Peter Riley wrote:
<snip>
Still waiting for the Dickinsonian Manuscript bombs.
<snip>
You suggested, if I remember, that Dickinson (who called herself 'Emily' and
often 'Emilie') probably wouldn't have minded the corruption of her texts.
Her response to the publication of *A narrow Fellow in the Grass* was
damning. It had made her seem to 'deceive'. It was 'robbed of me - defeated
too of the third line by the punctuation ... I had told you I did not print
...'
When the texts began to appear after her death, editing slid into
re-creation. With interesting results.
*Because I could not stop for Death -* was presented without its important
fourth stanza. A pity, since the poem divides neatly into three stanzas of
forward movement and three stanzas of stasis. So the structure was
destroyed.
When *I Heard a Fly buzz - when I died -* appeared, its transgressions were
normalised. The staginess of her deathbed scene was ameliorated by the
excision of both 'in the Room's. The effect of Death's intervention was
rationalised by changing '... Signed away / What portion of me be /
Assignable...' to '... Signed away / What portion of me I / Could make
assignable...' In both cases, tactful editing may have been what was
intended. However, what is *unconvincing* (and therefore altered by Mrs
Todd) is precisely the fault line on which the poem breaks apart in the
final stanza and from which it derives its power.
But perhaps this isn't what you meant, after all.
Christopher Walker
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