One of the most intriguing sentences I have heard is from our Persian language text book in elementary school: "Someone approached a sage who was alone and said, 'Why are you sitting alone?' The sage pondered and replied, 'I became alone when you came.'" How can someone become alone when someone else arrives near? what was happening to the sage that was making him not alone?

The following piece from the American writer Henry David Thoreau helped me to get deeper in the beautiful sentence above. See for yourself how close Thoreau is to the very fountainheads of our culture and literature. Isn't this amazing?

"I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows."

This is why I love Thoreau so much and a clear reason why I feel so close to him.

Ali

Funny Americans

By Steven Scheer

Not long ago I read about the reaction of a person from the Czech Republic to a funny Americanism. No, the expression in question was not meant to be funny - or jocular - it's just that it drove this woman crazy. She was learning English, you see, and she was very puzzled when she came across this phrase: "I am going to come." Why was she so puzzled? Well, because the phrase seems to completely contradict itself. If you are "going," how on earth can you be "coming" at the same time?

What the poor woman didn't know yet is that the phrase simply means this: "I will come." It so happens that in English the verb "go" can be used as if it were an auxiliary (a help-word) for the future tense. You can use it anytime "will" would be appropriate. I am going to finish this little essay soon. I am going to write more of these in the future. See how that works?

By the way, here are some more "strange" Americanisms: we park on the driveway, and we drive on the parkway. Yes, "parkway" can also mean highway. And driveway is the name next to our houses where we park our cars in America.

These kinds of expressions are called colloquialisms. Every language has them. A colloquialism is an expression that makes no sense literally, but is well-known and presents no problems for those who know the language well. But sometimes it can drive the beginnings "nuts." Okay, that's another one: to drive you nuts means to make you feel like you are crazy.

It's late now - as I am finishing this piece - so I am going to go to bed and get some "shut eye" (that is, sleep). Talk to you all soon again.

On Learning English

By Steven Scheer

This is basically for students who are learning English as a second language. As most of you who visit this site know, I happen to be Hungarian by birth. I left my country just days before my 16th birthday, but did not immediately come to the United States. By the time my mother and I arrived here as "legal aliens," I was 18 going on 19. And that's when I began to learn English in earnest, albeit I did know a few phrases already. "I love you" and "thank you very much" were among them. When I tell that to Americans I have just met, they usually have a good laugh - though not at my expense. (By the way, I have been living here 51 years by now.)

In any case, learning a foreign language is not easy. And there are certain stages that you have to go through one stage at a time. First, if you are learning from a book, you understand words that are written down and you can see. Next, you understand the spoken word, words that you can hear, if you can have access to people speaking the language you are beginning to learn. Then you may be able to begin to write a few words of your own. The very last stage is when you can speak words - or some sentences in the new language.

The most difficult part during the first stage comes from the fact that at first you still think in/with your native language. So some formulations in the new language may simply strike you as nonsensical. And when you use the words of the new language with the ways of your native language, then your formulations in the new language will sound nonsensical - at first. Since I don't know Persian, I can't give you an example that would make perfect sense to you, but I can try to show you one anyway. Here's a typical English expression:

"I want you to have this."

The way my native language (Hungarian) works, if I were to translate that with absolute literacy into Hungarian, it would sound like it came from the mouth of a hopeless idiot - if it made any sense at all. Yet it's perfectly "natural" in English. The Hungarian equivalent (or translation) would be:

"I want to give this to you."

The problem with the English version is that "have" in Hungarian is always a matter of possession. But to say that the literal Hungarian translation would sound like: "I want you to possession this" is not even close to how bad the actual literal translation would sound in Hungarian. But you can begin to see that "have" in Hungarian functions very differently than in English. You say in English "I have to go" (where "have to" means "must"), but translated into Hungarian - literally - that would sound like "I possess to go," and that would (again) be nonsense.

I know I have taken a long time with this point, but it needed to be made to make clear the importance of not being able to think in the new language independently of your own - in the beginning. And getting to that other stage may take a long time - or a fairly long time. When I use English now, it's only English that I am thinking in. I am not even conscious of the fact that I also know Hungarian (just as well as English). Well, I can stop to think of that fact any time I want to, but my knowledge of Hungarian is simply not necessary for me to speak or write English anymore. My knowledge of English alone will suffice - that is, it will be enough. It's like English was my native language (it's like it was - that's actually not correct English, strictly speaking - the correct English version is this: "it's as if English were my native language" - but "it's like it was" is how many Americans would express the idea these days).

