How to Read “I dreaded that first robin so”

Chanel Brown

Instructor Schenold

Writing in the English Discipline

5 November 2007

How to Read “I dreaded that first robin so”: A Plea for Expressive Anti-Realism

Emily Dickinson’s “I dreaded that first robin so” poem is full of unsettling, confusing imagery and metaphor. In the course of the poem, the narrator feels threatened by things in nature, describing yellow daffodils as being able to “pierce” her with “a fashion so foreign to” her own, and “pianos” that will “mangle” her in the woods. Dickinson has thus created images that don’t make a lot of sense in their context in order to communicate that the narrator is suffering from a depression severe enough to distort her perceptions of reality. She does this to show the reader the frightening and unsettling effects of depression, rather than tell the reader what they are. Reading the poem this way allows readers who have not experienced this kind of depression to see how disorienting, threatening, and alienating its effects are, and readers who have to recognize and relate to its effects, somewhat lessening the reader’s feelings of alienation. If we read the poem as an expression of depression, we cannot read it as an expressive realist would, looking for true, mimetic reflections of reality. Instead, Dickinson uses anti-realistic imagery, (in contrast to realistic, mimetic imagery), to demonstrate a depression severe enough to distort the perceptions of the speaker of the poem, making nature and reality disorienting and threatening.

In Critical Practice, Catherine Belsey discusses the theory of expressive realism, and its concern with mimetic art, art that imitates and accurately reflects reality: “. . . the artist must both represent (re-present) faithfully the objects portrayed, and express the thoughts and feelings they evoke in him or her” (8). She refers specifically here to romantic landscape painting and its imitation of reality, but the concept is the same when reading literature as an expressive-realist, with the notion that art should imitate life, and accurately reflect reality in order to communicate some truth about the world. Literature is seen as a reflection of reality, bad literature being something that “tells lies” about the world, and good literature being work that reflects reality and expresses truth about the world. “The novel, above all, is praised for its ‘authenticity’ in describing the world of social relationships, or conveying the inner experience (sometimes seen as ‘universal’) of the individual in quest of identity” (12). In this model, Belsey states, “the mimetic and the expressive are one” (12). According to expressive-realism, in order for a work of literature to be expressive and meaningful, it must mimic, or accurately reflect reality.

Expressive-realism also emphasizes authorial intention in finding the meaning of a text. Expressive-realists may look at an author’s biography and other works in order to find out what she means, what the intended meaning and significance are. Scholars are aware that Emily Dickinson suffered from depression and was somewhat of a hermit, but readers don’t really need to take Dickinson’s biography into account to find meaning in this poem. The meaning of the poem is actually lessened, or constrained, when we look at it as simply an expression of Dickinson’s own experience and suffering, rather than a representation of the nature of suffering and depression that many people experience. Instead of reading the poem as a reflection of Dickinson’s depression, we can read it as an expression of the ways depression manifests itself in the perceptions of any individual who suffers from it. The following analysis of “I dreaded that first robin so” will demonstrate that the meaning of the poem is found in its anti-realistic imagery.

Each of the first few stanzas of the poem describes, through imagery and metaphor, the violent or threatening surroundings of the narrator. The first two stanzas of the poem describe the narrator’s dread and fear of the future, using anti-realistic imagery and symbolism. The robin in the first sentence, “I dreaded that first robin so, / But he is mastered now, / And I’m accustomed to him grown, - / He hurts a little, though,” could symbolize the recurrence of spring, something the narrator finds threatening as it presents physical evidence that time is moving forward, and the future she dreads continues to approach. In the next stanza, “I thought if I could only live / Till that first shout got by,” “that first shout” could be the robin, the first time the robin made her fear spring and the continuation of time and the future. The next sentence, “Not all pianos in the woods / Had power to mangle me,” could represent all the sources of anxiety that the narrator feels “mangled” by, even though she herself may not be able to recognize specifically what they are, making them nonsensical, confusing, “pianos in the woods.” She fears daffodils, with “their yellow gown” might “pierce her with a fashion so foreign” to her own. The contrast between the happy image of yellow daffodils and her own mental and emotional state becomes threatening, something that could “pierce” her, or become a source of intense anxiety. She also fears the tall grass, that “stretch to look at” her, and the bees: “I could not bear the bees should come, / I wished they’d stay away / In those dim countries where they go: / What word had they for me?” The bees, like the daffodils, inspire anxiety and dread in the narrator. They pollinate the new flowers and plants, acting as participants in the romantic portrayal of spring as rebirth, usually a joyous idea, but threatening and dreadful to the narrator. Because her depression makes nature and reality threatening, inspiring fear and anxiety, being faced with the rebirth of the world is a reminder that the future is approaching. The future, for someone experiencing debilitating anxiety and depression, is a thing of dread.

