("There’s A Certain Slant Of Light") Essay, Research Paper
YVOR WINTERS
The three poems which combine [Emily Dickinson's] greatest power with her finest
execution are strangely on much the same theme, both as regards the idea embodied and as
regards the allegorical embodiment /293/. They deal with the inexplicable fact of change,
of the absolute cleavage between successive states of being, and it is not unnatural that
in two of the poems this theme should be related to the theme of death. In each poem,
seasonal change is employed as the concrete symbol of the moral change. This is not the
same thing as the so-called pathetic fallacy of the romantics, the imposition of a
personal emotion upon a physical object incapable either of feeling such an emotion or of
motivating it in a human being, It is rather a legitimate and traditional form of
allegory, in which the relationships between the items described resemble exactly the
relationships between certain moral ideas or experiences; the identity of relationship
evoking simultaneously and identifying with each other the feelings attendant upon both
series as they appear separately. [The three poems are], in the order of the seasons
employed, and in the order of increasing complexity both of theme and of technique:
["A Light exists in Spring," "As imperceptibly as grief," and
"There's a certain Slant of light"]. . . . /294/ In the seventh, eighth, and
twelfth lines of ["A Light exists in Spring"], and it is barely possible, in the
seventh and eighth of ["There's a certain slant of light"], there is a very
slight echo of the brisk facility of her poorer work; the last line of ["As
imperceptibly as Grief"], perhaps, verges ever so slightly on an easy prettiness of
diction, though scarcely of substance. These defects are shadowy, however; had the poems
been written by another writer, it is possible that we should not observe them. On the
other hand, the directness, dignity, and power with which these major subjects are met,
the quality of the phrasing, at once clairvoyant and absolute, raise the poems to the
highest level of English lyric poetry.
The meter of these poems is worth careful scrutiny. The basis of all three is the
so-called Poulter’s Measure, first employed, if I remember aright, by Surrey, and after
the time of Sidney in disrepute. It is the measure, however, not only of the great elegy
on Sidney commonly attributed to Fulke Greville, but of some of the best poetry between
Surrey and Sidney, including the fine poem by Vaux on contentment and the great poem by
Gascoigne in praise of a gentlewoman of dark complexion. The English /296/ poets commonly
though not invariably wrote the poem in two long lines instead of four short ones, and the
lines so conceived were the basis of their rhetoric. In ["A Light exists in
Spring"], the measure is employed without alteration, but the short line is the basis
of the rhetoric; an arrangement which permits of more varied adjustment of sentence to
line than if the long line were the basis. In ["As imperceptibly as Grief"], the
first stanza is composed not in the basic measure, but in lines of eight, six, eight, and
six syllables; the shift into the normal six, six, eight, and six in the second stanza, as
in the second stanza of the poem beginning, "Farther in summer," results in a
subtle and beautiful muting both of meter and of tone. This shift she employs elsewhere,
but especially in poems of four stanzas, to which it appears to have a natural
relationship; it is a brilliant technical invention.
In ["There's a certain Slant of Light"] she varies her simple base with the
ingenuity and mastery of a virtuoso. In the first stanza, the two long /163/ lines are
reduced to seven syllables each, by the dropping of the initial unaccented syllable; the
second short line is reduced to five syllables in the same manner. In the second stanza,
the first line, which ought now to be of six syllables, has but five metrical syllables,
unless we violate normal usage and count the second and infinitely light syllable of
Heaven, with an extrametrical syllable at the end, the syllable dropped being again the
initial one; the second line, which ought to have six syllables, has likewise lost its
initial syllable, but the extrametrical us of the preceding line, being unaccented, is in
rhythmical effect the first syllable of the second line, so that this syllable serves a
double and ambiguous function—it maintains the syllable-count of the first line, in
spite of an altered rhythm, and it maintains the rhythm of the second line in spite of the
altered syllable-count. The third and fourth lines of the second stanza are shortened to
seven and five. In the third stanza the first and second lines are constructed like the
third and fourth of the second stanza; the third and fourth lines like the first and
second of the second stanza, except that in the third line the initial unaccented position
is filled and we have a light anapest; that is, the third stanza repeats the construction
/297/ of the second, but in reverse order. The final stanza is a triumphant resolution of
the three preceding: the first and third lines, like the second and fourth, are metrically
identical; the first and third contain seven syllables each, with an additional
extrametrical syllable at the end which takes the place of the missing syllable at the
beginning of each subsequent short line, at the same time that the extrametrical syllable
functions in. the line in which it is written as part of a two-syllable rhyme. The
elaborate structure of this poem results in the balanced hesitations and rapid resolutions
which one hears in reading it. This is metrical artistry at about as high a level as one
is likely to find it. . . .