So, if you students find this kind of "talk" on my part helpful, I can do it again and again. Or could even answer questions you may have.

The Sarcastic Emily Dickinson

By Steven Scheer

Most people, it seems, want to be rich and famous. There is even a saying in America about celebrities. These are, some people claim, people who are being famous for being famous. Their fame seems to be undeserved, but they have it just the same. Emily Dickinson was a very private person. So private, in fact, that when she saw how a few poems of hers that did get published in her lifetime were edited (changed and made impersonal, in a way), she decided never to publish anything anymore. But - luckily for us - she kept her poems, and they did get published posthumously (after her death).

I use the word "sarcastic" in the title of this blog. But perhaps irony would have done as well. In any case, here is a little poem of hers that clearly goes against the grain of wanting to be - if not rich, at least famous, or - like some celebrities - to be known merely for being known. The poem is very short and simple:

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - Too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'll advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!

She wrote this way before our postmodern age of media where news travels lightning fast - especially bad news or scandal. Notice the irony in the third line? If "they" (the media, if you will) should find out that there are two of us who are not anybody famous, "they" are bound to report it to the world at large. And thereby hangs a tail, to use a Shakespearean phrase. Because if you get into the news for not being a well-known celebrity on the grounds that you and this other person are in that category, you immediately become known celebrities and, thus, you lose your status of being nobodies - that is, you lose your cherished privacy.

The second stanza indicates what, in Emily's view, is wrong with being well-known. But here the shift is from "they" to "us" (albeit indirectly). Those who want to be well-known seem to resemble frogs that croak all day - or through the month of June (why June? I don't really know) - to an "admiring Bog!"

Ah, a bog is a swampy piece of land, a good environment for frogs. But there isn't much else there except luxurious overgrowth of various plants or even weeds or the like. I don't know, I have never been to a bog. But I do know that the verb "bog" is not something nice. To be bogged down is to be stuck.

So, what's the final "meaning" of this poem. I am not entirely sure. And that's okay. I don't think Emily was/is (in her works she still "is") against being somebody in the sense of being an authentic person. But perhaps her poem is precisely about the loss of one's authentic self when one is merely well-known perhaps for simply wanting to be well-known. In the final analysis the poem seems to be a spontaneous little outburst against the possible loss of authentic self-hood due to, what, gossip? Possibly. Though the case of the frog in the second stanza also seems to indict bragging about oneself. My sainted mother used to warn me against that. She used to say, in my native Hungarian: "self-praise stinks." Ah, well.

Emily Dickinson's Poetry Online

By Steven Scheer

Emily Dickinson's poetry is available online right here:

http://www.bartleby.com/113/

It's interesting that they break her poetry into categories the way I used to when I taught her poems in my American literature classes in college. If you click on Index of First Lines, it seems that you get her complete poems - just click on any title and the poem should open up.

In my posts I have been giving the numbers used in the Standard Edition of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson. In this edition the poems are numbered, but there is an Index of first lines, too, at the back of the book. She didn't title her poems, so the words of the first lines are the only way to identify a given poem.

I am not entirely sure that the Bartleby online edition gives you the complete poems, but it seems to give you quite a few. As I recall, they say that they give you more than 500 of them, which is plenty for anyone to explore to begin with.

I hope this helps!

Emily Dickinson's Truth

By Steven Scheer

For that German iconoclast, Nietzsche, truth was a "moving army of metaphors." Most people think they know what it is, though it may be a question of claiming it in the way in which certain visitors to art galleries claim that they don't know much about art, but do recognize it when they see it. The word itself goes back to a root meaning something like "tree" or "wood." This means that the concept is so old that at the time the idea for truth has formed itself in the human mind, tree or wood seemed to be strong enough of a substance to be enduring enough to come to represent "truth." Stone would have done us better service, but this is neither here nor there. It so happens that few poets have dared to simply tell us what they think the truth is in no uncertain terms. But Emily Dickinson managed the feat with utter simplicity, yet with incredibly intriguing insight. So, here's her version (the poem is #1129 in the standard edition):

Tell the Truth but tell it slant -
Success in Circuit lies
Too Bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise.
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind,
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind -

Though Emily never mentions the sun explicitly, it is the underlying metaphor in the poem. For it is gazing into the sun too long that would make any of us blind, literally. So telling the truth "slant" means telling it in a roundabout way. That's what the word "circuit" also implies - but electricity comes to mind, too, especially since lightning is suddenly there a few lines later, and lightning is an electric phenomenon (as the American Benjamin Franklin discovered in an earlier time by flying a kite).

