WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course Literature, and today 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:06.000 we're gonna talk about this lady: Emily Dickinson. 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:08.000 By the way, we don't have a book today because she's on my Nook. 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:10.000 Emily Dickinson was a great 19th century American poet who-- 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:12.000 Mr. Green, Mr. Green, I already know everything about her: 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:15.000 she was a recluse, and you can sing all of her poems 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:17.000 to the tune of "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke," like 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:21.000 "Because I could not stop for Death --/He kindly stopped for me--" 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:23.000 Stop, Me From the Past, you cannot sing. 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:26.000 Fortunately, your inability to sing does insulate us from copyright claims, 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:30.000 because I for one did not recognize that as "If I Could Buy the World a Coke." 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:33.000 Also Dickinson's meter is more complicated than you're making it out to be, 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:36.000 but yes, you could sing most of her poems to "If I Could Buy the World a Coke," 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:38.000 also "Yellow Rose of Texas." 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:41.000 More importantly, these poems have a lot to say about the relationship between 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:44.000 death and life, between faith and doubt, between the power of God 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:47.000 and the power of individuals, so let's focus on that, 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:49.000 because it actually might change your life and stuff. 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:58.000 [intro music] 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:01.000 So Joyce Carol Oates once called Emily Dickinson "The most paradoxical 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:05.000 of poets; the very poet of paradox," and this can really frustrate students 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:09.000 and literary critics alike, particularly when Dickinson seems to contradict herself 00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:11.000 within a single poem. 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:12.000 Take, for example, this bit of light verse. 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:18.000 "'Faith' is a fine invention when gentlemen can see --/But microscopes are prudent in an emergency." 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:21.000 So this seems like a pretty pro-science, anti-religion poem, right? 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:24.000 I mean, 'faith' is put in quotation marks and called 'an invention.' 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:28.000 But she also implies the possibility of a different and valuable kind of sight 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:34.000 only available to some people at some times: "WHEN gentlemen CAN see." 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:36.000 And this is where it becomes important to look at how Dickinson, 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:38.000 for lack of a better phrase, sees sight. 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:42.000 Dickinson often imagines seeing as a form of power, so much so that seeing, 00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:47.000 not just literal sight, but also the ability to witness and observe and understand, 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:49.000 becomes the central expression of the self. 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:53.000 Like her famous poem that begins "I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died" ends with the line 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:57.000 "I could not see to see," associating the lack of sight with death itself. 00:01:57.000 --> 00:02:02.000 Dickinson also often played with the fact that this 'I' and this 'eye' sound the same, 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:08.000 her poem beginning "Before I got my eye put out" is about death for instance, not just monocularization. 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:13.000 In that poem, she clearly associates sight not just with the power to observe but with ownership; 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:21.000 she writes "But were it told to me, Today,/That I might have the Sky/For mine, I tell you that my Heart/Would split, for size of me – 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:25.000 The Meadows – mine –/The Mountains – mine –" 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:30.000 Of course in 19th century America, the idea that an I, possibly a female I, 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:34.000 could own the mountains, the meadows, and the sky, was a little bit radical, 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:38.000 I mean all that stuff was supposed to be under the control of God, not any human being who could see it. 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:41.000 All of this is made even more complex and interesting by the fact that 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:46.000 Dickinson's poems sounded like hymns, and throughout her life you could see her faith waxing and waning 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:50.000 in her poetry. In short, I don't think you can make easy conclusions about microscopes and faith 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:53.000 in Dickinson's poetry, but that's precisely what's so important about it. 00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:56.000 Dickinson's work reflects a conflicted American worldview, I mean, 00:02:56.000 --> 00:03:01.000 we're a nation of exceptional individuals who believe that we control our success and our happiness, 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:05.000 but we are also more likely to profess a belief in an omnipotent God 00:03:05.000 --> 00:03:07.000 than people in any other industrialized nation. 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:11.000 All right, I know you guys want all the creepy, macabre details of Dickinson's biography, 00:03:11.000 --> 00:03:12.000 so let's go to the Thought Bubble. 