Emily Dickinson differed from every other major New England writer of the nineteenth
century, and from every major American writer of the century save Melville, of those
affected by New England, in this: that her New England heritage, though it made her life a
moral drama, did not leave her life in moral confusion. It impoverished her in one
respect, however: of all great poets, she is the most lacking in taste; there are
innumerable beautiful lines and passages wasted in the desert of her crudities; her
defects. more than those of any other great /298/ poet that I have read, are constantly at
the brink, or pushing beyond the brink, of her best poems. This stylistic character is the
natural product of the New England which produced the barren little meeting houses; of the
New England founded by the harsh and intrepid pioneers, who in order to attain salvation
trampled brutally through a world which they were too proud and too impatient to
understand. In this respect, she differs from Melville, whose taste was rich and
cultivated. But except by Melville, she is surpassed by no writer that this country has
produced; she is one of the greatest lyric poets of all time. /299/
from "Emily Dickinson and the Limits of Judgment," in In Defense of
Reason, 3rd ed. (Denver, Alan Swallow, 1947), pp. 283-299.
LAURENCE PERRINE
[In "There's a certain Slant of light,"] Emily Dickinson . . . treats an
irrational psychological phenomenon akin to those recorded by Wordsworth in "Strange
fits of passion have I known" ("Down behind the cottage roof, At once, the
bright moon dropp’d. . . . ‘0 mercy!’ to myself I cried, ‘If Lucy should be dead!"’)
and by Tennyson in "Mariana" ("But most she loathed the hour When the
thick-moted sunbeam lay Athwart the chambers, and the day Was sloping toward his western
bower.") A certain external condition of nature induces in her a certain feeling or
mood. But the feeling is more complex than Wordsworth’s or Mariana’s.
The chief characteristic of this feeling is its painful oppressiveness.
"Oppresses," "weight," "hurt," "despair," and
"affliction" convey this aspect. A large component in it is probably
consciousness of the fact of death, though this is probably not the whole of its content
nor is this consciousness necessarily fully formulated by the mind. Yet here we see the
subtle connection between the hour and the mood. For the season is winter, when the year
is approaching its end. And the time is late afternoon (winter afternoons are short at
best, and the light slants), when the day is failing. The suggestion of death is caught up
by the weighty cathedral tunes (funeral music possibly—but hymns are also much
concerned with death—"Dies Irae," etc.) and by "the distance on the
look of death." The stillness of the hour ("the landscape listens, Shadows hold
their breath") is also suggestive of the stillness of death.
But besides the oppressiveness of the feeling, it has a certain impressiveness too. It
is weighty, solemn, majestic, like organ music. This quality is conveyed by "weight
of cathedral tunes," "heavenly ," "seal" (suggesting the seal on
some important official document), and "imperial." This quality of the mood may
be partly caused by the stillness of the moment, by the richness of the slanting sunlight
(soon to be followed by sunset), and by the image of death which it calls up.
The mood gives "heavenly" hurt. "Heavenly" suggests the
immateriality of the hurt, which leaves "no scar"; the source of the
sunlight—the sky; the ultimate source of both sunlight and death—God. The hurt
is given internally "where the meanings are"—that is, in the soul, the
psyche, or the mind-that part of one which assigns "meanings"—consciously
or intuitively—to life and to phenomena like this.
"None may teach it anything"—Both the sunlight and the mood it induces
are beyond human correction or alleviation; they are final and
irrevocable—"sealed." There is no lifting this seal— this despair.
"When it goes, ’tis like the distance On the look of death"—The lines
call up the image of the stare in the eyes of a dead man, not focused, but fixed on the
distance. Also, "distance" suggests the awful distance between the living and
the dead—part of the implicit content of the mood. Notice that the slanted ray and
the mood are still with us here, but are also going. The final remarkable image reiterates
the components of the hour and the mood—oppressiveness, solemnity, stillness, death.
But it hints also at relief—hopes that there will soon be a "distance"
between the poet and her experience.
from "Dickinson’s ‘There’s a Certain Slant of Light,’" The Explicator,
XI (May 1953), Item 50.