Lightning implies something that breaks the dark silence of untruth with a sudden flash the source of which is not the sun. But the sound of which - the thunder - along with its blazing onrush - can frighten children, until their fears are put to rest by an "explanation kind." It's interesting to note the relevance of this duality: a sudden light accompanied with a slight delay by the sound of thunder which is followed by an explanation that must unfold gradually since it comes with words that move forward one by one rather than all at once, like that lightning and the frightful sound that follows it. The "Truth" must indeed "dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind." If seeing is believing, looking at the Truth too long can deprive us of the very sight that we need to see it. A paradox? Perhaps. But one to which it is easy to assent.

Emily Dickinson on the Fate of Fulfilled Desires

By Steven Scheer

Have you ever been warned about what you wish for? On the grounds that your desire may get fulfilled? The warning is usually an implication of possible regret. That's not exactly what Emily Dickinson is up to in one of her most beautiful poems, but her idea hovers around that notion. Here, to begin with, is the poem (which is #579 in the standard edition):

I had been hungry all the Years -
My Noon had Come - to dine -
I trembling drew the Table near -
And touched the Curious Wine -

'Twas this on Tables I had seen -
When turning hungry, Home
I looked in Windows, for the Wealth
I could not hope - for Mine -

I did not know the ample Bread -
'Twas so unlike the Crumb
The Birds and I, had often shared
In Nature's - Dining Room -

The Plenty hurt me - 'twas so new -
Myself felt ill - and odd -
As Berry of a Mountain Bush -
Transplanted to the Road -

Nor was I hungry - so I found
That Hunger - was a way
Of Persons outside Windows -
The Entering - takes away.

The drift of this poem should be clear - a person may be desirous of something, something that she may have often seen and wanted, but when that something becomes available to her, the fulfillment of her desire seems to become anticlimactic. This paraphrase, though, isn't really all that satisfying.

What I find interesting is the fact that only two items are mentioned on the Table in the poem - bread and wine. It so happens that in Christianity bread and wine are sacramental in that they refer to the Last Supper - and later come to represent the body and blood of Christ, the "sacrificial lamb." Yet the poem is otherwise not religious. It seems to reflect a "mere" personal disappointment in having gotten to the point of a desire (for which Emily used the metaphor of "hunger") being fulfilled.

Notice the action of the poem as well. It seems that what Emily keeps desiring (for "years") is something that she sees displayed in a shop window on her way home. Then, without further explanation, she gets access to the "store" and finds herself "like a fish out of water." The final stanza has always been my favorite - I love the sound and sense of the last four lines. In fact, it would be a sin to try to paraphrase them, so I am simply going to repeat them - as they spell out the meaning of the entire poem:

Nor was I hungry - so I found
That Hunger - was a way
Of Persons outside Windows
The Entering - takes away.

Emily Dickinson's Preoccupation with her Own Death

By Steven Scheer

Emily Dickinson has a number of poems in which she imagines her own death - or its aftermath. One of these poems, a fairly long one, is the poem that the instructor reads to a class in "Sophie's Choice" (the movie). The class in question is for foreign students who are learning English after arriving in the United States (I myself attended a class like that after I came to the States in 1959 - ah, that was 51 years ago by now). In any case, in the poem in question, Emily envisions Death as a gentleman caller - that is, as a boy or man coming to pick up a girl or woman for a date. Well, let's read the poem first and then see what clarification we can throw on it. The poem in question is # 712 in the standard edition):

Because I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The Carriage held but just Ourselves -
And Immortality.

We slowly drove - He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For his Civility -

We passed the School, where Children stove
At Recess - in the Ring -
We passed the Fields of Grazing Grain -
We passed the Setting Sun -

Or rather - He passed Us -
The Dews drew quivering and chill -
For only Gossamer, my Gown -
My Tippet, only Tulle -

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling in the Ground -
The Roof was scarcely visible -
The Cornice - in the Ground -

Since then - 'tis Centuries - and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity.

