510 - It was not Death, for I stood up...
It was not Death, for I stood up,
And al the Dead, lie down - It was not Night, for all the Bells Put out their Tongues, for Noon. It was not Frost, for on my Flesh I felt Siroccos - crawl - Nor Fire - for just my Marble feet Could keep a Chancel, cool - And yet, it tasted, like them all, The Figures I have seen Set orderly, for Burial, Reminded me, of mine - As if my life were shaven, And fitted to a frame, And could not breathe without a key, And 'twas like Midnight - When everything that ticked - had stopped - And space stares all around - Or Grisly frosts - first Autumn morns, Repeal the Beating Ground - But, most, like Chaos - Stopless - cool Without a Chance, or spar Or even a Report of Land - To justify - Despair. |
Analysis
In poem 510, Emily Dickinson talks about her own condition; she is trying to figure out her own state of mind. The confusion is seen in this poem through the pronoun ‘it’ Dickinson uses. The word shows an unidentified cause of her anguish she describes later in this poem.
In stanza one and two, Dickinson uses concrete details about the body to describe her psychological state. The certainty of these things not being the cause of her pain is sharp, providing an insight of her emotions. The technique used which is called parallelism is used ‘it was not’ followed by the reason for her eliminating the possibilities. Dickinson knows she canned be dead because she ‘stood up’, the blackness cannot be ‘Night’ because all the ‘Noon’ ‘Bells’ are ringing (‘Put out their Tongues’); the ‘Frost’ she feels physically cannot be it because she feels ‘Siroccos’. The sense of touch and sound in these two stanzas indicates that there is something much greater than these physical things causing her pain. Stanza three sums up the possibilities she eliminated. ‘it tasted like them all’, here, Dickinson uses synaesthetic image to show that she feels all those things within her, in other words, her world is a chaos. She sees ‘Figures’ preparing for her ‘Burial’, reminding her of her own funeral. The death imagery is connected to what the speaker feels right now – in the middle of nowhere. In stanza four, she describes how trapped she feels, as if she is ‘shaven’ and ‘fitted to a frame’, which is similar to being put down in a coffin. The ‘key’ here may represent the cause she is looking for which causes all this pain and suffocation. In the last line, the word ‘Midnight’ represents her emotions of being in the dark. Stanza five shows the ‘Space’ which has ‘stopped’; meaning all things are stuck. The isolation can be sensed by the ‘Space stares all around –‘, as if in bewilderment – trying to find something, someone. The sense of coldness is represented through the ‘Grisly frost’. The ‘gh’ sound is very harsh – just like the frosty winds. Last stanza expresses the complete hopelessness Dickinson feels over her state. The ‘Chaos’ is ‘Stopless’ and cold, without any kindness. There is no ‘Chance’ of rescue, nothing like a ‘Spar’ to hold her to the ground, solidity. There is no one who can justify the ‘Despair’. There is resignation in the tone of this last stanza, as if nothing can be done. To conclude, Dickinson plays with human psyche to show the depression or the sense of despair. I think this poem contains very strong emotions and the riddle Emily Dickinson uses is successful because it makes one think about a very rare side of human. |