I've got to be a macho man
There's a Certain Slant of Light
Explication
There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.
Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.
None may teach it anything,
'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, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.
I initially felt a great affinity with this poem, with what it seemed to be saying on both a literal and metaphoric level. Now, having read and thought about it more, there is more of a gap between what I think it may mean and the feeling I still get from it.
On my first reading, I felt like Emily Dickinson was looking out of my eyes at Seattle, and writing about the dull grey light that prevails here six months out of the year. The deadening, deafening oppressive weight of the sky and its effect on me were reflected perfectly in her writing. On a closer examination, I found a lot of religiously flavored references that I do not identify with. They begin at the end of the first stanza- "That oppresses, like the weight/Of cathedral tunes". The first few lines of this poem caught me instantly. There is a certain slant of light on winter afternoons, and it is oppressive. It is a feeling that I've been trying to express, to convey to other people the whole time that I have lived in Seattle. She brings in the church right there, though, and that is divergent from my experience and view. Not only was I not raised in any sort of religious atmosphere, I am wary and uncomfortable when I am in one. I think she is referring more to the feelings of boredom and duty that other people associate with Mass. She might also be referencing the heavy-handed and obligation-laden teachings and hymns. It is written in a hymn-like structure, and I can't help but wonder if that is a little tongue-in-cheek, or if it's just tying it all together, or if that's just the form that she was most comfortable with (as a lot her poems are in this style, and I doubt that all of them are tongue in cheek).
The next verse begins "Heavenly hurt it gives us/Though we can find no scar," which I read to mean that it hurts on a level more than just physical or mental (it's more than just 'sad'), that it pierces the soul; that there's a shadow that leaves one wounded, though with no discernable mark or explanation. You feel it but you can't quite put your finger on what caused it, or why you were affected. I think this is what she intended as well. Dickinson seems to think that everything that matters, everything that makes up a person, is internal. "But internal difference/where the meanings are." As some one who spent nearly all her time alone with her mind and her pen, this attitude makes sense. I think that 'meanings' could be interchangeable with 'answers'. This weather, this quality of light, throws you into a mood that changes how you think, and the answers that usually suffice as truths seem 'off' somehow. There is a certain listlessness, an ennui that I fall into with the coming of this sort of winter light that makes a lot of my usual pursuits unsatisfactory. I find myself 'too tired' or feeling that there is no point to leaving the house; I start feeling like I am just going through the motions of duty, and then I start to feel like there's no point. I start a lot of new projects that I think will interest me and abandon them fairly soon. This may be more extreme than Dickinson meant it to be read, but I think it is the same flavor.
The next stanza is interesting in that it was the least intuitive for me to read. The last line is fairly straightforward, but the others bear a closer look. This feeling, this prevalent air won't change, and cannot be pushed away. I interpret it that the lights' effect is its own fault, not the fault of the person affected. You cannot change it and its effect by just changing your attitude, or your view. This statement is a bit defensive, and it shunts off responsibility.
In the first stanza, there is the word 'cathedral', in the second there was 'heavenly' and now we have 'seal' and 'imperial'. All of these combined conjure an image of a god, a higher power signing off on the malaise. This seems as though it might change the meaning of "Heavenly hurt it gives us" to something that must be borne nobly, a cross to bear, so to speak. It seems to change this "affliction/Sent us of the air" in to a kind of romantic despondency. The seal could be viewed a few ways. It could be the seal of despair, it could be just a tie-in to the other kingly words. I prefer the idea that it could be the seal on the envelope of an already unhappy mind, and so is something to despair.
The last verse is the most ominous, and the first half can be read literally or metaphorically. The literal translation would be that with heavy air, things are hushed, the light is soft and gray and shadows get softened out. This mental image of hills and mist and quiet expectant air is fairly strong. The metaphoric reading tells that everything seems to pause and listen, that it is not just her, or me, that feels oppressed, it is the world itself. This is a hope-giving idea, of solidarity, maybe not with other people, but with the earth. She doesn't dwell too long on this hopefulness, ending with the idea that even when the light and that mood have passed, they are still present, still felt, the same way you are conscious of your own mortality. I realize that in this view, I am personifying Death. In the case of the look of the lower-case death, I think she may be saying that when the mood leaves, you are left with a kind of empty peace, which is, I suppose, something to look forward to, so perhaps this whole section is hopeful, albeit in a pretty melancholy, almost self-pitying, way.
This is a poem that I love for its sentiments. Emily Dickinson gets it. She knew and put into words the same feeling I have now. She says it simply, expressively, and affectingly. And she never even came to Seattle.
This is a poem I hate to read out loud, with its alternately rhyming lines that make it so easy to lapse into sing-song, and so hard to convey vocally the deep-rooted feeling it brings up. It is a poem that was meant to stay quietly on paper, and to inspire a feeling of camaraderie in its readers.
Unless, of course, it's really about longing for death, as Lawrence Perrine ("Dickinson's 'There's a Certain Slant of Light,'" The Explicator, XI (May 1953), Item 50) seems to think. In which case, I take back everything I said that she may have meant, and leave you just with my reading of it.
