Through Knowing – where we
only [hope/guess]
[Receiving/beholding] – where we – pray -
(F369/J499; Fascicle 18, stanza 4)
Although the dead ‘know’ in their domain where we can ‘only hope’ in ours, they
also experience, as we do, ‘Expectation’, and, as the poem shifts into the mental space
of
the dead as the
originating
space, the subject of that space is ‘the dead’ not ‘we’,
so the pronoun in the now projected space of the living takes the regular, not the
-
self
anaphor form:
[11b] Of Expectation – also -
Anticipating
us
With transport, that would
be a pain
Except for Holiness -
(stanza 5)
Now it is the speaker’s space that is ‘away’ in ‘Exile’, and the final stanza ends in the
domain of the dead:
[11c] Esteeming
us
– as Exile -
Themself
– Admitted Home -
Through [gentle/curious -/
easy -
] Miracle of
Death -
The way
ourself
– must come -
(stanza 6)
Though the anaphor ‘ourself ’ appears to be in the speaker’s reality space, in fact it
is being projected from the perspective of the mental space of the dead with the
deictic words ‘must come’, as is ‘themself ’, with the word ‘admitted’. It is, however,
still governed by the ‘parent’ space of life now. By projecting the self from life into
the world of the dead, whether as the speaker’s reality space as in ‘Themself, should
come to me -’, or the projected mental space as in ‘The way ourself, must come -’,
Dickinson makes the world of the dead an integral part of our own.
Dickinson’s ‘Spider’ poem quoted in example (1) is one of those cases of ungram-
maticality people
characteristically point to, and it is true that under any autonomous
theory of language, Dickinson’s poetry is considered ungrammatical. However, the
explanatory power of cognitive grammar lies in its ability to account for what people
actually say, rather than creating arbitrary boundaries between what grammar can
and cannot generate. The seemingly anomalous use of the double
-self
anaphor in
‘Himself himself inform’ of example (1) can be explained by mental space theory.
In
the poem, the subject ‘Spider’ is projected onto the
-self
anaphor subject of the
conditional space set up by the ‘if ’ space-builder. The reflexive object is then preposed
before the verb (a typical Dickinson move) to get the line ‘Himself himself inform’.
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209
Given conceptual integration theory, Dickinson’s
-self
anaphors
are perfectly
regular. Her use of the
-self
anaphor in projected mental spaces has the effect of
making the self deictically present – grounding the self – in that space; not any self
but the self as subject/agent in the originating space.
But what are the consequences of Dickinson’s manipulation of the
-self
forms in
this as in other poems? The spider builds his web at night.
Only he can give shape
to or ‘in-form’ the nature of his projection of himself into his web as he builds it.
The grounding of the self in the space of the web is both strategic and physical:
whether it be the accoutrements of living – the ‘ruff of dame’ – or the accoutrements
of the dead – ‘the shroud of gnome’ – the spider is building his immortality. But it
has to occur through a
physical
projection of ‘himself ’ into his work – the web, his
physiognomy. If the spider’s web is to have any meaning, then the spider must project
itself as a deictic presence in the world. We need to project the self into the world
to change the world, to give it meaning, to create the web. This poem is not only a
poem about poetry, it is a poem about how poetry works in the world.
By projecting
-self
anaphors from the subject/agent in one mental space into its
counterpart in another, Dickinson creates for
us a world of possibilities, a world in
which things can happen and be made to happen through the agencies of the self.
Under a cognitive grammar account, we not only understand the principles under-
lying Dickinson’s grammar, we understand the way she uses the
-self
anaphor to
create a presence of self in the world – of the dead and of the living.
ISSUES TO CONSIDER
Freeman’s reading intersects in interesting ways with
other work on deixis and the
poetic voice, notable among which is Green’s study of deixis and the poetic persona
(Green 1992). Green concentrates on lyric poetry, and his analysis includes a very
useful typology of stylistic features (125–6) for this particular literary genre. It is also
worth following up Freeman’s other work on Emily Dickinson where she approaches
this poet’s complex writing from yet further cognitive-stylistic perspectives. See, for
example, M. Freeman (1995), (2000) and (2002).
More suggestions follow:
❏
Consider the sort of approach developed by Freeman here in relation to other
poetry which is often considered grammatically ‘deviant’. To what extent does
her approach work with writers other than Dickinson?
You can cross-refer to
texts reproduced in other units of the book, such as those by e e cummings (B2),
Edwin Morgan (D3) or even Gerard Manley Hopkins (B4 and D12).
❏
A major feature of Freeman’s cognitive stylistics is her emphasis on deixis. To
what extent is the ‘poetic voice’ delineated by deictic markers in other genres of
poetry? For example, does deixis feature significantly in ‘autobiographical poetry’
of the sort written by Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg or George Herbert?
Alternatively, does deixis feature in ‘dramatic monologue poetry’ such as that
found in the work of Robert Browning and John Donne,
in the sonnets of
Shakespeare and even in rap lyrics?
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E X T E N S I O N
✪
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