Emily Dickinson DID Do It Too

(Note: This post will only look right on the blog itself.  Formatting issues require it look silly as get-all on a white screen.)

In a comment on my earlier post, Loki wonders whether "a fourth underline [is] transcribed with an emoticon."  I replied:

I believe four underlines is smiley-face, five winking-smiley-face. Thus, your properly transcribed Emily Dickinson poem looks like this:

Only what followed the colon wasn't what your properly transcribed Emily Dickinson poem would look like, since it seems no underlines are allowed in comments.  They are, however, visible in posts.  So HERE NOW is what your properly transcribed Emily Dickinson poem would look like:

Because I could not stop for DEATH:)
HE kindly stopped for ME—
The Carriage held but just OURSELVES—
And IMMORTALITY

We slowly drove—HE knew no HASTE
And I had put away
My LABOR and my leisure too
For His CIVILITY—

We passed the SCHOOL, where Children STROVE
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the SETTING SUN—

Or rather—HE passed US—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For ONLY Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet—ONLY Tulle—

We paused before a HOUSE that SEEMED
A SWELLING ;) of the Ground—
The Roof was SCARCELY visible—
The Cornice—IN THE GROUND—

Since then—'tis Centuries—AND YET
Feels SHORTER than the DAY
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward ETERNITY :)

Maybe I'm a stickler for accuracy, but I find this transcription far more charming than one you find in textbooks.  I feel CLOSER to the original text, like I'm holding the very manuscript itself in my hands.  Maybe I could've been a paleographer after all ...

Comments

[Rich Puchalsky]

I think that these are the wrong emoticons, though. Smiley faces don't indicates extra emphasis. The right emoticons should be something like :-0 and 8~0 for four and five underlines, perhaps.

[Ray Davis]

What Rich said. 8O !! Emily Dickinson don't need NO emoticons.

I used to think that the greatest alternate history emoticon would be:

I hate all kings and the thrones that they sit on
From the hector of France to the cully of Britain. :)

After considering the tendency of email to veer toward speech, now I incline toward:

But people just don't do such things. :)

Or maybe:

And I pray solemnly that the slayer, whoever he is, whether he alone is guilty or he has partners, may, in the horrible way he deserves, wear out his unblest life. And for myself I pray that if he should, with my knowledge, become a resident of my house, I may suffer the same things which I have just called down on others. :)

[Ray Davis]

By the way, I remember writing some letters by hand, and underlining is an easy, swift, and natural gesture which, alas, has no keyboard equivalent.

(For scholarly purposes I should scan that most excellent postcard from the most eloquent Martha Soukup which read something like, as I recall,

DON'T GAMBLE WITH LIFE!!

with an assortment of underlines and text-sizes not reproducible in this comment box according to the preview.)

[SEK]

Damn it, Ray, you're a NATIONAL TREASURE.

That said, I don't think there's much a difference between "natural [handwritten] gestures" and "keyboard equivalents," esp. not among those of us who type 120 wpm. What I mean is, yes, I think there's a relation between gestural ease and expression, I just don't see the typed equivalent as being any more onerous than the handwritten. I can italicize in HTML in a fraction of the time it'd take me to underline something by hand; so if you're correct, I think you'd need to take into account the damn-near-infinite hours most of us have spent hands-to-keyboard, as I think it nullifies swift naturality of pen-to-pad.

[Sisyphus]

My god, you can make those little i-with-bracket-things more quickly than a quick stab across the page? 120 wpm?

You miss, of course, the emotional satisfaction of working out one's own anger and frustration in lining through the paper so hard it cuts. Natural, artificial --- typing, handwriting. Maybe you're a cyborg.

...(muses to self) that would explain so much, wouldn't it? so much...

[bitchphd]

Basically what you're saying is that ED was an incredibly melodramatic emo teenager.

Great.

[Rich Puchalsky]

"Maybe you're a cyborg."

I once wrote a poem in which Scott figured as a cyborg.

[SEK]

Maybe you're a cyborg...(muses to self) that would explain so much, wouldn't it? so much...

Like what, eh? My uncanny ability to write a dissertation in five years? Typing speed's irrelevant when you ain't got anything of importance to say.

That said, it's interesting how the act of typing mediates our emotional interface with words. You're correct that there's no stabbing-of-pages when typing -- there is, however, a figural stabbing, such that we're always at one remove from our emotional outbursts in type. You'd think this would alter for the better the quality of written interaction, but alas, we're no more temperate now -- perhaps even less so -- than in the halcyon days of the handwritten word.

Basically what you're saying is that ED was an incredibly melodramatic emo teenager.

Here and that Henry James fool, yes, most certainly.

Rich, how you manage to remember things you wrote last year amazes me; I can hardly remember things I wrote last week -- I sit there, shocked and embarrassed, every time I edit.

[eb]

These last couple of posts are reminding me that I've been meaning to read this book for quite a while. A quick glance suggests there's nothing in there about underlining, though.

[Rich Puchalsky]

"Rich, how you manage to remember things you wrote last year amazes me; I can hardly remember things I wrote last week -- I sit there, shocked and embarrassed, every time I edit."

One's own bad poetry is the best mnemonic. Good poetry is supposed to achieve its effects without the use of purely personal associations that other people won't get. Bad poetry accumulates lines that spark some strong association in the mind of the writer, even though they don't work for anyone else.

In the case of this particular poem, it's all about scorning one's youth / past, which is something that you more or less continually do (as above, where you scorn what you wrote last week, and hardly remember it, as if you've just turned up your junior high school diary or something). Since the poem is about nostalgia, of course it re-presents itself. (Not that I'd remember where it is or anything. But Google on acephalous cyborg youth turns it up as the first hit.)

[Loki]

This is nice. I'll have to use this system when I turn in my next report to my supervisor. And I agree that the type of emoticon used should definitely be situation-specific (in a poem about death, I might use the frowny face).