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• 1 2021-12-13T11:45:51-05:00 "A Multiplicity of Meaning": Emily Dickinson's Diction(ary) & Fascicle 15 56 By Daniel Rosler plain 2021-12-16T20:56:21-05:00 By Daniel Rosler
  
  Whether or not we should read meaningful intentionality into the sequencing of poems in Emily Dickinson’s fascicles seems contested amongst scholars, including R.W. Franklin, who first identified Dickinson’s poems as clusters and put them in order—an exercise taken up later by Cristanne Miller, who "presents her poems here for the first time 'as she preserved them'," replicating what Dickinson herself did when tethering together sheets of poetry. Such a process would, for perhaps any other white, male author, have been more than enough evidence for scholars to posit an intentionality to the fascicle’s structure. However, for Dickinson, the assumption has been different, with Franklin himself contending that “no aesthetic principle governs their binding," proposing instead that the fascicles were simply "meant to order (tidy up) rather than to arrange (make significant) (Cameron 13; 15).
  
  In “Dickinson’s Fascicles,” Sharon Cameron contrasts Thomas H. Johnson, who presented Dickinson’s poems as “isolated lyrics” in The Complete Poems, with those of Franklin, whose collection has the “appearance of a sequence." and argues quite convincingly that, since we know Dickinson “copied the poems into fascicles,” and, “with respect to the binding…Dickinson intended to associate these poems with each other,” we can safely assume Dickinson had intention behind sequencing poems into these cluster, though that intent, in many ways, remains mysterious and unclear (17).
  
  Indeed, the fact that the poems can be read either as isolated, independent lyrics or as fascicles with ostensible connections does not “clarify whether the poems are to be read in sequence or isolation,” an ambiguity Cameron ascribes to Dickinson herself: “it is not merely that Dickinson was uncertain, but that she refused to make up her mind about how her poems should be read,” a refusal that Cameron refers to as “choosing not to choose” (18; my emphasis).  However, Cameron posits the possibility that this ambiguity may nevertheless “teach us” about “the multiplicity of meanings” that may “resist exclusion,” something Cameron exemplifies by pointing to the many word variants Dickinson left in her manuscripts. These are words throughout her drafts Dickinson marked with a “+” to signify an alternative word, a variant, which she often supplied elsewhere on her manuscript (19).
  
  Cameron sees these variants as “collid[ing] without particular words being clearly made secondary or subordinate” (19). However, the words marked by “+” to signify an alternative word nevertheless remain the ones actually in the poems. This presence suggests, if not a certain choice, nevertheless a privileging of one of the words. One word always remains an alternate, not necessarily a substitute. If the word in the lyric and the word which could serve as its alternative were meant to be seen as substitutable, why wouldn’t Dickinson place a “+” in the line in lieu of any word at all and merely footnote the two possibilities, rendering neither as “variant” to one another?
  
  
  Despite this, Cameron’s suggestion that the reader must make an impossible choice of which variant to read into the poem without being able to “access the criteria by which she could make a choice,” makes sense, but the experience of these variants suggests something else, something even "(pre-) post-modern" about Dickinson’s word choice: the variation of meaning within a single word, let alone its variant (20). 
  
  As such, interpreting the relationship between Dickinson’s poems individually and within their respective fascicles produces questions related to the way context inflects, shapes, or changes the meaning of the poem, and becomes further complicated not only by poems that include variants but poems where Dickinson’s carefully chosen words themselves contain a slippage of potential meaning. Like nutrients travelling through mycelium between a network of neighboring trees, while not taking place underground, this multiplicity of meaning contained within a single word, simultaneously spills over its container so to speak, beyond being a single word with a single meaning, and influences the way we understand these poems both in isolation and in the context of their fascicle. In other words, there is an implied gathering of meaning within individual words just as much as in the ordering of the entire fascicle. 
  
  Analyzing several poems within Dickinson’s fascicle 15, namely "J 580," “J 413,” “J 418,” and “J 579,” reveals not only the play between poems as determining one another’s meaning, but the ways that the words within these poems produce the experience of encountering a “multiplicity of meaning"—which in turn makes thematic claims about these fascicles difficult. Despite this difficulty, I follow Gianna Fusco, who, observing the way “Dickinson’s poetry is developed and deployed along specific linguistic axes,” articulates the possibility of critics to “investigate her poetic production under the guidance of particular words and images, a path that leads to a deeper understanding of the way in which Dickinson distilled meaning out of constellations of signifiers” (73).
  
