Emily Dickinson's poem, "I showed her Hights" (J #446), was first published by Martha Dickinson Bianchi in The Single Hound in 1914, and then again by Thomas H. Johnson in his variorum and reader's editions of the poems in 1955. Johnson identifies "I showed her Hights" as a variant of "He showed me Hights," which was found in packet #32. He notes that "I showed her Hights," a separate manuscript, was sent to Susan Gilbert Dickinson and dates both manuscripts around 1862. "He showed me Hights" is included in the variorum edition of the poems, but not in the reader's edition, perhaps because at the time the variorum was published, part of the manuscript to "He showed me Hights" was missing, and Johnson was forced to reconstruct the last three lines based on the variant. The missing piece was recovered in 1967, however, and Johnson's reconstruction was corrected by R.W. Franklin in an article in American Literature in 1978. As it turned out, Johnson was off by only one word in his reconstruction; "larger," in line eleven of his reconstruction, is "steadier" in ED's manuscript, although she does include "larger" as a variant, indicating it with a + at the bottom of the page.

Editing Dickinson's poems for conventional print publication has become a daunting task in light of new scholarship emphasizing the visual importance of her manuscripts. Susan Howe, Martha Nell Smith, and Marta Werner have all discussed the significance of calligraphy, spacing, punctuation, and lineation in Dickinson's holographs, as well as her modes of production and self-publication. Therefore, the following transcriptions of Dickinson's manuscripts should be read with their limitations in mind. But while no printed poem can completely capture Dickinson's original, a printed version can accurately reflect her lineation and spelling, and attempt, though they are sometimes difficult to distinguish, a faithful representation of her capitalization and punctuation. This has been the intent here.

Johnson's well-known versions of the poems appear next to the transcriptions to invite inquiry into the significance of the differences between the two. He obviously takes much greater liberty with Dickinson's manuscripts. In his editing of "I showed her Hights," for example, the changes in lineation are striking. Changing Bianchi's 1914 version only slightly, Johnson takes Dickinson's "I showed her Hights," which is 21 lines in manuscript, with a break between lines 13 and 14, and turns it into "I showed her Hights she never saw -", a quasi-sonnet in 12 lines. He also makes a small change in emphasis by italicizing "now" in line 7 of his version. One might therefore consider why these changes were made, and to what extent the changes affect the reading of the poem.

"He showed me Hights" follows because the differences between Dickinson's variants invite important questions, too. To what extent might the variants be treated as the same poem? To what extent are they different poems? What do they say about Dickinson's intentions as a poet? And to what extent might the differences result from a change in the speaker's subject position?

For further reading on this poem, and on the editing of Emily Dickinson's poems, see the following: The Poems of Emily Dickinson 3 vols., ed. Thomas H. Johnson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955); The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson, 2 vols., ed R.W. Franklin (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1981); R.W. Franklin, "Additional Dickinson Manuscripts," American Literature 50.1 (March 1978); Susan Howe, "These Flames and Generosities of the Heart: Emily Dickinson and the Illogic of Sumptuary Values," Sulfer 28 (Spring 1991); Martha Nell Smith, Rowing in Eden: Rereading Emily Dickinson (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992); Marta Werner, Emily Dickinson's Open Folios: Scenes of Reading, Surfaces of Writing (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).

Kris Comment
kcomment@wam.umd.edu

[NOTE ON TEXTS: There is no emphasis indicated by underlining in this manuscript or by italics in Johnson's variorum. The lines after the page break in ED's manuscript are written on what Franklin calls a small, "pinned attachment"; this is the piece that was missing and then recovered. Johnson indicates the reconstructed lines with brackets.]