WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.680 align:middle line:84% And the next one I want to look at 00:00:01.680 --> 00:00:05.430 align:middle line:84% is another, which begins with the impossibility of love. 00:00:05.430 --> 00:00:09.990 align:middle line:84% Because life with true love is simply too intense, 00:00:09.990 --> 00:00:15.690 align:middle line:84% whereas most lives are ordinary, ordered, and contained. 00:00:15.690 --> 00:00:17.940 align:middle line:90% "I cannot live with you. 00:00:17.940 --> 00:00:19.950 align:middle line:90% It would be life. 00:00:19.950 --> 00:00:23.160 align:middle line:84% And life is over there, behind the shelf the sexton keeps 00:00:23.160 --> 00:00:27.090 align:middle line:84% the key to, putting up our life, his porcelain 00:00:27.090 --> 00:00:33.120 align:middle line:84% like a cup, discarded of the housewife, quaint or broke. 00:00:33.120 --> 00:00:35.130 align:middle line:90% A newer Sevres pleases. 00:00:35.130 --> 00:00:37.290 align:middle line:90% Old ones crack. 00:00:37.290 --> 00:00:39.150 align:middle line:90% I could not die with you. 00:00:39.150 --> 00:00:43.600 align:middle line:84% For one must wait to shut the others gaze down. 00:00:43.600 --> 00:00:46.170 align:middle line:90% You could not. 00:00:46.170 --> 00:00:50.070 align:middle line:84% And I, could I stand by and see you 00:00:50.070 --> 00:00:55.910 align:middle line:84% freeze without my right of frost, death's privilege? 00:00:55.910 --> 00:00:59.030 align:middle line:84% Nor could I rise with you because your face 00:00:59.030 --> 00:01:01.010 align:middle line:90% would put out Jesus. 00:01:01.010 --> 00:01:07.310 align:middle line:84% That new grace glow plain and foreign on my homesick eye, 00:01:07.310 --> 00:01:13.030 align:middle line:84% except that you than he shown closer by. 00:01:13.030 --> 00:01:14.380 align:middle line:90% They judge us. 00:01:14.380 --> 00:01:16.810 align:middle line:90% How, for you served heaven. 00:01:16.810 --> 00:01:18.940 align:middle line:90% You know or sought to. 00:01:18.940 --> 00:01:23.200 align:middle line:84% I could not, because you saturated sight. 00:01:23.200 --> 00:01:29.360 align:middle line:84% And I had no more eyes for sordid excellence as paradise. 00:01:29.360 --> 00:01:32.720 align:middle line:90% And were you lost, I would be. 00:01:32.720 --> 00:01:37.280 align:middle line:84% Though my name rang loudest on the heavenly fame. 00:01:37.280 --> 00:01:42.200 align:middle line:84% And were you saved and I condemn to be where you were not. 00:01:42.200 --> 00:01:45.310 align:middle line:90% That self were hell to me. 00:01:45.310 --> 00:01:51.290 align:middle line:84% So we must meet apart, you there, I here, 00:01:51.290 --> 00:01:56.870 align:middle line:84% with just the door ajar that oceans are and prayer. 00:01:56.870 --> 00:01:59.945 align:middle line:84% And that white sustenance despair. 00:01:59.945 --> 00:02:06.310 align:middle line:90% 00:02:06.310 --> 00:02:09.880 align:middle line:90% The dance here intricate. 00:02:09.880 --> 00:02:12.550 align:middle line:90% But able to be followed. 00:02:12.550 --> 00:02:16.330 align:middle line:84% Moves from I cannot live with you to I could not die with 00:02:16.330 --> 00:02:17.320 align:middle line:90% you. 00:02:17.320 --> 00:02:19.420 align:middle line:84% I could not go to heaven with you. 00:02:19.420 --> 00:02:23.050 align:middle line:84% I could not bear you in hell and I in heaven. 00:02:23.050 --> 00:02:27.350 align:middle line:84% I could not bear you in heaven and I in hell. 00:02:27.350 --> 00:02:29.360 align:middle line:90% So we must not love. 00:02:29.360 --> 00:02:33.740 align:middle line:84% And we are left to be lost, to despair. 