From: LouisFors <LouisFors@aol.com>
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Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 20:32:15 EST
To: emweb@fmgmt.mgmt.utoronto.ca
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Subject: ED's withdrawal
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Seeking indulgence from old ED hands, I report a personal discovery, which
serves as clarification for me of ED's withdrawal from much of face-to-face
socialization.

I've come upon an article by Roger Shattuck in the June 20, 1996 The New York
Review of Books.  Titled "Emily Dickinson's Banquet of Absetmiousness," the
article lays out an _intellectual rationale_ for ED's "self restraint and
withdrawal," aided no doubt by personal events.  Shattuck speaks of a probably
strategic decision by ED to distance hereself from the sensations of face-to-
face contact (a phrase he does not use), saying "She decides to place her
faith in the picture she can represent in her mind rather than to seek fuller
or more intimate knowledge of the other person." Shattuck quotes two of ED's
poems which "counsel not against desire but against yielding to desire without
fully consulting the soul's scruples.  A reasonable asceticism contributes to
aesthetic delectation of life."  The poems are # 421 and #1430.

           421
A Charm invests a face
Imprefectly beheld--
The Lady dare not lift her Veil
For fear it be dispelled --

But peers beyond her mesh --
And wishes -- and denies --
Lest Interview -- annul a want
That Image -- satisfies --

A brief explication of  421 by Shattuck notes "Looking through her veil, a
woman feels deeply drawn by the almost magical beauty of another person, for
whom she, thus concealed, may herself exert a powerful charm.  She decides to
place her faith in the picture she can represent in her mind rather than seek
fuller or more intimate knowledge of the other person."

I'll not present # 1430 here because, If I read my screen properly, there
isn't room.
It's a good one, of course, and leads one into all kinds of mental asking to
arrive at a reasonable reading.

I imagine Shattuck's reading of ED's withdrawal as (after many distresses) to
pull back into the kind of contemplation that would suit her personality and
her poetry best has been expressed many times elswhere.  I just haven't found
it elsewhere.  I like this view of ED:  No crazy woman in the attic here, no
pitty patting child, no hand wringing virgin, just somebody who gradually made
an intellectual decision
that she serves herself and others best by reflective removal, by accepting
greater asceticism.

Louis Forsdale