Poem 937 by Emily Dickinson

Journal Drawing by Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519)

Anatomical Drawing of a Human Skull

POEM 937

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind—

As if my Brain had split—

I tried to match it—Seam by Seam—

But could not make it fit.

The thought behind, I strove to join

Unto the thought before—

But Sequence ravelled out of Sound

Like Balls—upon a Floor.

Emily Dickinson

First published in 1896.

WHY THIS POEM?

It’s 2013 and this is absurd. I have been trapped here for an hour.

It started with a gift certificate for a manicure. I have a school fundraising gala to attend tonight, so I thought “Why not?”

Tuan, the “nail technician” assigned to me at this salon is a young Vietnamese guy who seems overwhelmed by the tasks involved in a manicure. It took him almost ten minutes to locate all the tools he needs and spread them out on a towel. Before filing my nails, Tuan inspected each finger slowly, one by one, as intently as if he were memorizing the whorl pattern of my fingerprints. In the process, he knocked over a bottle of nail polish whose cap was loose, causing me to jump back to avoid being splattered with “Malibu Peach.” After wordlessly instructing me to place my fingertips in warm sudsy water, he disappeared for another ten minutes.

When Tuan re-emerged from the back room, it was clear he had forgotten who his client was. He stood there, blinking, looking around the room in desperation. I waved and he rushed over to continue the ablutions with ritual precision. That was years ago. Or so it seems. Tuan has disappeared again. I’m getting restless but I’m also fascinated. What is this guy thinking? Is he  just lazy? Is he having panic attacks?

All of a sudden, the owner of the salon, a stylish, assertive Vietnamese matron, drops into the seat opposite me and starts to open a bottle of pale pink polish. “So sorry,” she says with a heavy accent. “This guy—he work here four month, still no good, so slow. This girl (she points to a teenager doing a pedicure) start yesterday. She already better than him.” She is gripping my hand hard and applying polish like a bricklayer slapping down mortar. “It’s okay,” I say. “I’m not in a hurry.” Her grip softens and she slows down, apparently relieved that I am not going to trash her place on Yelp. She shakes her head. “He no learn. She learn fast. Make no sense.” I’m not sure how to respond, so I just nod. She shrugs and sums up the problem in two words: “People’s brains.”

I love this phrase. It explains so much. “People’s brains” are mysteriously unique. The ways our individual brains are wired influence our worldviews and show up in our unique brands of quirkiness. One brain that has always fascinated me is that of Emily Dickinson, who often wrote about the fine line between sanity and madness. I chose to study this poem, which is about losing the ability to reason.

THE POET

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was a highly original and prolific poet who wrote almost 1,800 poems, only 8 of which were published in her lifetime.

The intriguing mystery of Emily Dickinson’s psychology has occasionally overshadowed the major influence her innovative work had on modern poetry. Dickinson was a forerunner of modernism in her inimitable and unconventional poetic style. She offers no titles for her poems, which are full of linguistic and syntactical surprises. She uses long dashes between words, forcing readers to fill in the blanks and make their own linking connections to make sense of the phrases. She idiosyncratically capitalizes certain nouns in the middle of sentences. She rarely uses exact rhyme (see/tree or tame/claim), instead using more discordant slant rhymes in which the ending consonants are the same though the preceding vowel sounds are not (soul/all) or vice versa (run/rust).

Recurrent themes in Dickinson’s poetry include death, love, and consciousness. Death was both a spiritual mystery and a stark reality: many in her intimate circle of family and friends died young and her bedroom window looked out on a cemetery. Her poems about love and yearning have caused much speculation about the object(s) of her affection. Her works address questions of identity—I’m Nobody! Who are you? (#260)—and explore the limits of the human mind—The Brain is wider than the Sky (#3632).

In an effort to articulate the inexpressible, Dickinson compresses complex ideas into few words, creating ambiguous double meanings. Her short poems sometimes read like irresolvable intellectual riddles.

Others read like definitions in a personal spiritual and psychological dictionary:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers – (#304)

Hope is a strange invention – (#1424)

Wonder—is not precisely Knowing (#1331)

Grief is a mouse— (#793)

Exhilaration is the Breeze (#1157)

Twentieth century poet Adrienne Rich wrote that “Dickinson is the American poet whose work consisted in exploring states of psychic extremity.” She focused on a wide range of emotional states, from the psychic pain described in this poem to the other end of the spectrum—ecstatic, otherworldly joy.

In a letter, Dickinson offered a definition of poetry that captures both her love of extreme states and the breathtaking effect her work has on many readers:  “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”

Dickinson’s poems describe her inner life rather than her daily life, which took place mostly at home among her immediate family. The poet’s father was a lawyer and treasurer of Amherst College. Her mother, Emily Norcross Dickinson, was a quiet homemaker who was timid and often ill. In later years, describing her parents, the poet wrote: “My father’s Heart was pure and terrible” and “I never had a mother.” Emily was the middle child; her brother Austin was older, her sister Lavinia (Vinnie) younger. Amherst, at the time, was a small, provincial town still clinging to Puritanism. Religious beliefs were conservative and orthodox.

