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  • “The Names of Sickness”:Emily Dickinson, Diagnostic Reading, and Articulating Disability
  • Vivian Delchamps

There is a Languor of the LifeMore imminent than Pain -‘Tis Pain’s Successor-When the SoulHas suffered all it can -

A Drowsiness-diffuses -A Dimness like a FogEnvelops Consciousness -As Mists-obliterate a Crag.

(F522A)

Emily Dickinson’s “There is a Languor of the Life” hints at her knowledge about diagnostic and surgical approaches to bodymind1 pain during her time. Although the poem can be read as a metaphorical portrayal of spiritual suffering, it also demonstrates Dickinson’s familiarity with contemporary medical innovations as well as her skillful use of simile to poetically depict complex bodily states. For example, the poem describes a “languor” that envelops consciousness with a “Drowsiness” that “diffuses–/ a Dimness like a Fog,” evoking literal sensations one might feel while under the influence of anesthesia.2 The poem goes on to examine the consequences that may result if pain gives way to this “fog”:

The Surgeon-does notblanch-at pain -His Habit-is severe -But tell him that it [End Page 106] ceased to feel -The Creature lying there -And he will tell you -Skill is late -A Mightier than He -Has ministered before Him -There’s no Vitality

The surgeon of this poem has a simple view of pain: he can potentially operate on a person who feels pain, but an inhuman “Creature,” whom he diagnoses as lacking in vitality, cannot be treated by any skill he possesses. The poem depicts this medical practitioner as efficient and knowledgeable about some aspects of the body. However, he also seems authoritative, dehumanizing, and “severe” in the guise of his profession, for he does not react to human pain. In the space of this short poem, Dickinson takes an approach to pain that is more comprehensive than the surgeon’s diagnostic and corrective one. She imagines the extreme experience of pain, the sensation of languor that follows it, the effects of pharmaceutical medicine, the attitudes of medical professionals, and the consequences of losing pain completely, demonstrating her willingness to try to represent tangible, visceral experiences in poetic form.

While Dickinson did not denigrate physicians and surgeons—indeed, further on I suggest that Dickinson was aware of, and fascinated by, medical innovations of her time—she refused to grant omniscient authority to patriarchal medical science. When Dickinson encountered physicians, including metaphorical physicians such as her editorial “surgeon” Thomas Wentworth Higginson, she investigated the usefulness and ethics of diagnostic and surgical approaches to bodymind pain and disorderly forms. She often indicates, as in the poem above, that diagnostic interpretations of complex visceral experiences can be flawed and even dangerous. While diagnoses seem to bridge the gap between felt realities and language, they can have dire consequences, including dangerous treatments and violent surgeries, and are not wholly accurate or ethical means of understanding bodymind realities. I further demonstrate that Dickinson thought deeply about the value of pain and about the consequences of using medicine to eliminate it. In the poem above, for example, she counterintuitively suggests that the loss of pain—brought about by shock, anesthesia, surgery, and/or the administration of medicine—is not a medical triumph; instead, the loss of pain signals a greater loss of vitality. Dickinson demonstrates that medical science cannot fully understand pain because it seeks only to label and eliminate it. Her poetry reveals that [End Page 107] poetic language offers valuable opportunities for articulating pain in all of its undiagnosed complexity.

As I contemplate Dickinson’s skepticism about diagnosis and her poetic experiments with articulating pain, I suggest that her poetry offers ways of thinking about disability that are highly generative for the field of disability studies today. Initially, disability scholars avoided discussing pain, focusing instead upon “the social meanings, symbols, and stigmas attached to disability identity” asking “how they relate to enforced systems of exclusion and oppression” (Siebers 3). Today, disability scholars contemplate embodiment to more fully consider the diverse range of social, political, and bodymind experiences that make up disabled life.3 As Jamie Utphall explains, “While some disabled persons experience disability as more of a social factor, others may live daily...

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