00:02:33.740 --> 00:02:36.080 align:middle line:84% Even though the only space between us 00:02:36.080 --> 00:02:40.880 align:middle line:84% is just that space in which the door is somewhat ajar. 00:02:40.880 --> 00:02:42.740 align:middle line:90% But how far is that? 00:02:42.740 --> 00:02:44.420 align:middle line:90% It is oceans. 00:02:44.420 --> 00:02:46.340 align:middle line:90% It is prayer. 00:02:46.340 --> 00:02:52.970 align:middle line:84% It is despair, not death but a life sentence, which 00:02:52.970 --> 00:02:56.170 align:middle line:90% even becomes a sustenance. 00:02:56.170 --> 00:03:01.660 align:middle line:84% Here the emptiness is dark yet white at the same time. 00:03:01.660 --> 00:03:03.430 align:middle line:90% Pain is pleasure. 00:03:03.430 --> 00:03:06.970 align:middle line:84% Separation is the only love that is bearable. 00:03:06.970 --> 00:03:11.000 align:middle line:90% And that perhaps only barely. 00:03:11.000 --> 00:03:14.060 align:middle line:84% Poem is a powerful expression of love so intense 00:03:14.060 --> 00:03:17.960 align:middle line:84% it shuts out everything else, including God." 00:03:17.960 --> 00:03:19.640 align:middle line:90% It is painful. 00:03:19.640 --> 00:03:20.960 align:middle line:90% It is excellent. 00:03:20.960 --> 00:03:22.820 align:middle line:90% It is saturating. 00:03:22.820 --> 00:03:26.000 align:middle line:84% It has everything we've talked about in every poem, 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:28.820 align:middle line:84% images like dinner service in the cupboard, 00:03:28.820 --> 00:03:32.000 align:middle line:84% saturation of sight, bells ringing in heaven, 00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:34.580 align:middle line:90% and wide and white oceans. 00:03:34.580 --> 00:03:39.600 align:middle line:84% It has the ongoing music like the rising 00:03:39.600 --> 00:03:45.450 align:middle line:90% tones in the first stanza. 00:03:45.450 --> 00:03:49.170 align:middle line:84% Keying the poem with the kind of bursting energy 00:03:49.170 --> 00:03:53.550 align:middle line:84% and the separation frequently of the you from the I 00:03:53.550 --> 00:03:57.510 align:middle line:84% through ruptures and rhythmic devices and the nearly 00:03:57.510 --> 00:04:01.575 align:middle line:90% ecstatic stanza 3 from the end. 00:04:01.575 --> 00:04:04.470 align:middle line:90% 00:04:04.470 --> 00:04:10.270 align:middle line:84% The one of saturation in the lovers look and being. 00:04:10.270 --> 00:04:17.560 align:middle line:84% And look at the isolation of the eye in the last stanza 00:04:17.560 --> 00:04:20.649 align:middle line:90% always finally alone. 00:04:20.649 --> 00:04:24.770 align:middle line:84% And the set off of the final word of the poem. 00:04:24.770 --> 00:04:27.230 align:middle line:84% Music in Dickinson always has to do 00:04:27.230 --> 00:04:30.890 align:middle line:84% with emotion and with meaning and not 00:04:30.890 --> 00:04:33.560 align:middle line:84% so much to do with prescribed patterns other than 00:04:33.560 --> 00:04:36.640 align:middle line:84% to set them up so as to break them. 00:04:36.640 --> 00:04:38.770 align:middle line:84% She is, I think, the most courageous poet 00:04:38.770 --> 00:04:41.140 align:middle line:84% of the 19th century, which makes her 00:04:41.140 --> 00:04:44.230 align:middle line:84% an apt prefigure for the 20th century 00:04:44.230 --> 00:04:47.560 align:middle line:84% as she has been found to be by many poets of the last 70 00:04:47.560 --> 00:04:48.940 align:middle line:90% years. 00:04:48.940 --> 00:04:52.600 align:middle line:84% And I cannot live with you love cuts her off from God. 00:04:52.600 --> 00:04:55.660 align:middle line:84% And it is finally her dance with the infinite. 00:04:55.660 --> 00:04:59.500 align:middle line:84% With God or with the possibility of God and the infinite that 00:04:59.500 --> 00:05:01.800 align:middle line:90% we will be concerned.