Rethink.

Just some notes. I’m not ter­ri­bly happy with the argu­ments from the dic­tio­nary, they’re just to get started think­ing about this poem.

“They say that “Time assuages”…” (686)
Emily Dick­in­son

They say that “Time assuages” -
Time never did assuage -
An actual suf­fer­ing strength­ens
As Sinews do, with age -

Time is a Test of Trou­ble -
But not a Rem­edy -
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no Malady -

Com­ment:

The link between “assuage” and “age” seems only estab­lished by rhyme; “assuage” is from the Latin “suavis,” mean­ing “sweet” or “delight­ful.” I don’t think I need to say how aging feels to most of us: the first stanza reit­er­ates that sen­ti­ment with­out any ambiguity.

But in a poem devoted to Time, the very first word stands out: “they” makes one won­der why Dickinson’s speaker has opened up the ques­tion of who exactly holds the opin­ion “Time assauges.” “They” links indi­rectly with “trou­ble;” there’s the Latin “tur­bu­lare” which the free online dic­tio­nary is telling me with “tur­bidus” (con­fused) and “tur­bula” (small group). The ori­gin is the con­fu­sion of many? That’s cer­tainly an inter­est­ing spin on pri­mor­dial Chaos.

So now we have to won­der about the speaker: for her, “Time never did assuage.” Per­haps Time could assuage; how would this hap­pen? One has to look at “an actual suf­fer­ing” com­pletely in a “that which does not kill me makes me stronger” man­ner. An ini­tial, sur­face gloss would most likely ignore that dark irony: after all, the “suf­fer­ing” itself “strength­ens” as/like “sinews.” “As” keeps the “suf­fer­ing” a dis­tance from the “sinews,” but “sinews” isn’t just “ten­dons:” the dic­tio­nary also notes that it is a source of vital­ity and strength [any­one got an OED? It would be very use­ful right about now].

So our speaker has per­haps been hard­ened by pain; she says “an actual suf­fer­ing,” dis­tanc­ing her­self from “they” who don’t know what suf­fer­ing is. We can read “other peo­ple” for “Trou­ble” and come to a very cyn­i­cal con­clu­sion regard­ing the sec­ond stanza: peo­ple who say “Time assuages” don’t pass the test Time actu­ally is, inas­much as an inabil­ity to grip pain prop­erly means they never truly felt any pain. But that makes our speaker too bit­ter to be reflec­tive in any way; it reduces the poem to aspersion.

We need to pre­serve the puz­zle and the pain of igno­rance that accom­pa­nies it. A close look at “rem­edy” gives us the Latin “remedium,” re + med­eri (to heal). A “rem­edy” can heal one again. “Mal­ady” brings us to “male habi­tus,” “in poor con­di­tion.” “Habi­tus” is from “habere” (to hold). Con­sider, also: “If such it prove, it prove too” — we started with “they,” moved to an oblique con­sid­er­a­tion of the speaker (“actual”), and now we are reduced to “it?” We prove, not “it,” no?

What makes us unique is the pain we each hold. It is a dark, tragic teach­ing, but not too far from the more opti­mistic Platonic/Socratic ‘anger indi­cates the exis­tence of jus­tice’ — after one is wronged, with patience and time, one can artic­u­late what exactly felt unjust. And that actu­ally gives us an answer why Time doesn’t assuage: there’s more to life than the con­tin­u­ous pro­gres­sion of time. Our sinews strengthen with age because there are motions we con­tin­u­ally make, and we get bet­ter with them. We allow our suf­fer­ings to strengthen some­times because we stand for some­thing and are (right­fully) frus­trated. “Assuage” and “age” are linked in a neg­a­tive way, then: to expect time to assuage is the hope of youth. Those of us who have become older have an entirely dif­fer­ent set of expec­ta­tions, and are well beyond the poem’s “they.”

• Notes on Dickinson’s “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” (288)
• Notes on Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feath­ers…” (254)
• Emily Dick­in­son, “Each Sec­ond is the last” (879)
• Emily Dick­in­son, “To own the Art within the Soul” (855)
• Emily Dick­in­son, “When I have seen the Sun emerge” (888)

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plu­gin.