than a deed which might help asingle soul. . . .
Truly yours,
HELEN JACKSON.
The "portfolios" were found, shortly after Emily Dickinson's death,by her sister and only surviving housemate. Most of the poems hadbeen carefully copied on sheets of note-paper, and tied in littlefascicules, each of six or eight sheets. While many of them bearevidence of having been thrown off at white heat, still more hadreceived thoughtful revision. There is the frequent addition ofrather perplexing foot-notes, affording large choice of words andphrases. And in the copies which she sent to friends, sometimes oneform, sometimes another, is found to have been used. Withoutimportant exception, her friends have generously placed at thedisposal of the Editors any poems they had received from her; andthese have given the obvious advantage of comparison among severalrenderings of the same verse.
To what further rigorous pruning her verses would have beensubjected had she published them herself, we cannot know. Theyshould be regarded in many cases as merely the first strong andsuggestive sketches of an artist, intended to be embodied at sometime in the finished picture.
Emily Dickinson appears to have written her first poems in thewinter of 1862. In a letter to oone of the present Editors theApril following, she says, "I made no verse, but one or two, untilthis winter."
The handwriting was at first somewhat like the delicate, runningItalian hand of our elder gentlewomen; but as she advanced inbreadth of thought, it grew bolder and more abrupt, until in herlatest years each letter stood distinct and separate from itsfellows. In most of her poems, particularly the later ones,everything by way of punctuation was discarded, except numerousdashes; and all important words began with capitals. The effect ofa page of her more recent manuscript is exceedingly quaint andstrong. The fac-simile given in the present volume is from one ofthe earlier transition periods. Although there is nowhere a date,the handwriting makes it possible to arrange the poems with generalchronologic accuracy.
As a rule, the verses were without titles; but "A Country Burial,""A Thunder-Storm," "The Humming-Bird," and a few others were namedby their author, frequently at the end,—sometimes only in theaccompanying note, if sent to a friend.
The variation of readings, with the fact that she often wrote inpencil and not always clearly, have at times thrown a good deal ofresponsibility upon her Editors. But all interference notabsolutely inevitable has been avoided. The very roughness of herrendering is part of herself, and not lightly to be touched; for itseems in many cases that she intentionally avoided the smoother andmore usual rhymes.
Like impressionist pictures, or Wagner's rugged music, the veryabsence of conventional form challenges attention. In EmilyDickinson's exacting hands, the especial, intrinsic fitness of aparticular order of words might not be sacrificed to anythingvirtually extrinsic; and her verses all show a strange cadence ofinner rhythmical music. Lines are always daringly constructed, andthe "thought-rhyme" appears frequently,—appealing, indeed, to anunrecognized sense more elusive than hearing.
Emily Dickinson scrutinized everything with clear-eyed frankness.Every subject was proper ground for legitimate study, even thesombre facts of death and burial, and the unknown life beyond. Shetouches these themes sometimes lightly, sometimes almosthumorously, more often with weird and peculiar power; but she isnever by any chance frivolous or trivial. And while, as one critichas said, she may exhibit toward God "an Emersonian self-possession,"it was because she looked upon all life with a candor as unprejudicedas it is rare.
She had tried society and the world, and found them lacking. Shewas not an invalid, and she lived in seclusion from nolove-disappointment. Her life was the normal blossoming of a natureintrospective to a high degree, whose best thought could not existin pretence.
Storm, wind, the wild March sky, sunsets and dawns; the birds andbees, butterflies and flowers of her garden, with a few trustedhuman friends, were sufficient companionship. The coming of thefirst robin was a jubilee beyond crowning of monarch or birthday ofpope; the first red leaf hurrying through "the altered air," anepoch. Immortality was close about her; and while never morbid ormelancholy, she lived in its presence.
MABEL LOOMIS TODD.
AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS, August, I891.
My nosegays are for captives; Dim, long-expectant eyes, Fingers denied the plucking, Patient till paradise,
To such, if they should whisper Of morning and the moor, They bear no other errand, And I, no other prayer.