A 821: etext transcription

The number of fragments inscribed on A 821 and the relations among them are ambiguous. Although the texts appearing on either side of the envelope seam were both composed in a rough-copy hand, slight variations in the writing style suggest that they were written on different occasions. The envelope seam, moreover, appears to function as a textual boundary. A smaller, pinned slip both completes the passage beginning "Afternoon and | the West and . . ." and carries the remains of an abandoned text, lost beyond the tear. In addition to the two sets of pinholes visible on the small pinned slip, four sets of pinholes—two on the left wing of the envelope and two on the right wing of the envelope—point to the document's material/textual instability and its potential for further transformations. One stray pencil mark appears along the left edge of the envelope; a similar vertical line appears on the pinned slip, dividing legible text from illegible text lost beyond the tear.

The passage on the left wing of the envelope, "Clogged | only with | Music, like | the Wheels of | Birds -," appears as a trace in four documents, all composed around 1885 (THJ, RWF): it appears as a variant trace (text altered) in another late (pinned) fragment (A 822); as a variant trace (text altered) in a letter to Benjamin Kimball (NYPL—Berg); as a nearly exact trace (punctuation and capitalization only altered) in a fair-copy draft of a letter to Helen Hunt Jackson (A 817); and as a variant trace (text altered) in another fair-copy version of the same letter-draft to Helen Hunt Jackson (A 819). The passage on the right wing of the envelope, "Afternoon and | the West and | the gorgeous | nothings | which | compose | the | sunset | keep [pinned slip] their high | Appoint | ment," is not incorporated into this letter or into any other extant composition, though it is, perhaps, translated into the late fragment (A 822a) cited previously, where the transition from day to night or night to day is raised exponentially to a transition of seasons: "and the Seasons | take their hushed | places like figures | in a Dream -." Dickinson's final intentions toward these fragments remain unknown. They may be drafts of passages in the letters to Benjamin Kimball or Hunt Jackson, or autonomous pensées composed independently of the letters and incorporated in them because of their momentary aptness.