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501
Dickinson's poetic experiments, then, inevitably result in clashes between intellect and heart--and of course they neither can be nor should be resolved. After all, she reminds us, "Wonder--is nor precisely Knowing not--/A beautiful but bleak condition / he has not lived who has not felt--" (P 1331). Not only emotion-based wonder, but intellect-based skepticism--the driving force of scientific inquiry--is essential to being fully alive.....Certainty is no prize; it brings no transport, no experience of either joy or dread, but a shutting down of vital life forces of continual discovery and movement. In one of her most powerful poems, Dickinson makes her premise startlingly clear:
This World is not Conclusion.
A Species stands beyond--
Invisible, as Music--
But positive, as Sound--
(so soft upon the sunlight the act of evening falls)
It beckons, and it baffles--
Philosophy--don't know
And through a riddle, at the last--
Sagacity, must go--
(for we are only human and we can only hope)
To guess it, puzzles scholars--
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown --
(turning our attention, the bird of birds is gone)
Faith slips--and laughs, and rallies --
(the soul made out of clay)
Blushes, if any see--
Plucks at a twig of Evidence --
And asks a Vane, the way --
(upon a single wheel whose spoke a dizzy music make)
Much Gesture, from the Pulpit --
Strong Hallelujahs, roll --
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul--
(go safely, wear an open eye where the seeds of life are sewn,
and she touched me...and i feel allright)
(P 501)
(parenths are kvh additions)
We struggle to find closure, plucking at any "twig of Evidence" that comes our way, but closure eludes us, and not even narcotics can quell our need to keep on searching. That, of course, is what life is all about for Dickinson. The "nibbling at the soul," the "sweet skepticism of the heart," is what keeps one moving ahead: "