  Bearing this in mind, I argue that, throughout fascicle 15, a dominant trend appears in which Dickinson deals with her relationship to religion by positing alternative modes of living—namely ones that find spirituality within nature, art, and creative expression—in opposition to the prescribed sterility of a life lived solely for the promise of entrance into the next one, where the absence of desire invokes within Dickinson the deep desire for desire during her life.
  
  However, such a claim could not be made without the aid of the Emily Dickinson Lexicon and the Emily Dickinson Archive, themselves composites of thousands of words in Dickinson’s poetry, informed in part by the first two volumes of Webster’s 1844 American Dictionary of the English Language, which Dickinson herself consulted. Utilizing this "lexicon" is not a superfluous exercise. Knowing that Dickinson herself said in a letter that her "lexicon" was her "only companion," it is important as it represents an invaluable interpretive tool. Indeed, because "an individual occurrence of a word can have more than one meaning in a Dickinson poem...a connection between words in a Dickinson poem may not be immediately obvious, but a lexicon can document subtle cohesive ties" (EDL). 
  
  The variety of meanings ascribed within these definitions allows us to see the ways in which Dickinson can simultaneously conceal and reveal her thematic intent. I, like Cameron, believe that "Dickinson intended to associate these poems with each other," but through the variety of meanings contained within a single word, we might explore a variety of possible (17). 
  
  To engage with the poems in the way Dickinson invites us, click on the highlighted words in each poem for a full list of definitions. You won't be redirected to a different page; instead, you can read the poem and have the definitions "pop up" so as not to disrupt the reading experience. This allows us to engage in a play with the words (perhaps "webplay") that Dickinson herself may have encouraged. Within the provided definitions, I have tried to bolden those central to my own analysis, but the reader is invited to engage in the play of meaning-making themselves. Throughout the piece, I have also "footnoted" (hyperlinked notes) singular definitions provided by the Lexicon as well as my own additional commentary. 
  
  Poem “J 580” presents us with an opportune place to begin this analytical exercise. On first read, the poem seems to suggest a romantic partnership, or the “business of marriage.” However, after thinking through multiple variants of meaning for a slew of individual words, we might see the ingenious way in which Dickinson seems, at the same time she articulates this “business of marriage,” to also effectively illuminate her critique of a subservience to God.

  I gave myself to Him —
  And took Himself, for Pay,
  The solemn contract of a Life
  Was ratified, this way —
  
  The Wealth might disappoint —
  Myself a poorer prove
  Than this great Purchaser suspect,
  The Daily Own — of Love
  
  Depreciate the Vision —
  But till the Merchant buy —
  Still Fable — in the Isles of Spice —
  The subtle Cargoes — lie —
  
  At least —'tis Mutual — Risk —
  Some — found it — Mutual Gain
  Sweet Debt of Life — Each Night to owe —
  Insolvent — every Noon —
  
  "J 580”

  The opening line invites us to read Dickinson as giving herself to either a man or God or both. She speaks in terms of a "contract" that is "ratified" by this transaction, a contract "of Life." On the one hand, this could mean something like a marriage certificate, or it might also mean that the only way to life at all, to possess "Life," is through God. The contract we sign to live, in other words, is a deal made with the Creator. 
  
  Dickinson warns the "Purchaser" that they may be disappointed by her lack of "Wealth," perhaps both financial and spiritual, she herself "poorer" than they may think. We might see this as a subtle attack on the patriarchal conception of marriage as transactional, with the man acting as an owner, as "Purchaser" is used figuratively to mean "husband" or "spouse," yet "Purchaser" can also signify "Lord; Savior." This, then, may "Depreciate the Vision." In other words, it may reduce or harm either the husband's image of her, or her "entrance into paradise," her "transition by death into the presence of the Lord." 
  
  By the end of the poem, Dickinson recognizes the mutual risk and mutual gain of those who have "found it." She ironically describes this "Debt" as "Sweet," whether that debt be a loveless marriage or spiritual debt to Christ. 
  
  As Cameron might explain it, throughout "J 580," Dickinson does not "choose" the meaning here per se; rather, she brilliantly rejects the business of marriage at the same time that she criticizes the business of faith, themselves often entangled within a patriarchal world view. Dickinson further explores this tenuous relationship with God, or at least the obsequious doctrines of faith preached by certain religious sects, in "J 418." Here she posits the importance of her own autonomy and her own authority on how to live. 

