A 841: etext transcription

This manuscript carries one of the most beautiful and mysterious texts found among Dickinson's late papers. Its presence among these papers suggests, moreover, that in the 1870s and 1880s she may have been working in a new form that oscillates between prose and verse. The language and cadence of the extrageneric fragment owe much to Dickinson's reading in the Bible; see especially "The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats" in Matthew 25:31–46: "And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. . . ." The text appears to be an intermediate-copy draft. Dickinson turned the sheet of stationery upside-down before composing the text but then wrote neatly within the rule. After filling the recto and verso of the first leaf, she completed the text on the recto of the second leaf. Dickinson made several internal revisions during the initial drive of composition, canceling words, substituting others, and setting down unresolved variants. Several of the interlineations, including the variant choices for "guide" ("gait"; "pace"); "gay" ("strange"); and "We have" ("There are"), were probably added at this time. Dickinson used wavy vertical lines and open brackets to cordon off variants added during the course of composition and, perhaps, to help direct the reader-writer's passage through the text. She appears to have gone through the draft a second time, at which point she may have canceled "sunny" and "one," and jotted down variants for "many" ("numbers"); "only" ("one"); "retire" ("Expire"); "occupying" ("ascertaining," "certifying -," "ratifying," "estimation"); "Heart" ("Head"); "befriends" ("provides"); and "and" ("but"). These variants, composed in a smaller hand, appear both supralinearly to the words they are alternates for, and sideways along the right edge of the paper. Dickinson may have intended to excerpt the brief, bracketed poem for use elsewhere; see Poems (1955), P 1772 and Poems (1998), Appendix 9.