"There's a certain Slant of light" is a lyrical poem written by the American poet Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886). The poem's speaker likens winter sunlight to cathedral music, and considers the spiritual effects of the light. Themes of religion and death are present in the poem, especially in connection to the theological concept of despair.
Text of the poem
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There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons, That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes.
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us -
We can find no scar, But internal difference Where the Meanings are.
None may teach it Any -
'Tis the Seal Despair -
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air -
Shadows - hold their breath -
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death. |}
Publication history
The poem was originally discovered by Lavinia Dickinson among Emily Dickinson's personal, unpublished fascicles (F13.03.010) following her death. It was published posthumously in 1890 by her friends Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson in Poems by Emily Dickinson: Series 1 as the 31st poem in section three: Nature. In their edition it was given the title "Winter." It was published again in Thomas H. Johnson's 1955 collection The Poems of Emily Dickinson, which numbered Dickinson's poems according to assumed chronology, which placed "There's a certain Slant of light" at number 258. R. W. Franklin's 1998 edition The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition also organized the poems by assumed chronology and numbered the poem 320. Since the poem was untitled in the original manuscript, it is commonly referred to by the first line or by one of the numbers assigned by Johnson and Franklin.
Form and summary
The poem is written in four quatrains. The poem is sometimes formatted without stanza breaks or em-dashes, though it has both in Dickinson's original manuscript.
The poem's metrical pattern resembles ballad meter, however, only the final stanza fully follows the meter of a trochaic ballad. The other stanzas are more irregular in observance of ballad meter. The first stanza, although it is in ballad meter (4-3-4-3), seems stilted when following the four downbeats of trochaic ballad; it is read most naturally with anapests at the start of line 1 and at the beginning and end of line 3. Stanzas two and three appear to shorten the beginning of each line (3-3-4-3), creating an abrupt effect. End-rhyme follows a scheme of abcb defe ghih jklk, a typical ballad pattern.
There is alliteration, consonance, and assonance scattered throughout the poem. There is idiosyncratic capitalization, especially for nouns. Many of the themes in the poem are created through the initial simile of winter light "that oppresses, like the Heft / Of Cathedral Tunes -" This simile creates a synesthetic effect, mixing sound, sight, and weight. This simile first introduces religious connotations to the poem. Literary critic Helen Vendler has noted in Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries that "Despair" was commonly known in the 19th century as one of two sins that could prevent someone from entering Heaven, the other being "Presumption." With Vendler's interpretation, Dickinson conceptualizes this religious Despair, the ultimate loss of hope, to what one feels at the onset of winter by connecting abstract terms to sensory details, such as "Slant of light" to "Heavenly Hurt" and "Shadows" to "the look of Death." Other scholars, such as Paula Bennett in Emily Dickinson: Woman Poet, have explored the inaccessibility of the poem without a grounded speaker or setting and the ambiguous nature of the "hurt" and "imperial affliction" described by the speaker.
Besides describing the afternoon light and the indirect nature of the poems discussion of death, Thomas H. Johnson has also noted that the term "slant" can have a mocking tone when defined as an oblique reflection or gibe. Thus the light and the heavenly hurt it causes may be interpreted as mocking, much like man's awareness of the irreversible Fall to mortality, which is the ultimate despair, especially if redemption is not an option. This realization may set an irrevocable seal of despair upon a person, but since it is "Sent us of the Air" it is still heavenly, and the seal of ecstasy may yet be waiting—though this poem does not touch on that alternative.