Is Precise Language (Always) Good? [Part III]
Emily Dickinson and Nothing
Here is Emily Dickinson:
By homely gift and hindered Words
The human heart is told
Of nothing－
”Nothing” is the force
That renovates the World－
I love this cryptic poem, which always leaves me with questions.
What is the homely gift to which she refers? The hindered words? What does it mean to be told of nothing? Why is “Nothing” the force that Renovates the World?
Homely means ugly, but it also means familiar, as in home-made, unpretentious. Hindered words could mean words that are imperfect, obstructed; but it could also mean subaltern Scriptures, alternative (rejected) drafts of the divine Word, heretical theological positions quashed by orthodox gatekeepers.
Expressed propositionally, the poem says that poetic and religious failure are the loci of poetic and religious discovery. “Nothing” is concealed by beautiful words and natural gifts, but to those who struggle, “Nothing” becomes a secret revelation. This secret revelation isn’t just a private, internal affair, though—it has the ability to renew the world.
But the poem isn’t a propositional statement—it’s possible to hear another resonance in the poem, namely, the toll that encountering Nothing takes on the heart, the toll that comes to those whose gifts are hindered. The poem may be saying that private pain is the basis for world-renovation, but it’s not pat. It says what it does. The word “Nothing” repeats, and in so doing, shifts meaning (from being an absence to a positive “force.”)
On the one hand, Dickinson’s poem is arguably hyper-precise, down to the syllable. On the other hand, the poem might say multiple things, depending on how you define its terms. We still don’t know who is giving the hindered words and who receiving them. Nor do we know what it means to be told of Nothing.
The virtue of the poem may rest in the tension it creates between intelligibility and elusiveness. It sounds like it makes sense—and yet if we reach too quickly for the sense—we miss the experience of Nothing. Our heads are satisfied, while our hearts remain untold—of Nothing.
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