In the second to last stanza, the poem takes a critical turn, as the narrator reveals herself as “The Queen of Calvary,” or “queen of suffering.”: “They’re here, though; not a creature failed, / No blossom stayed away / In gentle deference to me, / The Queen of Calvary,” Calvary being the place where Christ was crucified, and also used to denote extreme suffering. As the poem ends, each creature “salutes” her as it goes, and she lifts her “childish plumes” in “bereaved acknowledgement / Of their unthinking drums. “Plumes” could easily mean the feathers of the robin, which would put the speaker of the poem in the place of one of the things she dreads, implying a loathing or dread of herself, which is common with depression. However, according to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, “Plumed” can also be defined as “To congratulate oneself in a self-satisfied way.” If Dickinson is using the word this way, which is made more believable by the use of the word “childish” right before, it could be an acknowledgement to the narrator’s self-involvement, congratulating herself on her position as the Queen of Calvary, or queen of suffering, a rather self-centered thought, which is also very common with depression – self-involvement and self-centeredness, while a recognition of these things inspire self-loathing. She “lifts” her “plumes” in “bereaved acknowledgement of their unthinking drums.” The image of drums here is puzzling, but if we think of drums as keeping a beat, the creatures and nature have their own “unthinking” beat, a cycle of death and rebirth, a cycle of the seasons. The narrator is confronted with this cyclical recurrence and the hard fact that there is a future.

The narrator’s reference to herself as the Queen of Calvary is a critical point in the poem that informs the reader as to how to read the preceding stanzas. The positioning of the narrator as the “Queen of Calvary,” as opposed to the King of Calvary, asks us to address the poem as anti-realistic, and perceive the implications of it as readers. In Belsey’s discussion of Reader Power in Critical Practice, she writes about Wolfgang Iser’s concept of the implied reader: “a figure who is constructed by the text in the sense that ‘he embodies all those predispositions necessary for a literary work to exercise its effect – predispositions laid down, not by an empirical outside reality, but by the text itself’” (Belsey 30). In other words, Iser sees an implied reader as a reader who follows the signals or clues in a text as to how it should be read: “the reader produces meaning which is neither wholly determined – because of the ‘indeterminacies’ created by the juxtaposition of ‘perspectives’ in the text – nor entirely subjective – because the formal properties of the text construct a role for the reader” (30). If “Queen of Calvary” is meant to suggest that she is suffering, reading the rest of the poem in this light makes it more clear that her suffering, or depression, are creating perceptions of violence and threat in nature and her surroundings.

In “I dreaded that first robin so,” meaning is not achieved by a mimetic representation or reflection of reality, but the anti-realistic descriptions of the narrator’s experiences. Expressive-realism would assert that only an accurate representation of reality could communicate meaning or truth, but the meaning of this poem is found in the misrepresentation of reality, the narrator’s perception of reality becoming threatening and anti-realistic due to her depression. If Dickinson had tried to demonstrate the effects of depression in a mimetic, representational way, it would be telling the reader what those effects are, instead of using threatening imagery and signals such as “Queen of Calvary” to show how the imagery can be read, in a way that makes the experience seem more real, and more meaningful.  The anti-realistic imagery in the poem show us how our own perceptions construct our reality, and how having a serious depression can distort those perceptions and become debilitating by constructing reality as a threat, and something to dread.

from A Pre-Freudian Reading of Turn of the Screw

“Fear is like faith: it ultimately creates what at first it only imagined.”