DONALD E. THACKREY
One of the very best lyric poems which Emily Dickinson wrote, it seems to me, is
["There's a certain Slant of light"]. . . . /76/
This poem is frequently found in anthologies of American poetry but has seldom been
discussed, as far as I know. Perhaps the explanation is to be found in the poem itself,
which is unquestionably beautiful in its sound, and striking in its imagery, yet resists
definition in terms of a logical, comprehensive statement. This poem, certainly, is one of
those rare poems which are experienced, never completely understood. It seems to me
impossible to read the lines without feeling a tragic, serene emotion which must be akin
to the melancholy about which Keats writes. Emily Dickinson’s poem is much less specific
than the "Ode on Melancholy" in describing the nature of the emotion, but her
poem captures and transmits the experience itself.
In regard to the poem’s meaning, one finds himself perplexed at first. The poet
experiences a profound affliction in the presence of something normally regarded as
cheerful—a ray of light. If, however, one remembers the mystical approach which
characterizes much of Emily Dickinson’s writing, the poem assumes a new meaning. This is
not a mystical poem, but it derives its ethereal quality from the influence of the
mystical aspect of Emily, Dickinson’s viewpoint. Light, itself a characteristic mystical
symbol of the Divine, and perhaps also the natural splendor of the world which the light
reveals and enhances in its afternoon, fading glow, strikes Emily Dickinson with the
irresistible force of an Eternal Power. Not mere speculation is stimulated; an emotional
ecstasy of such intensity that it is an affliction possesses her. Furthermore, it is an
imperial affliction sent us of the air. It is again the mystical concept of the worthiness
of painful ecstasy to promote the complete fulfillment of one’s nature. No other education
is comparable; only the experiencing of "despair" sets the enduring
"seal" upon the soul. One recalls that beauty and truth, alike in their effect,
are for her the agents of supreme human fulfillment and are accompanied by the complex
sensations indescribable except in such paradoxical terms as rapturous pain. The slant of
light, its illumination epitomizing the glorious sublimity of nature, would symbolize for
Emily Dickinson the ultimate realization of truth and beauty. The immensity of light’s
compass, the intangibility of its substance, the mystery of its origin, the all-pervasive
immediacy of its /77/ presence would create in her the sudden awareness of her own
relationship to the natural world and yet of the inevitable change of this relationship at
death. The awareness that she must cease to see the light gives her present vision its
searing acuteness. . . .
An examination of the images in "There’s a certain slant of light" reveals
their extraordinary degree of consistency and appropriateness. The light is presented in
its most effective form. The slant indicates that the light is refracted so that
one may see the beam or ray itself and not just an illuminated surface. The slant is
explained by afternoons. Sunset is near, for "winter afternoons" are
short. The terms winter and afternoon both are suggestive of the end of life. The
lustre and yellow warmth of the light stand out in striking relief in austere winter.
Light compared with cathedral tunes demonstrates a consummate use of imagery in which the
profoundest impressions of one sense are called forth to describe equally profound
impressions of another sense. The senses of sight and hearing, as well as an emotional
tone and a feeling of muscular tenseness in opposing weight, are all involved in the brief
stanza. The nature of the paradoxical "Heavenly hurt" is made evident by the
image of cathedral tunes. Most people are sensible of the sober disquietude that may be
stimulated by great, solemn music, if not by the beauty of nature. The "internal
difference" is, of course, the essential difference for Emily Dickinson rather than
any outward change. . . . /78/
[The] significance of the slant of light is also within. The sudden, inward change is
so thorough that the poet, holding her breath and listening, sees her own emotional state
reflected in the very landscape and shadows. The emotion, too intense to last, subsides as
the slant of light lengthens and lowers into the gray of twilight. Then "’tis like
the distance / On the look of death." The feeling of softened, lengthened distances
as seen at dusk, the poignancy in the departure of something precious, the resigned
awareness of death—not felt with the acute sensations of before but contemplated
dispassionately—all are included in this solemn final image.
The mechanical details of the poem are, to my mind, flawless. The second and fourth
lines of each stanza end in perfect rhyme, and the first and third lines of each stanza
exhibit the incomplete sound-rhymes for which Emily Dickinson has been alternatively
praised and damned for something over fifty years. The recurrence of sounds in the
complete and incomplete rhymes is not obvious and blatant; it has the effect of music
lightly assuring the listener of its key by sometimes stating the tonic, but frequently
only pausing on the dominant. The key or tone of the poem is maintained throughout by the
preponderance of "s" sounds. The poem seems to demand to be read in a subdued
tone ending with the whispered last two lines. There is not a jarring sound present; the
liquid "I’s" and the vowels add to the hushed, lyric quality.