著者

中井 紀明 Noriaki Nakai 桃山学院大学文学部

出版者

桃山学院大学総合研究所

雑誌

桃山学院大学キリスト教論集 = St. Andrew's University Journal of Christian Studies (ISSN:0286973X)

巻号頁・発行日

no.41, pp.1-32, 2005-01-20

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Emily Dickinson left almost 1800 poems, many of them in bundles later called fascicles; they have been usually regarded as mss of poems chronologically bound just for preservation. Recently in the United States, however, some scholars find unity in fascicles without clarifying why only their particular fascicles have unity under the editor Dickinson. My hypotheses are: Franklin's "fascicles" are in fact distinct collections of Emily Dickinson's poetry, and his "sets" are groups of poems waiting for later inclusion in further fascicles. My project is to offer the poet a persistent reader taking her fascicles as collections of poems edited by the poet herself and as more than just chronological. My method of reading-thinking-fermenting-writing of/ about the fascicles was formed by Stanley Fish's Reader Response Criticism and has been the main engine in my analyses of Fascicles 1~4 and will take me as far as Fascicle 40. My experiment is to deliberately become me the first reader of her first "published" collection of her poems edited by the poet herself and to intentionally have the recent scholarship on Dickinson's poetry and fascicles stop intruding into my reading. The first reader is supposed to know nothing in terms of interpretations and commentary accumulated later. The only and main source of information on this "publication" is the collection itself, and the tradition of close reading from New Criticism to Reader Response Criticism will help me here. In Fascicle 1 Dickinson the editor juxtaposes nature and man in terms of time: nature rotates and overcomes time; man proceeds in a forward direction, dies and never returns. Fascicle 2 is not just a bundle of poems but an elaborately edited collection of poems, logically following Fascicle 1. In Fascicle 2, against the softening background of nature, are presented big themes like time, the human destiny of death, faith in Christ, and lastly the poet's scrupulous feelings about having faith which seem to be rooted in her own life. Although Fascicle 2 is breathlessly and daringly taking up big themes for only the second fascicle in a work of forty, it quite impressively binds these themes and reveals Emily Dickinson as a skillful editor. In Fascicle 3 Dickinson the editor intentionally repeats many words to bind this fascicle. Flowers are so abundant in this fascicle as to give solace to the reader facing the inevitability of dying. Days "die" into lingering yesterdays and a year "went up this evening", but for the first time in the first three fascicles substantial human deaths are treated. I discuss the eleventh, seventeenth, eighteenth, and the climactic twentythird poem, where, I suggest, the poet and the editor in her are engaged in not so much overcoming as outwitting the human destiny of death. This is the fourth article in my project of reading each of the forty fascicles as a distinct collection of poems chosen and edited by Dickinson. Literary texts are texts whose rhetorical intentions, deliberately and meticulously interwoven into the text by the author, are traceable through reader responses. Since we cannot expect Dickinson herself to deliver an oracle as to her real intentions in the fascicles, I have sought to experience the text of Fascicle 4 as a reader sensitive to the reading process. My conclusion is that, like the first three fascicles, it is a thematically united collection. Through the sixteen poems of Fascicle 4, Dickinson vividly depicts the stream of conflicting thoughts in the narrator's mind against the background of the Gospel According to St. John (King James Version). In the former part of the fascicle (poems #1 through #7), the narrator is at the same time pleased at the rebirth of the land in springtime (poems #1 and #3) and made gloomy by the contrast with the stark reality of human existence (poems #2 through #7). In poem #8, the turning point in the reasoning process of the fascicle, the narrator recapitulates her joy at the rebirth of Nature but reveals at the end of the poem that the fascicle's real concern is not with Nature but with human rebirth (3:5). In the latter part of the fascicle (poems #9 through #16), where death and human resurrection are discussed against the contrasting background of a cheerful description of Nature's rebirth in springtime (poems #10, #11, and #14), we discover the narrator's growing doubt as to the possibility of human resurrection because of the difficulty of maintaining the unconditional "faith" demanded by Jesus. According to Jesus, human resurrection is possible only for those with faith in him as the Son of God: "he that believeth on me shall never thirst"(6:35) and "he that believeth on me hath everlasting life."