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:17.000 So Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 to a prominent family - her father became a US Congressman - 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:19.000 and lived her whole life in Massachusetts. 00:03:19.000 --> 00:03:24.000 She was haunted by what she called "The Menace of Death" throughout her life, although, 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:25.000 then again, who isn't? 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:32.000 Between 1858 and 1865, Dickinson wrote nearly 800 poems, but she also became increasingly 00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:35.000 confined to her home in those years, and eventually rarely left her room: 00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:39.000 she usually talked to visitors from the other side of a closed door 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:43.000 and didn't even leave her room when her father's funeral took place downstairs. 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:45.000 Dickinson published fewer than a dozen poems in her lifetime, in fact, 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:50.000 no one knew that she'd been nearly so prolific until her sister discovered more than 1800 poems 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:52.000 after Emily's death in 1886. 00:03:53.000 --> 00:03:56.000 Dickinson was considered an eccentric in Amherst, and known locally 00:03:56.000 --> 00:04:00.000 for only wearing white when she was spotted outside the home, in fact, 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:04.000 her only surviving article of clothing is a white cotton dress. 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:10.000 This image of a pale wraith clad all in white has become a symbol of the reclusive, brilliant poet, 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:16.000 but it's worth noting that for Dickinson, white was not the color of innocence or purity or ghosts, 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:19.000 it was the color of passion and intensity. 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:24.000 "Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?/Then crouch within the door—" she once wrote. 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:29.000 She called red, the color most associated with passion, "Fire's common tint." 00:04:29.000 --> 00:04:35.000 For Dickinson, the real, true, rich life of a soul, even if it was physically sheltered, 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:37.000 burned white-hot. Thanks Thought Bubble. 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:39.000 Oh, it's time for the open letter? 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:43.000 An open letter to the color white. 00:04:43.000 --> 00:04:46.000 But first let's see what's in the secret compartment today! 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:50.000 Oh, it's a Dalek. Stan, more flagrant pandering to the Whovians. 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:55.000 Dear White, you're a complicated and symbolic -- AAGH! Dalek!... they're not very bright. 00:04:55.000 --> 00:04:58.000 So White, you're often associated with purity, like wedding dresses, 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:03.000 you can symbolize Heaven, or the creepy, infinite Nowhere where certain parts of Harry Potter 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:05.000 and all of Crash Course Humanities take place, 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:11.000 but many 19th century writers inverted those associations, like Melville's famous great white wall of whale, 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:14.000 the terrifying blankness of nature. And to Dickinson, White, 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:16.000 you were the color of passion and intensity. 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:19.000 This reminds us that our symbolic relationships aren't fixed; 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:22.000 we're creating them as we go, communally. I mean other than Daleks, 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:26.000 which are universally terrifying no matter what color they come in. Best wishes, John Green. 00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:30.000 Okay, let's take a close look at a poem we've already mentioned, sometimes called Poem 465, 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:33.000 and sometimes known by its first line, "I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died." 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:37.000 Speaking of which, here in the studio we've had a genuine plague of flies in the last few weeks, 00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:41.000 I mean, in the lights up there, there are thousands of fly carcasses. 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:44.000 Okay, let's put aside the fly carcasses and read a poem together. About flies. 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:53.000 "I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - The Stillness in the RoomWas like the Stillness in the Air -Between the Heaves of Storm - 00:05:53.000 --> 00:06:03.000 The Eyes around - had wrung them dry - And Breaths were gathering firmFor that last Onset - when the KingBe witnessed - in the Room - 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:11.000 I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away What portions of me beAssignable - and then it wasThere interposed a Fly - 00:06:11.000 --> 00:06:20.000 With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz - Between the light - and me -And then the Windows failed - and thenI could not see to see -" 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:22.000 Okay first, let's talk about the dashes. 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:26.000 Some critics think that Dickinson's use of dashes as punctuation is just eccentric handwriting 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:30.000 or else an accident -- I mean they point out that Dickinson also used similar dashes, 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:34.000 for instance, in her cake recipes -- others argue that the use of dashes are a typographical attempt 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:38.000 to symbolize the way the mind works, or that the dash is used as a punctuation 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:41.000 stronger than a comma but weaker than a period. 00:06:41.000 --> 00:06:43.000 Regardless though, the appearance of a dash at the end of this poem, 00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:46.000 at the moment of death, is a very interesting choice. 