A 637 SGML-Encoded E.Text

A 637 SGML-Encoded E.Text

<BODY>
<DIV0 TYPE="electronic transcript">
<DIV1 ID="A637.TXT.1" TYPE="letter" REND="fair-copy draft, incomplete (not mailed)" INK="pencil" HAND="FAIR">
<ED TYPE="passage">
Twice, when
<LB>
I had Red
<LB>
Flowers out,
<LB>
Gilbert knocked,
<LB>
raised his sweet
<LB>
Hat and asked
<LB>
if he might
<LB>
smell them -
<LB>
</ED>
<ED TYPE="passage">
Yes, and pick
<LB>
them too, I said,
<LB>
but Chivalry
<LB>
forbade him -
<LB>
</ED>
<ED TYPE="passage">
Tudor was not
<LB>
a Beggar -
<LB>
</ED>
<ED TYPE="passage">
<SEG TYPE="TRACE" CORRESP="a287.trace.1 hclb145.trace.1" ID="A637.TRACE.1">
Most Arrows
<LB>
</SEG>slay but whom
<LB>
they strike -
<LB>
</ED></DIV1>
<PB REND="reverse (A 637a), paper flipped over right and rotated one-quarter turn left">
<DIV1 ID="A637.TXT.2" TYPE="fragment, extrageneric" INK="pencil" HAND="ROUGH">
<ED TYPE="lines">
Tis a dange
<LB>
rous moment
<LB>
for any one
<LB>
when the meaning
<LB>
goes out of things
<LB>
<SEG TYPE="VAR" CORRESP="a637.2" ID="A637.1">
and Life stands
<LB>
straight - and
<LB>
punctual</SEG>
<SEG TYPE="VAR" CORRESP="a637.1" ID="A637.2">
X and
<LB>
yet no
<SEG TYPE="SUBVAR" CORRESP="a637.4" ID="A637.3">
contents </SEG>
<SEG TYPE="SUBVAR" CORRESP="a637.3" ID="A637.4">
<ADD PLACE="infralinear" TYPE="variant">
signal </ADD></SEG>
<LB>
come
<DEL REND="strike-out">
s</DEL>
<LB>
</SEG>Yet such mo
<LB>
ments are
<LB>
If we survive
<ADD REND="retraced for clarification" PLACE="infralinear" TYPE="addition">
survive</ADD>
<LB>
them they Expand
<LB>
us, if we do
<LB>
not, but that
<LB>
<MILESTONE UNIT="fold">
is
<SEG TYPE="VAR" CORRESP="a637.6" ID="A637.5">
Death X, whose
<LB>
if is Everlasting
<LB>
</SEG>
<SEG TYPE="TRACE" CORRESP="rosenbach.trace.1" ID="A637.TRACE.2">
when I was a
<LB>
little girl I called
<LB>
the Cemetery
<LB>
Tarry Town
<LB>
but now I
<LB>
call it Trans -
<LB>
</SEG>A wherefore
<LB>
but no more
<LB>
and
<SEG TYPE="VAR" CORRESP="a637.5" ID="A637.6">
X the if
<LB>
of Deity - </SEG>Avalanche
<LB>
or Avenue - Every
<LB>
Heart asks which
<LB>
</ED></DIV1></DIV0></BODY>

See Traces Below

A637 traces to HCLB145 and A287
A637a traces to Rosenbach 1170/18

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Date: [A 637: October 1884 (THJ), about 1884 (RWF); A 637a: early spring 1884 or last decade (THJ)]
Status: text 1: letter, fair-copy draft, incomplete, not mailed; text 2: fragment, extrageneric
Formula: 1 fragment
Paper: wove, off-white stationery
Dimensions: 201 x 128 mm; reverse: 128 x 201 mm
Edges: left: torn; reverse: bottom: torn
Folds: folded horizontally in half; reverse: folded vertically in half
Media: pencil

TRANSMISSION HISTORY
MSS from LND to MLT, 1891?

PUBLICATION HISTORY
A 637, text 1: NEQ 28 (September 1955): 301 n, in part; Letters (1958), L 938 n; OF (1995), A 637, in facsimile, with unredacted transcription; Poems (1998), P 1666 n
A 637, text 2: Rev (1954), 95, in part; NEQ 28 (September 1955): 301; Letters (1958), PF 49; OF (1995), A 637a, in facsimile, with unredacted transcription

COLLECTION
Amherst College Library

COMMENTARY
This is one of a number of late manuscripts in which the opposite sides of the paper appear to constitute separate textual spaces. A 637 carries an incomplete fair-copy draft of a letter to Susan Dickinson; A 637a carries a rough-copy fragment or pense. Dickinson appears to have revised the rough-copy text as she wrote: three large cross, or "X," marks appear in the text of the document, possibly marking variant passages (for a tentative arrangement of variants, see the Variant View of the document). The texts on A 637 and A 637a both have links to other documents. In addition to being a draft of a message sent to Susan Dickinson (HCL B 145) around 1884 (THJ, RWF), A 637 is linked to the fragment "Most Arrows" (A 287), which appears in this draft as a trace. Corresponding pinholes on A 637 and A 287 suggest that the documents were at one time physically associated. In the case of A 637a several lines of the fragment -- "when I was a | little girl I called | the Cemetery | Tarry Town | but now I | call it Trans -" -- appear as a trace (text altered) in a letter to Catharine Dickinson Sweetser (Rosenbach 1170 / 18 [26]) composed around 1884 (THJ). In this instance the rough-copy fragment was almost certainly written before the letter to Sweetser, not as a draft of the letter but as an autonomous text, which Dickinson later mined for lines.

No link, save a material one, has ever been established between the texts inscribed on A 637 and A 637a: written in different hands, on different occasions, they appear to be discrete. Yet the Sweetser letter suggests that Dickinson drew on both texts during the course of composition, for the line in the letter directly following the trace to A 637a -- "In this place of | shafts, I hope | you may remain | unharmed -" -- may allude both to the text on A 637 and, by implication, to the fragment A 287: thus, the "Arrows" of A 287, reinscribed and pinned to A 637, may also be translated into the "shafts" that enter the fair-copy letter to Sweetser. The study of textual constellations reveals the constant migration and transmigration of meanings and intentions between and among texts.

CODE SUMMARY

text was composed between c.1870 and c.1886

document was discovered among Dickinson's papers, unbound

wove, off-white, unruled

document has pin pricks

document was folded in half, horizontally or vertically

composed by Dickinson in pencil

composed by Dickinson in a fair-copy hand

composed by Dickinson in a rough-copy hand

Dickinson's writing appears on both sides of the paper/leaf

Dickinson added text infra- and/or supralinearly

The disposition of Dickinson's text is chaotic; the order of the text is unclear