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Abstract
Considering assistance ‘the finest of Joys’ (Fr1729), Dickinson singularly espouses withdrawing or withholding giving, regarding at times ‘leaving alone’ as an essential aspect of perfect assistance. This essay offers a reading of several of Dickinson’s poems that relate to the ethics of withholding: including ‘To offer brave assistance’ (Fr492), ‘We grow accustomed to the Dark -’ (Fr428), ‘I rose - because He sank -’ (Fr454), and ‘It came his turn to beg -’ (Fr1519), arguing that Dickinson’s idiosyncratic non-service stems from a creative conversation with the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Notes
1 In-text citations of Dickinson poems refer to the poem number and the year of composition. Fr refers to R.W. Franklin, the editor who assigned the numbers. Quotations of Dickinson’s poetry are taken from The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, edited by Ralph W Franklin, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1951, 1955 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © renewed 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1914, 1918, 1919, 1924, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1935, 1937, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi. Copyright © 1952, 1957, 1958, 1963, 1965 by Mary L. Hampson.
2 One of five texts treated as poems in poems edited by Thomas H. Johnson, yet are excluded in Franklin's version.
3 A reader has read this poem as a parallel to Shakespeare’s Hamlet; Hamlet gives Claudius ‘leave to live’ - a reprieve when Claudius was praying but then kills him later in a fencing dual. https://emily-dickinson-riddle.blogspot.com/2015/08/it-came-his-turn-to-beg-claudius-prayer.html. Accessed on 28 July 2020.