00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:49.000 So in this poem, the speaker is dying, or I guess has died, 00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:52.000 in a still room surrounded by loved ones. 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:56.000 A will is signed, and then the Fly, with Blue, uncertain, stumbling Buzz 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:58.000 comes between the light and the speaker. 00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:02.000 This makes it so the narrator cannot see to see, and by now, you know what happens 00:07:02.000 --> 00:07:05.000 in Dickinson poems when people can't see: they're dead. 00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:07.000 So Dickinson was just a smidge obsessed with death, which means that she got to 00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:12.000 imagine death in a lot of different ways: as a suitor, as a gentle guide, but here, 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:14.000 Death is a buzzing fly. 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:17.000 So everyone in the room is awaiting the arrival of the King, 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:21.000 which, before Elvis took over the title in 1958, was a reference to God. 00:07:21.000 --> 00:07:23.000 But instead of the quiet, peaceful arrival of God they're expecting, 00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:29.000 it's a dirty little fly with uncertain, stumbling buzz that gets between the narrator and the light. 00:07:29.000 --> 00:07:34.000 So this poem features Dickinson at her most formal - the lines are very iambic: 00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:38.000 I a buzz - I - The ness the , 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:42.000 and they alternate between tetrameter (four feet), and triameter (three feet). 00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:45.000 The rhyme scheme throughout the poem is ABCB, which means the first line ends with 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:50.000 one sound, the second line with yet another, the third line, with another still, 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:52.000 and then the fourth line rhymes with the second line. 00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:58.000 But Dickinson employs her famous slant rhymes here, like in the first stanza 'Room' is matched with 'Storm,' 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:01.000 in the second, 'be' with 'Fly.' These words sort of 00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:04.000 almost rhyme, like 'Room' and 'Storm' both end in 'm' sounds, 00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:07.000 'be' and 'Fly' both end in hard vowel sounds, 00:08:07.000 --> 00:08:10.000 but they don't rhyme, and this discomforting lack of closure 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:14.000 is a hallmark of Dickinson's poetry, also of most of my romantic relationships. 00:08:14.000 --> 00:08:18.000 Only in the final stanza, when Death comes, do we get a full rhyme: 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:22.000 'me,' the 'I,' is rhymed with 'see,' the thing the eye can no longer do. 00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:25.000 So is this a peaceful death? Hardly, I mean, the stillness in the room 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:30.000 is broken by the buzzing fly, and yet with that final full rhyme, Dickinson offers us 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:33.000 a bit of peace and closure that we didn't get in the first two stanzas. 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:37.000 To return to an old theme, even though we live in an image-drenched culture, this is a good reminder 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:41.000 that language is made out of words. And it might sound like over-reading to you 00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:44.000 to say that a full rhyme brings peace, but I'm reminded of the story of Mozart's children 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:48.000 playing a series of unfinished scales in order to taunt their father, who would eventually 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:50.000 have to go to the piano and finish them. 00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:53.000 Poetry isn't just a series of images, it's rhythmic, and it's metric, 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:57.000 and we crave the closure of a good rhyme at the end of a poem. 00:08:57.000 --> 00:08:59.000 That's why sonnets end with couplets. 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:04.000 Dickinson gives us that closure. And then she gives us a José Saramago-ing dash! 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:06.000 The poet of paradox. Still haunting us. 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:10.000 Thanks for watching our Crash Course Literature mini-series, next week we begin a year 00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:12.000 of learning about US History together. 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:18.000 Now begins the complaining by non-Americans 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:22.000 that we're shallow and self-interested and call ourselves Americans even though in fact 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:25.000 this is America, but my friends even if you don't live here, 00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:29.000 the history of the United States matters to you, because we're always meddling in your affairs. 00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:31.000 Thanks for watching! See you next week. 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:33.000 Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller, 00:09:33.000 --> 00:09:35.000 our script supervisor is Meredith Danko, 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:38.000 the associate producer is Danica Johnson, and the show is written by me. 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:41.000 Every week instead of cursing I've used the names of writers I like, 00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:44.000 that tradition is ending, but a new one will begin next week. 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:47.000 If you have questions about today's video, you can ask them down there in comments 00:09:47.000 --> 00:09:51.000 and they'll be answered by our team of literature professionals, including Stan's mom. 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:53.000 Thanks for watching, and as we say in my hometown, 00:09:53.000 --> 00:09:55.000 don't forget to be awesome.