[Aaron Poochigian]

Sublime Punning in the Work of Emily Dickinson

While I am reading the work of Emily Dickinson, her genius is obvious to me. It is of the idiosyncratic and infinite variety. I could spend hours daily reading and re-reading her collected poems and still be making new discoveries on my death bed. However edifying it would be to devote my life to studying her work, I am, unfortunately, a practical man. When I bring the fantastical funny-car of her work into my chop-shop and, through analysis, strip it for parts, I am looking for machinery that will fit my own poetic hot-rod—the one I am forever building and re-building. With Emily Dickinson, my question has always been: Is her poetry so idiosyncratic, so unique, that there is nothing I can steal from it that would useful to me? If there is, I want to find it and make it my own.

This short essay will focus on a technique in Dickinson’s work that strikes me as highly stealable—I call it “the sublimated pun.” According to the standard definition, a pun is a joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words that sound the same but have different meanings. According to this definition, all puns are more or less “jokey,” ranging from real groaners on down to mere quibbles. My favorite example appears in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar where a cobbler says “all that I live by is with the awl.” (Hilarious!) In contrast, the following examples of puns in Dickinson, though playful, have no hint of jokiness. Furthermore, I contend that each word is the mot juste in its context precisely because of its doubled meaning.
In poem 486 “noteless” (line 17) refers simultaneously to a lack of sound and a lack of recognition. The speaker explains that she “was the slightest in the House” (line 1), “never spoke” (line 10) and “could not bear to live—aloud” (line 12). The “noteless” death she imagines thus brings together material from stanza 1 (where she lacks recognition) and stanza 3 (where she lacks voice).

In poem 670 “superior” (line 19) operates in both the moral and locational senses—“better” and “above”. That “Cooler Host” the self “haunts” the “material place” of the Brain’s Corridors. It is “ourself behind our self.” The body carries a revolver for defense against the self but to no purpose—the self is “superior”, it is both “better than” (morally and otherwise) and “above” (and behind) the body. In this position the self is “concealed” (line 9). Simultaneously, as the morally “superior” thing that is conscience, this self is more horrible than an “Assassin hid in our Apartment” (line 15).

In poem 387 the “Heresy” (line 1, here, meaning “school of belief”) is marriage, represented as a quasi-Christian sect. We are told that this “Faith accommodates but Two” (line 4). The verb “accommodates” has two distinct meanings: the “Faith” of Marriage both makes accommodations (i.e. special rules) for the couple and “accommodates” them in the spatial sense, that is, “makes space” for them in a home, a bed. Both meanings are developed in the second and final stanza, where the “Churches” are the homes of the couples, and the “Grace” is the special accommodation that the “Faith” of marriage provides.
(Here are few more examples for good measure: in poem 665, with the “Journey of Down,” the “Down” means both the little bird-feathers and the direction; and in poem 389, “Appalling” means both “the one who puts the pall on a corpse” and “making pale.”)

A few further conclusions drawn from this, admittedly, limited study: the words on which Dickinson puns in this way tend to be Latinate rather than Germanic in origin. “Bifurcating” Latinate words is easier, perhaps, because of their abstraction and multiple fields of meaning. Furthermore, the abstract nature of the doubled meaning in these instances may be what keeps them from being “jokey” like other puns.

There it is—a piece of machinery in Dickinson’s poetry. I like it, I understand how it works, and I am going to make it my own.

[ross hamilton hill]

It's the unintended pun you have to watch out for.

[Susan McLean]

Aaron, two comments for you: first, yes, ED had a passionate attachment to the dictionary, so it is not surprising that wordplay is one of her delights; second, your own examples include "down," which is of Scandinavian origin, so your theory of her wordplay being primarily Latinate is not necessarily true. Some of the simplest words have multiple, very different meanings. I would say that the serious context of her wordplay is what keeps it from being jokey. On the other hand, I think she has a playfulness that is often underestimated, and I, for one, do not find the playfulness to be at odds with the seriousness of her thought.

Susan

[Gregory Dowling]

Very interesting take on Dickinson, Aaron. In some ways you could say it goes with her extreme economy of means ("One clover, and a bee, / And revery"). If one word can do for two meanings, then all the better. "Sublimated pun" is a nice phrase.

"Success in circuit lies" - pun there, I guess, after "tell all the truth"...

[RCL]

It's also well to remember that she and most middle-class people studied Latin, as she did at Amherst Academy. Her puns are amazing, some of them visual or conceptual rather than semantic.

Neighbors Thoreau and Emerson also pun habitually--one stretch in Walden is a complex web of etymological puns, Greek and Latin, just below the surface of the superficial text (won a paying award for "The Depths of Walden Pun"!).

[Aaron Poochigian]

Hello, all. This is the first in a series of brief essays I will be writing on Dickinson and posting here. Thanks for your comments—they will help me revise and expand them.

Yes, Ross, I always double-check my poems for unintended puns.

Susan, thanks. Your post reveals your thorough knowledge of E.D.’s style and technique. When I revise this essay, I will take your points into consideration.

Gregory, in the revision I will situate her puns within the context of her extreme economy. Thanks, thanks. You get to teach E.D. often, don’t you?

Mr. Clawson, thanks for the biographical info. I will hunt up some puns in Emerson and Thoreau.

[Gregory Dowling]

Look forward to your future postings, Aaron.

Actually, it's been a while since I taught E.D. Most of my poetry teaching in recent years has concerned 20th- and 21st-century poets. (Plus the Romantics, when I can sneak them into a course of American literature...)