From: LouisFors <LouisFors@aol.com>
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Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 16:57:54 EST
To: emweb@fmgmt.mgmt.utoronto.ca
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Subject: # 1412--the tint divine
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I've been struggling with # 1412 for several days.  Here it is:

Shame is the shawl of Pink
In which we wrap the soul
To keep it from infesting Eyes --
The elemental Veil
Which helpless Nature drops
When pushed upon a scene
Repugnant to her Probity --
Shame is the tint divine.

I checked the email archives of emweb to see if # 1412 had been dealt with,
searching for "pink" as a tell-tale sign. I didn't want to bring up a subject
that had been worried over recently.  Pink was there, in early 1997, but
applying to # 1598, with one person repeatedly pondering whether ED even wrote
it (too Hallmarkish for her).  Andrew was right in his post yesterday that
there's good rambling in the archives.

But back to 1412.  I read it as a pro-shame proclamation.  But, as usual with
ED, density calls for much digging. *We* wrap the soul, an act designed to
protect the soul. (This suggests that we *invent* shame, a troubling
proposition for me.)  But why protection against *infesting* eyes?  Maybe
prying eyes that might see our souls could damage them, infect them in some
sense?  I know that people in some cultures won't tolerate photography of them
for fear their souls will be captured. (I personally experienced that in rural
villages in Iran.)  Capture is not the same as infestation, however, but their
could be a relationship that I haven't uncovered. Help.  Nature also uses the
shawl (veil) of pink to cover a scene that she comes upon and cannot tolerate.
But nature is characterized as helpless, a puzzling thought.  Perhaps nature
comes upon a *human* scene, like seeing into a soul, which is not her product,
but a cultural product.  (That separates us from nature, a dubious proposition
for me.) Then the final line:  "Shame is the tint divine."  So we return to
shame as something very special:  that quality that protects us from excesses,
a notion that I relate to easily.   But, why "pink"?  Upon reading the Webplay
explanation from Tarsine yesterday, I checked in Webster's 1828
dictionary--the only one I have.  The fourth definition of "pink" is "Any
thing supremely excellent."  My grandkids today would say "real cool," or "way
cool." So maybe ED was checking out her 1848 dictionary and found this
definition, or maybe "pink" was in common currency then and is troubling only
today, or, perhaps only to me. (Can Tarsine/Cynthia turn up contexts in which
ED used "pink"?) The discovery of "pink" in Webster settles my mind a bit
about "pink," perhaps prematurely, but I'm still crawling around in remote
corners of my mind hunting explanations for other aspects of the poem.  Any
help?

In one of my runs around the Internet a couple of days ago I came upon a
comment from somebody (don't remember who) who said that his idea of hell was
being forced to spend a single span of time analyzing 50 poems by Emily
Dickinson.  Yup, not at one sitting.

And, Margaret, your message a while ago nudged me on to send this note.  I've
been saving it, hoping to clarify it.  Email has the strange quality of being
somewhere between a post card and a letter, but hardly every an essay, even a
mini-essay.  It's hard to adapt to.

Louis Forsdale