(6:47) The narrator, fearing that compared with the annual rebirth of Nature in springtime human resurrection is difficult, finds herself unable to respond to the message of St. John's Gospel, which gradually comes to weigh more and more heavily on her mind. For such a scrupulous narrator, to believe in Jesus as the Son of God without seeing for herself the miracles St. John claims for Him is problematic. Should we believe in things we have not seen? "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed"(20:29). If so, then the narrator, who has not seen and therefore cannot believe, is unblessed. She cannot face Jesus because she does not qualify to stand among those disciples chosen for their unshakeable belief in Him. She feels unqualified to be added to those selected for their trustworthiness as the Twelve Disciples, and finally turns herself into a humble daisy devoid of heart and mind and free from all demands (poem #12). At this point (poems #9, #13, #15, and #16) the narrator uncovers some graves. She learns that many of the dead, either because they are animals without minds or because they are without belief, are left abandoned in their graves even when springtime comes, while an exceptional woman, presumably being possessed of a firm faith, has been raised to Heaven immediately following her death in springtime. It is as if she has been resurrected not on this earth but in Heaven itself. Are we being pressured to accept the reality that God discriminates among the dead and favors those with faith in Jesus? The narrator's skepticism toward the possibility of human resurrection, which takes belief in Jesus as its key, and her nihilistic fear of being incapable of faith gradually pervade the fascicle. Are we doomed to wander in helpless anguish through this haphazard world, buffeted by Fate, waiting only to die? In this fascicle Dickinson is engaged in what I call"polemical reasoning". Each poem is an independent narrative but at the same time is contributing through "polemical reasoning" to the formation of the fascicle's overall narrative of the difficulty of human resurrection. Dickinson is referring the reader to the words of Jesus in St. John's Gospel that "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die". (11:25) Though enchanted and moved by this Gospel prophesy, the poet finds herself unable to respond to it. In the return of flowers in the springtime she sees human resurrection, yet she cannot hold on to the belief in Jesus as the Son of God. As we read the poems in this fascicle, we follow the theme of rebirth in Nature, which is simultaneously contrasted to the narrator's fear of the difficulty of human resurrection due to her increasingly shaky belief in Jesus. We will now trace how the narrative of each of the sixteen individual poems contributes to the fascicle's overall narrative of "polemical reasoning". The first line of each poem is shown in parentheses following the poem number. In Poem #1 ("Perhaps you'd like to buy a flower,") the narrator rejoices, confident of Nature's seasonal rebirth. In Poem #2 ("Water, is taught by thirst.") the narrator lets us know that there are both bright and dark sides to everything on this earth, and that we should admit that we recognize and appreciate things most deeply when we suffer from their lack. At the beginning of the poem we have the "water of life" whose lack leads to thirstiness; we must wait until the Nicodemus Mystery in poem #8 for "water" that does not lead to thirstiness (4:14) and that gives rebirth (3:5). It is said that love is most dearly felt when the loved one dies, but the stark reality is that dying means not returning to dwell on the earth. In Poem #3 ("Have you got a Brook in your little heart,") the flowers of poem #1 and the water of poem #2 are linked, and a new item, "life is " added. In the first and second stanzas we see how water gives life to flowers and to birds, but the same river, we learn in the third and the fourth stanzas, can also at times flood or dry up. That the narrator seeks to draw our attention to this harsh reality at the end of the poem is perhaps the result of her jealousy toward Nature's guaranteed annual rebirth, but probably also because she cannot bring herself to celebrate unreservedly the renewal of Nature thanks to her pessimistic view of the possibility of human resurrection. Poem #4 ("Flowers - Well - if anybody") provides readers with a puzzling problem of definition. Flowers, as the embodiment of Nature, give us "transport" with their return at their successive springtime, but at the same time "trouble" through the fact that the dead among us can never return. The "extasy" caused in us by this combination of "transport" and "trouble" humbles us. There is one more point that must be mentioned here in connection with the fascicle's overall narrative of "polemical reasoning." The narrator wants to find, even at the expense of a reward, someone who could truly claim to be represented by the following words of Jesus: "…but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life (my emphasis)."