  Not in this World to see his face —
  Sounds long — until I read the place
  Where this — is said to be
  But just the Primer — to a life —
  Unopened — rare — Upon the Shelf —
  Clasped yet — to Him — and Me —
  
  And yet — My Primer suits me so
  I would not choose — a Book to know
  Than that — be sweeter wise —
  Might some one else — so learned — be —
  And leave me — just my A — B — C —
  Himself — could have the Skies —
  
  “J 418”

  
  In the opening stanza, the first use of "Primer" refers to Bible or scripture, but it also denotes the much less religiously tinged variant, that of “introduction” or “preparation.” For Dickinson writes, “Not in this World to see his face – / Sounds long – until I read the place/ Where this – is said to be/ But just the Primer – to a life”. She has “read” in the religious “Primer” that this world functions as a type of training for the next world, an exercise for which we are graded on “Judgment Day!” (J 413). Whether the “his” refers to God or Jesus or a mortal being, perhaps one who has passed away, remains unclear—for the lower case “h” cannot always reliably signify a human individual in the same way that a capitalized variant cannot definitively refer to the higher being. Evidence for this resides in Dickinson’s penmanship , where the capitalization looks more like an aesthetic flourish than a textual clue. We must rely on context, but of a specific kind: the way in which the content of the poem becomes the context which determines or warrants a claim about capitalization. 
  
  Moreover, if we read “World” as an obvious reference to the mortal world, the material realm, the here and now, then Dickinson is also emphasizing “World” as the place between this life and the afterlife. To recognize such distance, perhaps even at a young age (as a child would from a religious education primer, for example) from our future home in the heavens, then, indeed, this separation from God “sounds” like it would feel “long.” But for Dickinson, upon learning that such a belief reduces the present material world into a proving ground for devotion (“until I read”), this would no longer “sound long”—it might instead feel short. The stanza then closes by Dickinson drawing a conclusion about the unknowability of the book to which we inherit its Primer. The afterlife is essentially unknowable; it remains “Unopened” on a “Shelf,” and remains “Clasped yet – to Him – and Me” because the life cannot be entered, the clasp broken, until or unless she dies. 
  
  The following stanza marks a distinctive turn toward the central claim in the poem, where Dickinson posits a different "Primer" in opposition to the religious denotation of the word, and one with which Dickinson aligns herself by suggesting possession: “And yet – My Primer suits me so,” she writes, returning to it a moment later: “And leave me – just my A – B – C – / Himself – could have the Skies – ” (“413”). In this instance, Dickinson threads two different yet simultaneously occurring meanings within this “Primer”: the “A-B-C” suggests a 19th century early children’s language primer, the mechanics of which are necessary for the composition of poetry and letters. However, “Primer” might also be a “book” of another kind, one that suggests “mortality” or a “book of life” or “the basics of life on earth”—that is, a book of life rooted in the basics of life on earth, in the world not stuck clasped upon the shelf.  Finally, Dickinson’s “Primer” carries with it a third possibility, a metaphorical one. She posits her "A-B-C" as both the figurative representation of "mortality; book of life; the basics of life on earth" in response to the Holy Book," and this "A-B-C," which on the surface level signifies her "spelling book" or "textbook for teaching children the elements of reading," also functions metaphorically as “literacy; creative writing; composition of poems and letters.” This last possibility is pure poetry: leave Dickinson to her poems, to her correspondences, to her threaded books we now call fascicles, her (“My”) Primer, and let God—like the elder, taller sibling who mockingly reminds us that only they can reach “Upon the Shelf”—have that ungraspable content that rests higher than the highest shelf: the sky.  

  I never felt at Home — Below —-
  And in the Handsome Skies
  I shall not feel at Home — I know —
  I don't like Paradise —
  
  Because it's Sunday — all the time —
  And Recess — never comes —
  And Eden'll be so lonesome
  Bright Wednesday Afternoons —
  
  If God could make a visit —
  Or ever took a Nap —
  So not to see us — but they say
  Himself — a Telescope
  
  Perennial beholds us —
  Myself would run away
  From Him — and Holy Ghost — and All —
  But there's the "Judgement Day"!
  
  “J 413”

  
  Dickinson begins by comparing her inability to feel at ease, comfortable, or in her own element here “at Home,” within her community, “Below” on the earth, to what she anticipates will be an inability to feel at home “at Home”  in the “Handsome Skies,” in Heaven, reunited with God. For the promised “Paradise” would neither cure nor relieve the sense of unbelonging she feels on the mortal world. She cannot desire freely in the mortal sphere, and, if “Paradise” implies a lack of all wants, needs, or desire, then this, too, fails to make her feel at home. Indeed, Dickinson emphasizes her opposition to the afterlife, where all bodily passion and wants have been fulfilled, and thus the lack of a lack serves as a measure of Paradise, of being without desiring—which is to say, to no longer “be” human at all. 
  
