A 822: etext transcription

The relationship between the texts inscribed on the pinned fragments is ambiguous. Although both of the texts were composed in a rough-copy hand, variations in the handwriting on the two scraps suggest that they were written on different occasions. Each scrap appears to carry a separate fragment that, unpinned, would turn back into an autonomous text. The sudden association, by pinning, of the two texts creates a new, albeit inherently unstable and extrageneric text, "A 822 / 822a." The "correct" reading order of the fragments is, like the compositional order, unknown. One passage inscribed on A 822, "Thronged | only with Music, like the | Decks of | Birds -," appears as a trace in four documents, all composed in or around 1885 (THJ, RWF): it appears as a variant trace (text altered) in another late pinned fragment (A 821); as a nearly exact trace in a letter to Benjamin Kimball (NYPL—Berg); as a variant trace (text altered) in a fair-copy draft of Dickinson's last letter to Helen Hunt Jackson (A 817); and, as a nearly exact trace (punctuation and capitalization only altered) in another fair-copy version of the same letter-draft to Hunt Jackson (A 819). The opening passage of A 822, "It is very still in the | world now -," does not reappear in any other extant composition. Likewise, the text carried on A 822a, "and the Seasons | take their hushed | places like figures | in a Dream -," is not incorporated into any other extant composition, though it is, perhaps, translated into a variant fragment—A 821—where the transition of the seasons is mirrored in the transition from day to night. 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.