Emily Dickinson: Learn'd Astronomer

Then falling into a moment's revery, he again looked up towards the sun and murmured to himself: "Thou sea-mark! thou high and mighty Pilot! thou tellest me truly where I am - but canst thou cast the least hint where I shall be? Or canst thou tell where some other thing besides me is this moment living?"

-Ahab in "The Quadrant," Moby-Dick

In a May 16, 1848 letter to Abiah Root, Emily Dickinson adds a postscript about her schoolwork:

P.S. My studies for this series are Astronomy and Rhetoric, which take me through to the Senior studies. What are you studying now. . . ? (L67).

Her closing question taunts her modern-day reader as well -- if the grail of Dickinson studies is context, then even her homework seems worth doing. Such is the case with astronomy. As Richard Sewall notes, "a good deal of astronomy" in the form of diction, images, and themes is presented by her poetry (354). But though it is easy to acknowledge that her poetry exhibits a "long-standing fascination with astronomy" (Guthrie 33), it might be more hobby than enterprise; as James Guthrie concludes in Emily Dickinson's Vision (1998), the goals of her poetry might be "utterly foreign to . . . the purposes of scientific inquiry" (51). But the brightness of her cosmic lexicon seems to resist such judgments. When viewed in context with (her) textbook astronomical references, Dickinson's treatment of the sky emerges as a deeply poetic, highly semiotic enterprise begging to be gazed at.

Dickinson's stellar sight is best seen in poem J322/Fr325, "There came a Day at Summer's full."

There came a Day at Summer's full,
Entirely for me -
I thought that such were for the Saints,
Where Resurrections - be -

The Sun, as common, went abroad,
The flowers, accustomed, blew,
As if no soul the solstice passed
That maketh all things new -

The time was scarce profaned by speech -
The symbol of a word
Was needless, as at Sacrament,
The Wardrobe - of our Lord -

Each was to each The Sealed Church,
Permitted to commune this - time -
Lest we too awkward show
At Supper of the Lamb.

The Hours slid fast - as Hours will,
Clutched tight, by greedy hands -
So faces on two Decks, look back,
Bound to opposing lands -

And so when all the time had leaked,
Without external sound
Each bound the Other's Crucifix -
We gave no other Bond -

Sufficient troth, that we shall rise -
Deposed - at length, the Grave -
To that new Marriage,
Justified - through Calvaries of Love -

(J322/Fr325) ¹

The subject of the poem is a sunny, deathless day in June; specifically, the day of the summer solstice. Metaphorically, Dickinson's interest in the solstice seems self-evident: figured as masculine, the sun -- as Dickinson's Master, lover, or God -- is high and far above her. Historically, the solstice also conjures forth pictures of druids bloodily cavorting at Stonehenge, an image and date not only rebuked, but (somewhat) redefined by Christianity as St. John's Feast Day, which is still "enmeshed with the midsummer pagan rituals" of its bloody ancestors (Wagner 13). The speaker acknowledges this reference in her assessment of the day: "such were for the Saints." But for all the richness of these referents, they fail miserably in the speaker's understanding of the event itself as the poem unfolds: the sun goes "abroad" to its highest point in the sky, the event seems "as common" as everyday and not as mystically-rewarding as the speaker's expectations promise (5). Nature behaves "As if no soul the solstice passed," leaving the speaker, expecting to be dazzled by pagan and religious contexts, initially let down (7).

As Lynn Shakinovsky points out, what makes Dickinson's poetry problematic "is the absence of the provision of clues that might guide the reader through her complex and ambiguous universe" (19). To chart her movements, we need a detailed map of her subject. Luckily, Dickinson's...