  “I don’t like Paradise,” Dickinson writes, “Because it’s Sunday – all the time – / And Recess – never comes – and Eden’ll be so lonesome” (“J 413”). Put simply: Paradise is a lonely bore, and what good is Eden without desire? Dickinson offers her answer: it would be just “Bright Wednesday Afternoons.” Wednesday, we learn, is not only a school day that “has afternoon recess in England and New England,” but is also “mundane” and “average.”   On the one hand, then, Dickinson contrasts Wednesdays with Sundays, wherein, during the former, recess does come, and, during the latter, the day is dedicated to church services, prayer, and contemplation. On the other hand, Wednesday also represents the blandness that Paradise promises: nothing but prettily-colored ordinariness—a “Bright,”  or “pleasant” averageness. 
  
  Dickinson suggests an inability to desire or live freely by her acknowledgement of that fatherly gaze of God, “Himself – a Telescope,” that sees all action and thought. “If,” Dickinson muses, he would only “make a visit” and leave his astral perch or take “a Nap” and close his watchful, judging eyes, to pause his constant “Perennial behold[ing] ”, then she, like a child fleeing from home, would run away from “Him,” God, the “Holy Ghost” and everyone else—to live a different life, one in which she can feel at home. Yet, Dickinson concludes, all this she would do, “But there’s the” inescapable day of reckoning always on the horizon: ‘Judgment Day’!”. Here Dickinson invites us to consider what it would mean to live without this assumption of judgment, of having to account for one’s life instead of being able to live. 

  I had been hungry, all the Years —
  My Noon had Come — to dine —
  I trembling drew the Table near —
  And touched the Curious Wine —
  
  'Twas this on Tables I had seen —
  When turning, hungry, Home
  I looked in Windows, for the Wealth
  I could not hope — for Mine —
  
  I did not know the ample Bread —
  'Twas so unlike the Crumb
  The Birds and I, had often shared
  In Nature's — Dining Room —
  
  The Plenty hurt me — 'twas so new —
  Myself felt ill — and odd —
  As Berry — of a Mountain Bush —
  Transplanted — to a Road —
  
  Nor was I hungry — so I found
  That Hunger — was a way
  Of Persons outside Windows —
  The Entering — takes away —
  
  “J 579”

  The first stanza of the final poem in this fascicle necessarily asks us to consider what, exactly, Dickinson “had been hungry” for “all the Years.” We begin with a metaphor of hunger, of “Noon” or lunch time, of drawing a “Table near” and touching some “Curious Wine.” However, Dickinson uses these words for the ways in which they can be codified religiously. For instance, “Table”  refers to the altar in a church where Holy Communion takes place. During Holy Communion, recipients consume (“to dine”) bread, or Jesus’s body, and wine, Jesus’s flesh. Of course, in most traditions throughout the U.S., one must wait until they are between the ages of seven-nine to receive the sacrament of First Holy Communion. For the years leading up to this, young children watch as the adults rise and walk to consume the bread and drink wine from a golden chalice, wondering all along about this mysterious sustenance of which they are deprived: what does it taste like, smell like? What does it mean? Further, she plays with "hunger" as a want for spiritual nourishment, and her "Noon," as the "culmination of something" or "highest point of life," for which the "Wine," the "sacrament, communion drink" offers itself as "sustenance." 
  
  By the second stanza, we can carefully surmise that this food and wine did not satisfy her hunger. Indeed, upon “turning…Home,” toward religion and God and Paradise, she remains hungry. She “looked” in and through other “Windows,” either as literal windows into others’ homes or “Windows” to the soul (eyes) and discovered a “Wealth” that she “could not hope” for herself. The other believers seem content, no longer hungry; they are rejuvenated.
  