First, some clarification about unusual vocabulary: "gossamer" is a light, transparent material; "tippet" is a kind of sleeve, and "tulle" is a kind of veil. These words all describe what a dead body would be clothed in. So, on with the meaning of the poem.

From the very beginning Emily knows that her gentleman caller is Death. In the 19th century, horse-drawn carriages would take the coffin to the cemetery. In a number of Emily's poems the words "Immortality" or "Eternity" refer to death - or what happens after death. And she usually capitalizes these words (as well as many others - for emphasis). So, as soon as the poem opens, Emily imagines herself dead and being carried towards the cemetery in a carriage by Death, in the role of a gentleman caller.

In the third stanza, once more, Emily spells out for us the fact that she is dead. She has, she says, put away her "labor" and "leisure" for Death's "Civility" - that it, out of courtesy for her "gentleman caller." It's interesting that she sees the children in the schoolyard "striving" at their play. Then come the grazing fields and the setting sun. Sunset is also commonly associated with death.

In the next stanza Emily says that - paradoxically - she feels cold - and the reason is the light and delicate and transparent material in which her dead body is clothed. Then she describes her own grave as something that they are passing, after a short pause, in their carriage. Clearly, the "Swelling of the Ground" whose "Roof" can hardly be seen and whose "Cornice" (usually the top of a building) is in the ground, is a description of her own grave, or burial site.

But the poem doesn't end there. In fact, Emily claims that centuries have passed since she has died - though the time seems to her hardly more than a single day - and she also clearly states that she recognized, from day one, that her carriage ride with Death, her gentleman caller, was moving "toward Eternity." Again, the word Eternity (with a capital "E") is a word Emily Dickinson frequently uses to designate death.

What this poem tells us beyond its simple words is clearly that Emily believed in a life after death. Do notice, though, that she doesn't "tell" us what that life is like; she only imagines it as something not at all unpleasant, since a girl or a woman would usually recognize a gentleman caller as something nice.

This is truly an interesting poem, and it's no wonder that Sophie in the movie should have become interested in the poet who wrote it.

Why Did Emily Dickinson Know So Much?

Sometimes people wonder why Emily Dickinson knew as much as she did. After all, she was a recluse who lived in a small town in the 19th century. There are few records of her ever leaving her home town. But she could think, and could give verbal embodiment to her thoughts. Experience isn't, after all, things that happen to us, but things that we make of whatever happens to us. And if not much happens to us externally, we have imaginations that can make up for external events. Emily Dickinson actually wrote some poems that relate to this issue. Here is one of my favorites (this is # 632 in the standard edition):

The Brain - is wider than the Sky -
For - put them side by side -
The one the other will contain
With ease - and You - beside -

The Brain is deeper than the sea -
For hold them - Blue for Blue -
The one the other will absorb -
As Sponges - Buckets - do -

The Brain is just the weight of God -
For - Heft them - Pound for Pound -
And they will differ - if they do -
As Syllable from Sound -

What's remarkable about this poem is the fact that it anticipates a lot of what neuroscience tells us about the human brain these days. Its capacities seem endless. So, yes, our brains can hold heaven and earth within their borders, as it were. The final stanza may seem like going overboard a bit. The brain equals the "weight" of God? Well, perhaps the very fact that people can believe in God makes the brain a remarkable part of our humanity.

Also, it's interesting that Emily Dickinson uses the word "brain" rather than "mind" in this instance. We can't accuse her, after the fact, of having been a materialist. On the contrary. Still, many contemporary neuroscientists claim that the mind is just the brain, although some will admit that it's more than the brain, even if it resides in it.

But what difference does any of this make? What's interesting is that with so few words a lonely woman in the 19th century should have come up with all the ideas that are clearly available to us in her poems. I, for one, have always found it interesting, too, that she used such unorthodox methods of capitalization and punctuation. I guess she was giving us a sign to the way her poems should be read - when to pause and when to think that a small idea should be looked upon as if it were bigger than itself.

Emily Dickinson's Gentle "Quarrel with God"!

In many of her poems Emily Dickinson touches on what I may term a kind of "quarrel with God." There are some poems of hers where this quarrel is not very gentle either, but the following is among the first you can find in her collected poems and it is a truly interesting case. So here's the poem in question (it's # 49 in the standard edition of her poetry):

I never lost as much but twice,
And that was in the sod.
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God!

