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.
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