I DIED FOR BEAUTY (1862) 449

My Business is Circumference- What did Dickinson mean by "circumference"· In a late letter, Dickinson writes, "The Bible dealt with the Center, not with the Circumference." · Earlier, in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (2 July 1862), she had said, "My Business is Circumference."

Definitions · Circumference: Derived from the Latin root meaning "to carry or go around," this word's emphasis is on the sense of encompassing.

· Albert Gelpi, in Emily Dickinson: The Mind of the Poet: "Emily Dickinson's most frequent metaphor for ecstasy was Circumference. Each of the negotiations which consciousness conducted between the me and the not me established a circumference. . . . The circle had long been a symbol for the spirit in activity" (121).

· Circumference is a double metaphor, signifying both extension and limit.

· Typically, Dickinson connected this concept with feelings of awe and the sublime; the sublime has an element of fear or terror mingled with aesthetic perception

Circumference is the keyword to Dickinson's sailing around her subjects of inquiry, illuminating them from different points of view and angles, approaching them through opposites, unbalancing the seemingly safe ground of terminologies and definitions. The ultimate aim of these processes is to penetrate to a somewhere of meaning, have meanings condensed, distilled, and evaporated. Dickinson bids and bends language, forcing silence to speak. She hurricanes her mind in search of truth, which she "tells slant" (1129)

Circumference here : the farthest limit of what can behumanly known, in this case, about the meaning of death. Death of loved ones : soldiers, townsfolk, relatives , her room overlooked a graveyard…death of cousin ‘gave way to a fixed melancholy’ mourning everpresent : etiquette for mourning applied-constant awareness of imminence of death.

SPEAKER : assertive I communicates through voice, words and builds a platonic relationship. met and talked questioned implies complicity, companionship. male

speaker implied in ‘brethren’ and ‘kinsmen’

SETTING :The poet fantasises about death; laid out in a tomb – a mausoleum with separate rooms – even in death she envisions isolation. Archetypically, tombs can represent feminine or concave images like wombs, ponds, wells….receptive enclosures promising nurturing and security.

Rooms-enclosures-freedom-protection. Euphemistic presentation of tomb/death (house-like in Because)

Implication of an elite setting : mausoleum for the distinguished, wealthy.

Met at Night : secretive, dark, gothic element introduced.

Somewhat horrifying concept of adjusting in tomb and speaking to neighbour until death overcomes at last.

—,” she asks the reader to accept the fiction that the speaker has already died. Thus,although “the poem’s voice tells us what silencesvoice, it is still talking, is after its end relating its end” (Cameron,Lyric Time,209–210)

TRUTH AND BEAUTY.

Begins with a declaration ‘I died for Beauty’ tells story, uses dialogue, and reaches climactic point. Opposition begins in line 1 with ‘but’ :

No reason given for HOW they died or WHY they chose this path.

Susan Sontag suggests:

Unfortunately, moral beauty in art, like physical beauty in a person, is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or un-timeliness. -

Dickinson was fascinated by John Keats so it is very likely she was influenced by his Ode to a Grecian Urn – a celebration of beauty and our desperate attempts to pursue it.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

The engraving on the urn depicts a stripling athlete pursuing a beautiful nude maiden – an example of impossible dreams – the youth has been chasing her for thousands of year without success. Yet it is the striving after beauty that makes us better human beings.

William Shakespeare’s monody (personal lament) “The Phoenix and theTurtle,” which concludes: “Truth may seem, butcannot be: / Beauty brag, but ’tis not she; Truth and beauty buried be.”

‘for’ as a result of, or in pursuit of ? Links universal ideals beauty, truth, immortality.

Both of these ideals occupy an exalted place inDickinson’s universe; both are eternal and exempt from analys is . Thus, she s tates of beauty in Fr654: “Beauty be not caused—It is—/ Chase i t ,and i t ceases—/ Chase i t not , and i t abides—.”

Sounds of B and T continues through stanzas 1 and 2 uniting two ideals.

Reads as sequel ? InFr 797, she dec lares: “The Definition of Beautyis/ That Definition is none—/ Of Heaven, eas ingAnalys is , / S ince Heaven and He are one.” And inFr 1515, she says, “Estranged f rom Beauty—nonecan be—/ For Beauty is Infinity—.” As for Truth,“Truth—is as o ld as God—/ His Twin identity / And wi l l endure as long as He/ A Co-Eternity ,”she says in Fr 795; and in Fr 1495, “But Truth,out lasts the Sun—.” Indeed, Truth is so br i l l iant that i t “must dazzle gradual ly or every man bebl ind” (Fr 1263)Dialogue : offering equality, comfort, complicity, means of communication between (living) humans implies speaker’s surprised awareness of his new state of being. Communication through voice-lips power of the word silenced by time and nature. Stasus

Question is softly posed : ambiguous subject at first. The word “failure” has a multiplicity of possible meanings in this context. Their “failure” is life’s ultimate defeat - death. Alternatively “failure” represents the futility of all human endeavour for good; it results in martyrdom. “Failure” is also a personal stumbling, an imperfection or shortcoming. Both seem to accept that their deaths are “failures”.

religious connotation : martyrdom, -dying in pursuance of a good cause-heroes. Themself are One, brethren.

As in “a narrow fellow in the grass” Dickinson assumes a masculine voice or persona indicated in “brethren”, and “kinsmen”.

Metapoetic element : beauty and truth revealed through art. Poet creates art, beauty, truth, and poetry may live on, while artist does not : name is covered by moss-living nature but invasive, unaesthetic plant. Need for posterity, (understated) fear of anonymity and mortality, and loss of identity becomes sharper when final word ‘names’ surprises with slant rhyme . NB : only perfect rhymes in Tomb and Room : S1 equating these two dimensions through euphemism.