Emily and Me, part II
The Emily Dickinson seminar – The Incredible Brightness of Being (given by Mark Scarbrough, at the Gunn Memorial Library in Washington, Connecticut) – is over now, and there is so much still to ponder, to appreciate and revel in. Bits and pieces of poems and background, philosophy and technique float through my every day since, sparking reflections, discussions, and work. The titles of Mark’s lectures tease a multitude of starting points: I -The Soul Selects Her Own Society; II -Take That, Emerson: Dickinson, Romanticism, and What It Takes To Make A Prairie; III – My Business Is Circumference; IV – “Our Lives Are Swiss”; V – Pugilist and Poet: The Struggle With God. No matter the topic or frame of his lecture, Mark attends to Emily’s craft as he reads her poetry, especially her deft use of rhythm and rhyme, her exquisite word choices, and her concision. Which are all revelations to me, the writer.
Another sharp awareness comes from two separate themes presented by Mark, that together center my intuitive understanding of powerful writing, and art. The first is the idea of Master Narratives, and how they play upon any reading of Emily’s (or any other poet’s/writer’s/artist’s) work. The second is his unearthing of Emily’s obliquity – her refusal to identify, name, or locate any idea she nonetheless engages.
The concept of master narrative is de rigueur now in the world of literary criticism, and a commonplace understanding among the rest of us, but it is worth noticing, again, here. Master narratives are the frameworks we construct and carry with us to filter and make sense of the world, like creation stories, or Greek myths, or any philosophy. What this means for art is that we the reader bring our meanings to bear on a work. We interpret, according to our mores, ideals, hopes, and experiences – according to our own master narrative(s).
Great works are just such because they allow our imprint. They have the capacity to hold many meanings: one work equals many texts. Think the Bible, and Shakespeare, the Constitution – even History itself. All start definitively, with words or facts, yet allow us to read between the lines, and importantly, to edit. And we do. As our contexts differ and change, so do the meanings we find among the givens. In this way open-endedness in art and text gives long life to created work.
Art-making has long recognized the active role of the reader, too, as has design and literature, most explicitly in the expressions of participatory art and open narrative. Umberto Eco’s beautiful essay The Poetics of the Open Work is an historical exposition of participation in art. He makes the case that the reader/viewer’s agency has always been recognized by artist and writer and composer; what has changed is how any created work addresses this fact. At one extreme the artist attempts to control the viewer’s experience with perspective and frame: This is what to look at, this is what to see, to learn, to know. At the other, the creator embraces ambiguity – Tell me what you think – or expressly leaves a role for the audience in performing the work: Show me what you would make, create this with me.
Emily Dickinson makes room for her readers in two ways. She is deliberately circumspect about her topics and themes, rarely if ever naming them. Instead she uses a marvelous mix of metaphors and aphorisms to dance around ideas, and to conjure feelings. To read Emily is to have emotional experiences first and foremost, rather than rational or logical or analytical ones. This is how she hooks us and so places an idea within us. She tells us what something is by telling us how it feels – how she feels – and reveals truths to us in that way.
I do wonder if this was intentional on her part. How much is craft, and how much is simply process writ down? Was she playing with an intended audience, attempting to gift an experience? Or, is her poetry more a diary of her own struggles to understand herself, the world, life? Another way to ask it: Is her poetry a simply a record of her attempt to put (nonverbal) interiority into words?
For myself, I have always felt my best work realizes processes of learning, and the deep yet fleeting emotions that accompany them: the ache of beauty, the rapture of an idea, the epiphany of wisdom. My work – writing and art – are simulations of acquisition, knowings wrought with feeling. I experience this most powerfully when I read my memoirs aloud to an audience. Then I am performing, reliving the feelings I remember, as much as if not more than the events I recount. My audiences confirm it, with applause and comments, and it is true, too, of the art work most special to me.
I’ll leave you with this poem, to experience and understand on your own terms. Or as Emily intended/wanted/crafted. You decide.