  However, we might read this poem, not only as against spiritual abundance but material wealth as well, for this poem, unlike the previous two, is marked with several variants. Dickinson suggests “things” as an alternative to “Wealth” and “to earn” as a variant to “for Mine.” These variants don’t seem to shift the meaning. Rather, it’s within the context of religion that we might recognize this as spiritual abundance (Wealth) that she, perhaps after finally tasting the "Curious Wine," finds lacking—falling short of expectation. For Dickinson writes that the “ample Bread,” the bountiful body of Christ, is “unlike the Crumb” she has previously shared with “Birds.” On the one hand, this suggest that the sustenance of religious devotion fails to fill her up like even the tiniest morsel shared in communion with the birds, within nature—in “Nature’s – Dining Room,” in a holy communion with the natural world. On the other hand, this abundance might once again be serving as a critique of material wealth, where some have “ample Bread” and the others have crumbs.
  
  And yet still there might be a cleverly concealed third option. Though Douglas Anderson publicly admits to being “privately suspicious” of those who read much of Dickinson’s poems to be “poems about ‘poems’ and ‘poetry,’” he makes a beautiful case for why we might consider Dickinson to be writing about herself in the poem “At Half Past Three” (211). Anderson writes that “there is no reason why the singing bird might not be Dickinson herself, ‘implement’ in hand, beginning a poem” (211). Indeed, and Dickinson’s dictionary offers concrete evidence. For example, one of the definitions for bird is “communicative creature,” which, used figuratively could mean “thought; idea; intelligence,” and, as another metaphor, “poet; minstrel; author of lyric verse.” The “single Bird” who “propounded but a single term” may indeed be the poet who playfully invites us to consider the various terms for “term,” which, of course, includes “[metaphor] statement; expression in words; line of poetry.”
  
  Therefore, in "J 579," if by "Birds" Dickinson means other poets, and if “Crumb” she means a lyric of poetry or verse, then the failure of religion, this time, is being unable to provide the kind of nourishment that this creative and communal world does, in the trading of letters and poems within letters, where there is a place to consume creation. 
  
  However, the connection to the following two stanzas might once again pivot toward a critique of material wealth, toward suddenly having an abundance where one previously had hunger. Indeed, Dickinson now suggests an encounter with plentitude, which is “so new,” that she feels “ill,” “odd,” and out of place—like a “Berry” from a “Mountain Bush” plucked from its majestic place on high, upon a mountain, to be “Transplanted” and thus severed from other berries with which it has grown alongside of in a “Bush,” upon the “Road.” This sudden encounter with “Plenty” has stripped the poem’s narrator of the hunger they had at the beginning of the first stanza, but not in a way that feels satisfiable. Here, consumption does not take away hunger; hunger is not a temporary state but a “way” of being, something we have or do not have depending on which side of the “Windows” we are on. This “Entering” that “takes away” hunger could mean a number of things: publication, fame, or becoming an adult and feeling out of place within one’s church.
  
  Further, Dickinson marks “Persons” with a variant: “Creatures.” This might mean that the persons on the inside of Windows are typical aristocrats or even published writers, for instance, rendering those on the outside as “creatures,” a designation Dickinson might not see as pejorative, but something to celebrate if we feel more spiritual eating in “Nature’s dining room.” The lexicon also marks creature as “creation” as well as “product of creative action,” from its Latin roots. To this degree, Dickinson might very well be critiquing the way the creative act suffers when the hunger is quelled by publication or national fame, on the other side of “Windows / The Entering – takes away.” 
  
  Within poems individually, Dickinson’s diction, let alone the variants she herself supplies on her handwritten pages, contain a latency of multiple meanings—not just synonyms, but significantly different potential denotations, where the reader’s choice, in part, determines the meaning. Like any interpretive act, this doesn’t render all analyses equal; context certainly matters. What this does mean, however, is that Dickinson invites the reader to be part of the constitutive act of meaning-making. By “choosing not to choose,” Dickinson puts the reader in an active position of determining the poem’s significance. On the other hand, in several instances within these poems, we see the way a multiplicity of meaning seems to operate simultaneously, allowing Dickinson to make several claims within a single line of poetry. Further, her careful word choice unlocks networks of signification between poems within their respective fascicles, where specific words have a codetermining effect upon the potential meaning of another. For these reasons, I have identified what I believe to be a dominant theme of fascicles 15, that of Dickinson’s rejection of traditional, organized religion and her positing alternative sources of spiritual sustenance: in nature, in writing, in art, in the act of desiring itself. 
  
  Daniel Rosler is currently a Ph.D. student and teaching fellow in the English department at Lehigh University. His academic interests include rhetoric and rhetorical theory, cultural theory, continental philosophy, ecocriticism, and literature, particularly twentieth-century U.S. modernism. At present, he’s interested in applying theory to contemporary issues, including data mining and machine learning’s impacts on culture and subjectivity.