Emily Dickinson -- This is Immensity

Sometimes I feel like I've spent months of my life immersed in Dickinson. At the most I think it's been two weeks in another American Literature class, but there's nothing quite like two weeks straight of Dickinson capped with a ten page research paper that requires another week of reading about her poetry to convince you that you never want to read another Dickinson poem as long as you live.

Or at least for another semester.

Despite the almost ridiculous number of Dickinson's poems that I've read in the past year, there are a few that no matter how many times I read them catch me by surprise over and over again. This seems to happen more often than not particularly with her two or three line poems (none of which we covered in class, so a lot of this blog may seem a little bit extraneous).

I find 1548 in The Poems of Emily Dickinson particularly striking.

All things swept away
This - is immensity -

I'm not sure whether I love the irony of the concept confined to such a brief piece (read it out loud and then think about it for a few moments -- it's pretty mind-boggling) or the power that Dickinson manages to pack into seven words more, but I feel like there's no denying that the simplicity and complexity of the poem all wrapped up together is nothing short of brilliant. The idea of complete nothingness is incredibly disturbing, and it's striking that we feel such a need to consider it.



For those who care where I'm pulling my poems from, here's a citation:
Dickinson, Emily, and R. Franklin. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999. Print.

Harriet Beacher Stowe -- The Cabin that Started a War

All right, maybe that's a bit of a dramatic statement. However, the sun's shining and I'm feeling a bit presumptuous today, so there you have it.

The cynic in me dislikes Uncle Tom's Cabin a little more than is probably necessary. The idealist in me falls all over itself in happiness about once every two chapters or so during particularly beautifully-strung passages. My difficulty in reading this book, prior thoughts taken into considering, is reconciling the two feelings without compromising the novels goals.

Every time I read this book I spend the majority of my time arguing with myself over whether it's worth the time I've spent arguing with myself about it or not, and honestly I still haven't come to a decision that makes both Cynictasia and Idealisttasia content, and probably never will. The novel tends to leave me feeling a bit juvenile (one would think after reading the same novel at least two times it would be more or less easy to form solid opinions about it), partly because I spend so much time complaining to myself about it. Which is silly, but there you have it.

On almost every point I'm torn pretty irrevocably one way or another, both loving and hating the novel all at once. The language is often stunning, and I'm a sucker for breathtaking description. Take Stowe's description of night on the river, for example, for example --

Night came on,--night calm, unmoved, and glorious, shining down with her innumerable and solemn angel eyes, twinkling, beautiful, but silent. (Stowe, 111)

Ridiculously potent in so many ways, most interestingly from my perspective that the imagery I find most striking in Stowe's writing involves her description and personification of the landscape rather than description of the same sort about people. Her treatment of the human element in Uncle Tom's produces almost the reverse effect on me. Her descriptions of Eva in the "The Grass Withereth," for instance.

Has there ever been a child like Eva? Yes, there have been; but their names are always on grave-stones, and their sweet smiles, their heavenly eyes, their singular words and ways, are among the buried treasures of yearning hearts. In how many families do you hear the legend that all the goodness and graces of the living are nothing to the peculiar charms of one who is not. (Stowe, 222)

That bit isn't as frustrating as the passage the describes Eva's interactions with Topsy before she dies, which I'm going to include only in part for time (and my sanity)'s sake.

"O, Topsy, poor child, I love you!" said Eva, with a sudden burst of feeling, and laying her little thin, white hand on Topsy's shoulder; "I love you, because you haven't had any father, or mother, or friends;--because you've been a poor, abused child! I love you, and I want you to be good. I am very unwell, Topsy, and I think I shan't live a great while; and it really grieves me, to have you be so naughty. I wish you would try to be good, for my sake;--it's only a little while I shan't be with you."

The round, keen eyes of the black child were overcast with tears;--large, bright drops rolled heavily down, one by one, and fell on the little white hand. Yes, in that moment, a ray of real belief, a ray of heavenly love, had penetrated the darkness of her heathen soul! she laid her head down between her knees, and wept and sobbed,--while the beautiful child, bending over her, looked like the picture of some bright angel stooping to reclaim a sinner.

I mean, really, Ms. Stowe? Really? Not only does the forced depth of description make me feel a little bit stupid (if she has to explain this relationship so very clearly she apparently expects that I may otherwise have missed the subtleties in contrast...), but the idealization and cliche are a little bit insulting.

I deeply appreciate the sentiments behind Stowe's characters, particularly in the dichotomies between them. The contrasts in the relationships between George and Eliza, Cassy and Emmeline, St. Clare and and his brother, and Eva and Topsy (as well as many others -- the list goes on and on) are cleverly executed and present a clarity and depth of understanding that Uncle Tom's would lack were they nonexistent. At the same time however the contrasts between ideals are often pressed to the point of ridiculousness--I've already referenced the above passage, which is a prime example. I want to appreciate the novel's sentiments so badly, but at the same time I have difficulty grounding myself in these themes simply because everything is so over-exaggerated. The novel is, for instance, one long series of foreshadowing of the last few chapters. I deeply appreciate this on one level, but at the same time it's a large part of one of my greatest critiques of the novel's form. I as a reader appreciate a certain amount of subtlety, and Uncle Tom's Cabin is anything but. Every instance of death it seemed that six or so pages before there was at least a paragraph discussing the probability of that death (i.e. Tom and Eva's discussion of heaven on the shore of the lake, Miss Ophelia pressing St. Clare to make provisions for his servants in the case of his death, etc.). These instances would not be a problem, generally speaking, if Stowe did not insist on pointing out that she's heavily foreshadowed everything. In case you've even missed her little hints, she's even pointedly named an entire chapter "Foreshadowings."

Yet again, this makes me feel like an idiot. I wrote beneath that particularly helpful chapter heading "thanks for the info." Because really, how should I ever have guessed otherwise? Thank you, Ms. Stowe, for heading off any sense of confusion or ambiguity that I may possibly have had.

All in all, I can't help but be frustrated with Uncle Tom's Cabin. There's so much overwhelmingly good about it, style and themewise, but at the same time so much that makes me want to shut my head in a door. I've read the thing through in its entirety about three times now, and if anything the more I read it the more confused I become. Do I think it ought to be dismissed from the canon of American Literature? Absolutely not. But I think it's a more troublesome book in many ways (many of which I simply don't have time to cover) than it's often presented to be.