There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference –
Where the Meanings, are –
None may teach it – Any –
‘Tis the Seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air –
When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, ‘tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –
Mary Martin’s PETER PAN – I saw this on television when just a child, and was completely taken in to the world of Peter and Wendy and Tinkerbelle, the Lost Boys and Tiger Lily. Then I was unaware of the simplicity and minimalism of the set, using it unconsciously to build a most elaborate artifice in my mind that persisted in memory, as fact. I was astonished so many years later as an adult, to see its stripped down, bare bone structure, and to realize how the dialogue and personifications, acting and song witched up a few props and drops into a fantastic otherworld.
PIPPIN (directed by Bob Fosse) – My first Broadway musical experience, which I shared with Bruce. I was gob-smacked, no two ways about it, being a sheltered, inward, naive young woman from the Midwest, unused to the theatrical except for camp skits and middle school productions. This was a story for adults, told by adults, with adult language and memes (even though the word did not exist then). I most remember the spectacle, and the breaking of the fourth wall when the actors, in character, addressed the audience to start the show. Whoever could, would think of such a thing!?! My boundaries pushed so far out into the world, it took my breath away. A de-limiting, freeing-for-all delight. Did I mention Ben Vereen?
SWEENEY TODD Broadway musical revival (based on the play Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, by Christopher Bond). All I can say here is Sondheim, who beguiled us with rapturous melody and rhythm, a modern Orpheus taking us downward to hell, note by lyrical note. The acting was the best Broadway could offer, and the staging, scene by scene, set by set, distracted from the intrinsic horror until we were too far gone, having tasted the unthinkable. Amazing to have the musicians on stage while the story unfolded around them. Another boundary breaking production.
ARCADIA, by Tom Stoppard (Yale Rep) – The Independent called it “the greatest play of our age”. A remarkable script that showcases a mind-bending interlace of themes and meanings, all resonant with one another, and all adding up to an encompassing though elusive whole. At first I was put off by the idyllic country manor house set/setting and the stately pace, but as the play unfolded, speech by speech, word by word I was convinced finally, of its propriety, its value, its necessity.
MOBY DICK, at Long Wharf Theater – Melville’s classic was adapted and beautifully performed as a monologue by Conor Lovett of Gare St. Lazare Players Ireland. He was accompanied onstage by a deliberately unpolished fiddler (Caoimhin O’Raghallaigh), who hauntingly evoked the sea and the age.
TURN OF THE SCREW, at Madison Lyric Stage – Benjamin Britten’s opera was performed in two rooms of a historic house museum (which the audience moved between!). Musicians and conductor off-stage in a hallway, were just visible to the cast. Single row seating surrounded the actor-singers, and the immediacy of flawless performance intensified the creep of the story and Britten’s score. Luscious costuming, especially the ghosts’.
THE MOORS by Jen Silverman @YRT – Wow!, I said after it was all over, having been taken on a journey from such an intensely flat perpetual moor-ish b o r e d o m, that I wanted to scream bloody murder – to, well, bloody murder. Just as the Victorians craved, created, and consumed their Gothic horrors.
RACE by David Mamet, seen in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Oh, such a delight to have my attention – my inner jurist – entrained/captured/focused/directed/manipulated by Mamet’s words, flipping guilt and accusation back and forth like tennis volleys. Mamet is a Master Storyteller, and a wordsmith with few equals. Expertly cast, directed, and performed.
STONES IN HIS POCKETS (by Marie Jones, at Yale Rep), for its rich, entrancing rapid-fire dialogue.
HAMLET at the Yale Rep – because, Paul Giamatti
THESE PAPER BULLETS (Rolin Jones, Billie Joe Armstrong) at the Rep – joyful, clever, infectious
HE SKIN OF OUR TEETH, by Thornton Wilder at Yale Rep. Yeah yeah Our Town – this is a much better play, and this production was a visual delight.
NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND – Dostoevsky, adapted by Bill Camp. Heavy, heavy themes and exposition but done well enough that I attended to every minute.
THE FAIRYTALE LIVES OF RUSSIAN GIRLS by Meg Miroshnik @Yale Repertory Theater – A entrancing presentation of very modern stories about women, told through the veil of ancient Russian folk tales. Wonderful sets. Zhyli, byli …
FREEWHEELERS – A Broken Umbrella Theater production, performed at New Haven’s annual Arts and Ideas Festival. A sweet story of New Haven’s past, set in an historic building and told with charming alacrity. An inspired use of space and prop.
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