F 141
She died at play –
Gambolled away
Her lease of spotted hours,
Then sank as gaily as a Turk
Opon a Couch of flowers –
Her ghost strolled softly o’er the hill –
Yesterday, and Today –
Her vestaments as the silver fleece –
Her countenance as spray –
She died at play –
Gambolled away
Her lease of spotted hours,
Then sank as gaily as a Turk
Opon a Couch of flowers –
Her ghost strolled softly o’er the hill –
Yesterday, and Today –
Her vestaments as the silver fleece –
Her countenance as spray –
Now, a song. "Live and Die" by the Avett Brothers. Listen closely (and enjoy, hopefully!), and pay attention to the lyrics:
This song is part of an album that stemmed from the group's dealing with a tragedy that hit close to home: Bob Crawford, the bassist, found out that his 2-year old daughter Hallie, developed a brain tumor (if you want to read more, the full article is here and there's a short interview with the band here). This song is one of many that addresses the delicate line between life and death - and how we deal with the possibility of it hitting so close to home, when we least expect it. Keep this in mind in light of the poem and the song lyrics (do we simply "fear like a habit"?).
F 141: Ghosts of Childhoods Past
Dickinson’s poem is delightfully light and cheery, painting a peaceful picture of the passing away of the deceased subject of the poem. The first line is stunningly and deceptively simple: “She died at play—”. Interestingly, play is often depicted in Freud’s psychoanalytic work as a protective mechanism against the detrimental impact of trauma on the mind. Literary critic Stephen Tapscott summarizes, revealing, “According to Freud, this tendency of the psyche to protect itself from the effects of trauma by repeating the episode in dream or in vision can also be the motive more play. Children can neutralize their fears about traumatic events by repeating them in play, translating them into familiar, repetitive, non-threatening forms” (42). This concept is emphasized throughout the poem; and the language of levity and brightness that Dickinson uses to describe the ghost softens the blow that the individual is, in fact, dead. Her life involved a “lease of spotted hours” that she “Gambolled away.” The OED defines “gambol” quite simply: “to frolic.” Springy and light, the term is cheerful and vivacious, the exact opposite of the normal, Gothic and dark portrayal of one’s demise.
Unlike the other Dickinson poems we will examine, F 141 works around the tragedy of the death playfully, but still deals with the loss. The poem combines “play and poetry [that] can make pleasurable events from traumatic events without contradicting the pain” (Tapscott 42). The empathy felt for the deceased is balanced by the knowledge that she died happily, seemingly without undergoing any pain . There is pleasure in this knowledge, and it transforms the poem from one of grief and loss into one of a delightful memory. The speaker sees the ghost of the girl as she "strolled softly o'er the hill - / Yesterday, and Today." The descriptive language Dickinson employs moves away from portraying the death in anything but a graceful, delicate manner. The ghost moves "softly" and is seen both "Yesterday" and "Today," disrupting the traditional passage of time as she reappears, reasserting and reaffirming her absence with her faint presence.
In The Avett Brother's song, the first few stanzas go as follows:
All it will take is
just one moment and
you can say goodbye to
how we had it planned
Fear like a habit,
run like a rabbit out and away.
Through the screen door
to the unknown.
And I want to love you and more.
I want to find you and more.
Where do you reside
When you hide? How can I find you?
I find the tone of both the poem and the song to be interestingly similar. The repetition of the third stanza above as the harmony is a traditional move in a song, but also can be perceived as a working through and dealing with a traumatic event. The first few lines of the song convey this sense of loss: "All it will take is / just one moment and /you can say goodbye to / how we had it planned." Like F 141, there is no fatal, jarring blow that delivers the news of the death. It is painted as "one moment" in the song, a "lease of spotted hours" in the poem. They are more so exemplary of a "psycho-linguistic dynamic of grief or of playfulness - the summoning with words of a presence out of an absence" (Tapscott 44). The upbeat tone of these two pieces, both in language and in tone, breathe life into the grieving process. This vivacity transforms these linguistic objects into something more than a lament for the dead. Dickinson, like The Avett Brothers, reminds us of the absence by carefully, softly, and reconstructing the memory of the dead without the constricts of time or place. The song searches for this ghost ("I want to find you and more. / Where do you reside / When you hide? How can I find you?"), holding onto the memory of the one lost, but in a playful way: the light tune of the song makes it seem like a game of hide-and-seek, rather than of a search for one who has died.
The intermixing of the playful and the tragic form a bittersweet tribute to the dead, and allow the reader to observe and feel the sadness of the passing without too deep or dark of an emotional link. The ghost in F 141 lands "gaily" on "a Couch of flowers," in such a way that there is no jarring signal that the life has ceased within her. It is reminiscent of a little girl twirling and running in her backyard, putting flowers in her hair, and delighting in the sheer joy of being outdoors. This is precisely the "non-threatening" and "familiar" formula that Tapscott described (above). By describing both "Yesterday, and Today," and depicting a death without fully cohering or reassembling the full trauma, both the poem and the song work to disconnect the agony and swift horror of the traumatic death by utilizing language and structure of play, bringing the past childhoods of those in the narrative and outside of the narrative to the surface, made all the more effective through the familiarity and comfort of recognition on the part of the reader. We see ourselves as children, walking over the hill, just as we recall playing hide-and-go seek with our friends. The poignancy and sadness that exists in the content is tempered by the play itself, and it makes this working through and reading an experience of trauma through pleasure, rather than that of pain.