Though she had a profoundly religious temperament—some critics describe her as a mystic—Dickinson rejected the Neo-Calvinist ideas of hellfire, damnation, and salvation of the chosen few. She had studied classical literature, Latin, botany, geology and history and mental philosophy at Amherst Academy for seven years, where she developed a keen interest in the “argument from design.” She alludes to this in poem #202, which suggests that the design evident in nature is proof of the existence of God for those who can’t “see” God by faith alone:

"Faith" is a fine invention

When Gentlemen can see—

But Microscopes are prudent

In an Emergency.

After Amherst Academy, Dickinson attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College), where she drew attention by refusing to stand when the headmistress asked all who wanted to be Christians to rise. She returned home after a year.

Once home, she withdrew from society, seldom leaving the house. This was unconventional behavior. In the 19^th century, it was expected that women of Emily Dickinson’s social standing would regularly pay calls on others and receive visitors. Her family home was often frequented, due to her father’s law practice and his association with Amherst College. Dickinson found these social calls draining and restricted her time with visitors. She eventually sequestered herself in her bedroom.

Neighbors considered this self-imposed seclusion highly eccentric. Literary historians have analyzed this behavior in a variety of ways. Early critics looked for evidence of a romantic disappointment. Others saw her as a victim of an overbearing father who wanted her and her sister at home to care for his wife. Others assumed mental illness. Armchair diagnoses ranged from depression and bipolar disorder to anorexia and agoraphobia. More recently, critics have interpreted her non-conformist actions as assertive choices which gave her power that she otherwise would not have had as an unmarried female. In poem #303, she asserts that this reclusive life was her own choice:

The Soul selects her own Society—
Then—shuts the Door—

The characterization of Dickinson as a loner is misleading, however. Though she limited interpersonal interactions, Dickinson was not as isolated as many assume. She maintained many friendships through active correspondence with ninety or so individuals. The thousand or so of her letters that have been published represent only a fraction of those she sent. Some of her correspondence took place over decades. For example, she had a 24 year friendship by mail with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, an abolitionist, women's rights activist, and author whom she only met twice. Higginson was glad not to spend much time with her in person. He told his wife: “I was never with anyone who drained my nerve power so much.” Apparently, she was intense.

THE POEM

Poem # 937 may describe the pain and confusion the poet felt during the nervous breakdown she experienced in 1861. “Nervous breakdown” is the general term for a sudden, acute mental disorder, often precipitated by external stressors, that temporarily interrupts daily functioning. Symptoms can include severe headache pain, feelings of disassociation, distorted thinking, and inability to concentrate. Anyone who has experienced a deep loss, a stroke, or another psychic wound can identify with the experience she describes of great mental pain, a fear of never being whole again, and an inability to express oneself clearly.

The poem begins, “I felt a Cleaving in my Mind—/As if my Brain had split.” This phrasing tells us that her mind is not fragmenting on its own. Some outside force has caused this sharp anguish. The word “cleave” suggests that the “split” in her brain is the result of a single, powerful emotional blow. ”Cleave” means to forcefully split apart; it’s a term we might associate with using an axe to chop wood along the grain. The poet is describing her psychic state as split along some pre-existing dividing line.   Is it the line in her mind between belief and doubt, between hope and despair, between love and loneliness? We don’t know.

What we do know is that she has been unable to heal the rift. Switching to a sewing metaphor, Dickinson writes: “I tried to match it—Seam by Seam—/But could not make it fit.” She feels as though her brain has been torn in two and she is unable to stitch the pieces back together into a whole. The lines suggest that she has tried to make sense of what has occurred, but that she is unable to do so.

In the second stanza, Dickinson introduces another domestic metaphor—knitting. Just as a knitter might link one stitch to another to create a pattern, the poet has tried to join her last thought to the one before. But her thinking is distorted. She can’t find connections in her mind.

But Sequence ravelled out of Sound

Like Balls—upon a Floor.

Ideas—and words—don’t make sense to her anymore. Words are just sound; there is no logical sequence to her thoughts. She has lost the thread or, to use the final image in the poem, meaning has unraveled like the wool strands in balls of yarn dropped on the floor.

The movement in this poem from the violent image of a sharp instrument to soft, rolling balls of yarn seems to describe the emotional arc of a nervous breakdown. An external stressor causes debilitating pain, the afflicted individual unsuccessfully tries to reconcile what has happened with a previously believed truth, and then helplessly watches as the pattern of normal life unravels. In fewer than fifty words, the poet accurately and courageously distills the essence of psychological pain.

The psychic break that caused Emily Dickinson’s brain to “split” had a significant impact on her writing. She transmuted her pain into poetry. In the year following her breakdown, she had a burst of creativity and wrote 366 poems—more than one a day.

Make of that what you will.