Ramblings on "There's a Certain Slant of Light"
~ There's a Certain Slant of Light
In this poem, what is the poet’s relation to light? How does she experience this light?
First, it’s appearance: We spoke in class about the strange quality of winter afternoons –– how the sun, low at the horizon, cuts the earth in severe spears of light, enlarging the shadows of everything, in stark contrast to the brightness of the light.
In addition, the presence of cathedral tunes in the next line of the first stanza places one’s perspective in a church. There, too, I imagine light pouring in from the windows, taking a piercing line to the pews. Frankincense, too, might waft through the the shaft of light, intensifying it. Outside, light can be ambient, even during the late afternoons; it molds itself around objects, embracing things in a general touch. However, when light from the outside enters into a darker space, that light is sharpened by the presence of darkness, and the hue of darkness deepens. Either outside or inside, we are invited to inhabit stark contrast.
Oddly, this light, which cannot be weighed or is not generally experienced as physical, “oppresses,” and does so in a similar way to the “Heft Of Cathedral Tunes,” another non-physical phenomena. But we know this instinctually. Music, at least, can lift our spirits, call us into new emotional and spiritual landscapes, give clarity to our experiences, and intensify everything in our lives. Light can do this too. I’m thinking of James Turrell, the perceptual light artist, who takes light as his primary sculptural medium; he can turn the same room into several different spaces just by altering the shape and texture and mood of the light.
Music and Light, although weightless, non-physical, and without a recognizable body, somehow have the ability to oppress or cause “Heavenly Hurt.” Oppression –– literally to impress or press upon with undue force, often against ones will and with unjust exercise of power, is a force that crushes, smothers, and overwhelms. However, the poet doesn’t attempt to do away with this oppression; she doesn’t seek retribution against it or wish it away. In part, the picture of this light is a kind of reporting of the experience, and perhaps even in praise of it. The hurt brought by the light is “heavenly:, that is, not just heaven sent, but the kind of hurt that feels heavenly, a pain that might involve joy or, at least, meaning. The experience is a mixed state, one where joy and pain cannot be distinguished.
I’m thinking of Grushenka in the Brothers K, who throws herself before Alyosha as the tortured, ashamed, mess she had become. Her very vulnerability, so antithetical to her cruel reactions towards others, (in part) causes Alyosha to instantly forgive her; she experiences a kind of love she never expected from anyone but always hoped for, and it arrived through submitting to an exquisite pain that was expressed through vulnerable confession. Her pain is met with love, seen by love, and this experience of love would have been lost from her if she had kept the story of her pain hidden, if she hadn’t brought forth the pain to make it even sharper.
Emily’s poem reveals other aspects of the doubleness of pain. The “Heft” of oppression, whether musical or light, could be thought of solely as weight, or could alternatively be thought of as bringing forth lightness: To Heft is to lift or carry, to raise or hoist. Strangely, the downward force of weight upon us has the opposite affect of sending us up, raising us to the heavens, literally becoming an uplifting experience.
I find this image present when I engage with the suffering of others, where lightness can be oppressive and what is oppressive/dark can be enlightening. A lightness that is oppressive might look like someone attempting to dispel the suffering another, a forceful attempt to bring the other back into a state of joy, one which the sufferer is terribly far from. Such a forced joy might unintentionally enlarge the suffer’s darkness; thus a call to lightness is a veiled oppression.
Compassion, on the other hand, the act / ability to suffer with, can be a balm to soulful wounds through touching that very pain with pain, but, somehow, without inflicting pain: one meets another in their darkness, witnesses it, and allows space for it to be seen, discovered; there is pain in letting the darkness be present in a kind of light, the light of awareness and understanding and felt experience; this is done not so that it is forced into becoming light, but so that it can be seen as dark, in all the hues of its darkness; it is allowed to be darkness, and not forced into banishment, exile, or execution. I think this kind of seeing has a transformative quality that, mysteriously, uplifts, enlightens, and makes meaningful.
I have another image before me that connects to the slanting of the light. Sometimes what is true, real, and genuine must be experience through something unintuitive or oblique; in other words, at a slant. This might be a quality of how we experience the world. Inspired by Lobachevski, I’ve been thinking about how a line parallel to a straight line could possibly “appear” like a slanting line. But isn’t that our experience if we were to stand on one of the two straight and parallel tracks of a train track? If I gaze down a track upon which I stand, I see the line go off into the horizon straight away in front of me. But for the other track, I see it curve, at a slat towards the line I stand on. If I were to switch over to the “curving” line, and set my view down it like with the other line, I see the opposite effect. What is truly straight, then, appears, curved, crooked, misaligned, wrong even.
Mr. Gilmour, your post made me think more about the nature of light, all its spectrums of color. Dickinson writes with the full spectrums of color, almost like she holds up a prism to the psyche. In her work, we feel the whole gamut of human emotions and moods, resulting in distinctive contrast. Like you mention, “how the sun, low at the horizon, cuts the earth in severe spears of light, enlarging the shadows of everything, in stark contrast to the brightness of the light.” I was reminded of the last time I visited La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The use of light took my breath away (even more so because of how the sun played with the glass as it was only slightly after the winter solstice). The stained-glass windows create an intensity of light that lifts one up in an almost transformative place because of how the light struck the cathedral walls and exploded in colors. You’re captivated by the filters creating the tremendous transcendent atmosphere. Explosions of light, explosions of color, explosions of emotion. The stained-glass windows in Gaudi's Basilica create maximum contrast, manipulated light to motivate emotional feelings and almost a sense of ascending. It is dynamic, just as Dickinson’s poem (and music, as you discuss, calling into new emotions, as you put it). Dickinson plays with and makes us see the entire spectrum, not simply one band of color. We see life through a prism, not a clear window pane when we read her poems. Like at the Basilica, this process is an ethereal panoply, where, as you say it, "The experience is a mixed state, one where joy and pain cannot be distinguished."
ReplyDeleteBeautifully thought and expressed, both of you. I wonder if all important emotions are "mixed," sometimes self-contradictory, and there are no words to capture these mixes simply. So they become unbearable, but the pain can be softened if we look at them "slant" -- which is what Dickinson does, and why it is impossible to classify her emotions into traditional genres. Less significant emotions, however, can be given simple words, because they don't matter so much.
ReplyDeleteHer sensitivity to light really is astonishing. It's true for an artist that different qualities of light can bring about different emotional states or moods -- and are moods "just" feelings, or do they have cognitive power, the power to open us up to certain thoughts?