Dickinson was a keen observer of her environment, dramatizing her reactions in poems. Her sense of melancholy informs her observations of light on winter afternoons.
Emily Dickinson’s poem #258 in Johnson, “There’s a certain Slant of light,” consists of four stanzas with the rime scheme ABCB. The speaker dramatizes the intense feeling of spiritual intuition that is brought on by the simple “Slant of light” on a winter afternoon. The light pouring in through the window tilts in a way that causes the speaker to experience of sense of spiritual melancholy.
First Stanza: “There's a certain Slant of light”
In the first stanza, the speaker claims that on winter afternoons, the light that shines through her window has a “certain Slant” to it that “oppresses, like the Heft / Of Cathedral Tunes.” Something as weightless as “light” feels heavy to the speaker.
The weight of “Catheral Tunes” would be quite profound, sound being heavier than light, but to the speaker that “certain Slant” causes the light to be as heavy as that heavy sound coming from the gigantic organs that deliver church music.
Because church music is meant to be uplifting, the speaker’s words become paradoxical: how can an inspirationally uplifting hymn be oppressive?
Second Stanza: “Heavenly Hurt, it gives us”
The profundity of the “Cathedral Tunes” causes the speaker to experience a “Heavenly Hurt.” She confirms, however, that the “hurt” leaves no scar, because it is inside; it is the soul that is affected by the oppression or “Heavenly Hurt.” The speaker says that the pain is on the inside “Where the meanings are.”
“Meaning” is very important to all human beings, whether they are yet aware of that fact or not. The speaker is keenly aware of the soul’s sensitivities to the “meanings” of physical things and events, and she is aware that they are internal— not external.
Third Stanza: “None may teach it—Any”
The speaker declares that no one can teach another how to become aware of the mystical attributes of the yearning for meaning. While “Despair” leads one in that direction, and the desire is universal, it comes to each one as simply as breathing. One’s spiritual development has to be right before one can entertain such divine cravings.
Fourth Stanza: “When it comes, the Landscape listens”
When the strong spiritual desire for understanding the nature of reality comes, everything seems to stop and listen. She speaker dramatizes that utter stillness by claiming, “Shadows—hold their breath.” The quietness implied by “shadows holding their breath” is astounding; it is a miracle of striking awareness, undetectable to most and unceasingly secure to but a few.
Then the speaker avows that when the sense of melancholy goes, when the “[h]eavenly hurt” lightens into understanding, it is “like the Distance / On the look of Death.” Of course, it is not death itself, but merely like the blank stare that none can fathom, save those who can distinguish that profound melancholy in the “certain Slant of light” on “Winter Afternoons—.”
Other Dickinson articles:
- December Poet – Emily Dickinson: Dickinson’s “Twas just this time, last year, I died”
- Dickinson’s “I heard a Fly buzz”: Mystical Adeptness
- Dickinson’s Summer: “I know a place where Summer strives”
- “A Bird came down the Walk”: Dickinson’s Frightened Beads
- Dickinson’s Spiritual Intoxication: “I taste a liquor never brewed”
- Dickinson’s Riddles: “It sifts from leaden sieves” and “I like to see it lap the miles”
- Looking Back from Eternity: Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death”
- The Nun of Amherst: Dickinson’s Spiritual Poetry
- Emily's Brain: Dickinson’s “The Brain is wider than the Sky”