(4:14). Like Thomas the Apostle, she is not one of those "that have not seen, and yet have believed"(20:29) Unable to see what Jesus did with her own eyes, she cannot believe in Him. In Poem #5 ("Pigmy seraphs - gone astray -") the narrator, looking at the roses she has raised, cannot resist dwelling upon the limited opulence of human affairs: human splendors are nothing compared with the natural world around us. In Poem #6 ("Heart not so heavy as mine") the narrator, gloomy thanks probably to the stress on the harsh reality of human existence in poems #2 through #5, receives solace from a song she overhears. Poem #7 ("Soul, Wilt thou toss again?") describes another feature of harsh human reality which is dominated by haphazardness and lack of planning. In Poem #8 ("An altered look about the hills - ") the narrator recapitulates her concern with the seasonal rebirth of Nature, while in the last two lines her real concern with human resurrection is made clear. At the end of the poem the reader finally learns why flowers and the water that gives them life appear so repeatedly in poems #1 through #4. We also learn about "Nicodemus' Mystery" which, though concerned specifically with human resurrection, is here being applied to natural rebirth too. The reference comes from the passage in the Gospel According to St. John: "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God"(3:5). We understand for the first time here that the theme of human resurrection is the main theme of this fascicle over and above that of natural rebirth. In the following poems the possibility of human resurrection is implicitly doubted because of its dependence on unwavering faith in Jesus. In Poem #9 ("Some, too fragile for winter winds") the narrator, after having rejoiced in the springtime rebirth of Nature, is trying to see into some graves to find out whether those buried there are also revived. The graves have protected those within - children, sparrows and lambs - from the winter. The words "unnoticed by the Father" deserve notice. What is happening here to those in the grave who, like the children, are too immature to profess "faith," or to those who, like the sparrows and lambs, have no mind that would enable them to have faith? Are they unnoticed by the Father simply because they don't have faith? Does being unnoticed by the Father mean that they must remain in the grave without the possibility of resurrection? In Poem #10 ("Whose are the little beds, - I asked") the narrator is watching the flowers revived in springtime and now enjoying sleep different in kind from that in the graves. . Poem #11 ("For every Bird a nest - ") presents, as in poem #10, flowers and birds making homes for themselves and enjoying their lives in springtime. Poem #12 ("'They have not chosen me,' he said,") is a crucial poem in the greater narrative of the fascicle, centering on the story of the Twelve Disciples. Jesus chooses the twelve for their "trustworthiness" or "promising nature"(15:16). Elsewhere Jesus tells them "I chose you" in the knowledge that one of them, Judas, would betray Him (6:70). Reading Jesus' thoughts at the moment of betrayal, the narrator is hesitant to be added to the twelve disciples chosen for their "promising" nature. Knowing that her faith is too unstable to live up to Jesus' expectations, she feels happier to be regarded by Jesus as no more than a roadside daisy, lacking in consciousness and consequently free from the demands of faith. Poem #13 ("She bore it till the simple veins") tells of a woman who died at the end of spring. This woman did not stay in the grave but went immediately to Heaven, presumably because her firm belief in Jesus had been recognized. She was resurrected, but not on the earth as flowers are. Are people with faith resurrected only in Heaven? Is going to Heaven the only way to be born again? Is God discriminating between the woman raised to Heaven in this poem and those remaining in their graves in poems #9, #15, and #16? Does lack of faith mean that we must remain in our grave deserted by God? Poem #14 ("We should not mind so small a flower") talks about the significance of a flower, symbol of the rebirth of the garden she lost, and the relative difficulty of human resurrection. "Faith", a keyword crucial to the "polemical reasoning" in this latter part of the fascicle, is repeated in this poem and the next. In Poem #15 ("This heart that broke so long ?") the narrator, uncertain of her faith, sympathizes with the dead left deserted in their graves. At the end of the first stanza she explains why this keyword "faith" has become so crucial: she had sought after Jesus as her Savior, but her search had been "in vain." In Poem #16 ("On such a night, or such a night,") the narrator's sympathy is with the small children laid so early in their tiny graves. Must they remain there forever because of their lack of faith?