Harold C. Goddard

Amanda Palmer

Robert and I drove to Portland this weekend to see Amanda Palmer play with Estradasphere on Sunday night, where she played this song (that’s a video link, click it):

Guitar Hero

I can’t get them up
I can’t get them up
I can’t get them up At all
Hey ho let go

good morning killer king you’re a star
that’s gorgeous hold it right where you are
the weathers kinda lousy today
so what oh what oh what’ll we play?

stratcaster strapped to your back
I’ts semi-automatic like dads
he taught you how to pause and reset
but that’s about as far as you get…

so what’s the use of going outside?
it’s so depressing when people die in real life
I’d rather pick up right where we left
Making out to faces of death
Making out to faces of death

And i could save you baby But it isn’t worth my time
And i could make you chase me for a little price is right

It’s a hit but are you actually sure?
the targets in the crowd are a blur
people screaming just like they should
but you don’t even know if you’re good
you don’t even know if you’re good

so tie them up and feed them the sand
Ha! *****! try hard to tell us using your hands
A pictures worth a million words
And that way nobody gets hurt
And that way nobody gets hurt

and I could save you baby but it isn’t worth my time
and I could make you chase me for a little price is right….

Woo-ah-oo
Woo-ooh-ah-oo
Woo-ah –ooh ah ohh ah oo

you’re my guitar hero
you’re my guitar hero
you’re my guitar hero
you’re my guitar hero

x marks the box in the hole in the ground that goes off at a breath
so careful don’t make a sound
x marks the box in the hole in your head that you dug for yourself
now lie in it

shut up about all of that negative ****
you wanted to make it and now that you’re in
you’re obviously not gonna to die
so why not take your chances and try….
why not take your chances and try…

do you turn this thing off
this isn’t at all like the ones back at home
you shut your eyes and flip the cassette
and that’s about the time that they hit
and that’s about the time that they hit

what the **** is up with this ****?
It’s certainly not worth getting upset
His hands are gone and most of his head
And just when he was getting so good…
just when he was getting so good…

and I could save you baby but it isn’t worth my time
cos even if I saved you there’s a million more in line

Woo-ah-oo
Woo-ooh-ah-oo
Woo-ah –ooh ah ohh ah oo
you’re my guitar hero
you’re my guitar hero
you’re my guitar hero
you’re my guitar hero

(source)

So worth not getting any sleep before my midterm on Monday morning.

“She who enjoys doing and enjoys what she has done is happy.”

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Originally, it was “He who enjoys…” but I changed it, ’cause I felt like it.

hahaha

“Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.”

- Leo Tolstoy

I like this quote

“My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet.  As I grew older I became a drunk.  Why?  Because I like ecstasy of the mind.  I’m a wretch.  But I love, love.”

- Jack Kerouac

The comma in the last sentence kind of throws me off.   If he’s just saying he loves love, I would’ve just written, “I love love.”  Or are you always supposed to put a comma between the same two words?  The comma makes it look like he’s saying either, “I love,  love” like he’s addressing someone as “love,” or like he’s saying, “I love love love love,” you know what I mean?  Like in a “all we need is love” sort of way. 

It’s probably just me. 

I like this quote

“Know thyself!  A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly.  Whoever observes himself arrests his own development.  A caterpillar who wanted to know itself well would never become a butterfly.”

- Andre Gide

(French writer)

The Dresden Dolls, Shores of California

he’s been trying with limited success
to get this girl to let him get into her pants
but every time he thinks he’s getting close
she threatens death before he gets a chance

and that’s the way it is in Minnesota
and that’s the way it is in Oklahoma
that’s the way it’s been since protozoa
first climbed onto the shores of California

and she’s been trying with limited success
to get him to turn out the lights and dance
cause like any girl all she really wants
that fickle little bitch romance
that fickle little bitch romance

and that is why a girl is called a tease
and that is why a guy is called a sleaze
and that’s why god made escort agencies
one life to live and mace and GHB

and that’s the way it is in Minnesota
and that’s the way it is in Oklahoma
that’s the way since the animals and noah
first climbed onto the shores of California

must not be too kind
stop thinking love is blind
clench your fists yeah right
she’s just not my type

why all these conflicting specifications
maybe to prevent overpopulation
all I know is that all around the nation
the girls are crying and the boys are masturbating
the girls are crying and the boys are masturbating

and that’s the way it is in Minnesota
and that’s the way it is in Oklahoma
that’s the way aristophanes and homer
wrote the Iliad and Lysistrata

and that’s the way it is in Minnesota
and that’s the way it is in Oklahoma
that’s the way it’s been since protozoa
first climbed onto the shores of California