Angels - twice descending
Reimbursed my store -
Burglar! Banker - Father!

I am poor once more!

It is clear that a little reading between the lines tells us what Emily Dickinson is doing in this poem. It seems that twice before the present occasion she has lost someone to death. And so twice before she turned to God for consolation over her loss. And it seems that twice before she did receive the consolation she was looking for. This is what's going on in the first six lines. Then come the final two lines, and that's where the poem becomes really interesting.

Notice how at first Emily accuses God of being a burglar, a thief, someone who yet again "stole" a loved one from Emily. She never identifies the ones she has lost to death, just mentions the fact. But having accused God of being a thief, she immediately changes her tune and calls God a "banker." This metaphor needs a bit of elucidation. What do we do in banks? We put our money in there for safekeeping. So if the loved one Emily lost now has been banked by God, as it were, that person is now seen in the poem as being in God's keeping. And then, softly, Emily calls God "Father" for the third time. It's quite a quick run-down from anger to reconciliation. We can assume that once more God has sent Emily "angels" to "reimburse" her "store."

As I said in my first blog here, Emily Dickinson's poetry always makes us think. Her simple language covers deep thoughts. And gives us great insights into the human condition.

The Mischievous Emily Dickinson

By Steven Scheer

A student friend of mine from Russia recently sent to me a map by e mail. It showed his family's route since his birth--from his native Kamchatka to the Middle East four years ago, then on April 1 to Washington state as new immigrants." When I asked him if he was in fact born on Kamchatka I found myself wondering if he understood how we use the prepositions in and on for designating a place of birth. (His English from a year’s exchange study in the US is good but he’s still learning.) As soon as I began to explain, I wondered how many Americans understood the rules, or if there were rules?

Since the rules are not obvious, even to me, who taught English at several universities, how do Americans, even children, learn them?

In English we say a person is born ‘in’ Russia, but born ‘on’ Kamchatka (Russia’s 700 mile long, volcano and geyser studded teardrop peninsula that forms much of its Pacific coastline). Wouldn’t we probably say, born ‘in’ Greenland? But ‘on’ Greenland doesn’t sound too strange to be acceptable. Definitely we say, born ‘in’ Florida. So why ‘on’for Kamchatka? Not because it is a peninsula or part of a larger country. Florida is both.

And how does an English speaker know to say ‘on’ Kamchatka? Most have never heard of Kamchatka. I should test a few people to find out if they automatically say ‘on’ Kamchatka and whether it depends on their knowledge of the geography.

Now that I wonder at the complications of my own language I think of other examples: Born ‘on’ the Great Plains. Born ‘in’ Kansas (which is part of the Great Plains). And what about Heaven? Most people want to continue their lives ‘in’ Heaven.

Here’s the probable solution and general principle: a person is always born in a political entity—city, state, country. Same for places without a physical location on a map—Heaven, Dreamland, Hell, Fantasy Land.

However, a person is born ‘on’ a geographical feature. Not always. We usually say, ‘She was born in Europe or Asia or South America—all geographical rather than political identities. And yet, we were all born ‘on’ earth, an even larger geographical entity--on the moon or Mars.

The moral of the story: all languages have principles and all principles have exceptions, and even children can learn both.

I Dream a World
by Langton Hughes

I dream a world where man
No other man will scorn,
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its paths adorn.
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom's way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,
Where wretchedness will hang its head
And joy, like a pearl,
Attends the needs of all mankind--
Of such I dream, my world!

And I dream a class where we improve our English by the words of great poets and writers. My dear friend, Steven Scheer, is here to help me realize such a dream.

My association with my friend . . .

Dear Readers and Students of English:

My association with my friend, Ali, goes back quite a few years by now - in fact, I have actually lost count. We began a working friendship when Ali read a little handout of mine on my literary website about Henry David Thoreau's Walden. He then asked me to help him with some difficult passages in the original, because he was making a translation of this American masterpiece into Persian. From then on a friendship ensued. We have worked together on a number of different projects, not the least of which is Ali's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. His English translation of this work has now been published in Iran with an introduction that I wrote for the book myself.

This is my first post here. And it's a kind of introduction. I aim to write more posts here in the future, both about the vicissitudes of learning English, and about aspects of literature - English and American and, of course, literature in other languages as well. I hope this blog will have many readers in due course, and I hope it will be a success.

Dr. Steven C. Scheer