there27s a certain slant of light

Appreciation of Theres a Certain Slant of LightTheres a certain slant of light,On winter afternoons,That oppresses, like the weightOf cathedral tunes.Heavenly hurt it gives us;We can find no scar,But internal differenceWhere the meanings are.None may teach it anything,Tis the seal, despair,-An imperial afflictionSent us of the air.When it comes, the landscape listens,Shadows hold their breath;When it goes, t is like the distanceOn the look of death.This poem begins by noting the oppressive sound of church bells heard in the bleak atmosphere of a winter afternoon.They give“Heavenly Hurt,”though they leave no external scar. Within six lines, Dickinson synthesizes a description of depression in terms of three senses: hearing, sight, and feeling.This depression is, however, more than ordinary sadness. It comes from Heaven, and it bears the biblical“Seal Despair.”It hurts the entire landscape, its nonhuman as well as its human constituents, which listens, holds its breath for some revelation, yet perceives only the look of death. Significantly, the poet nowhere implies that no meaning exists; indeed, in other poems she is certain that a divine being exists and that there is a plan. Even so, the implications of what she writes are almost as devastating, for the apocalyptic seal of revelation holds fast, yielding no enlightenment to those below but the weak afternoon sun of a New England winter.Dickinson was a keen observer of her environment, dramatizing her reactions in poems. Her sense of melancholy informs her observations of light on winter afternoons.This poem consists of four stanzas with the rime scheme ABCB. The speaker dramatizes the intense feeling of spiritual intuition that is brought on by the simple “Slant of light” on a winter afternoon. The light pouring in through the window tilts in a way that causes the speaker to experience of sense of spiritual melancholy.First Stanza: “Theres a certain Slant of light”In the first stanza, the speaker claims that on winter afternoons, the light that shines through her window has a “certain Slant” to it that “oppresses, like the Heft / Of Cathedral Tunes.” Something as weightless as “light” feels heavy to the speaker.The weight of “Catheral Tunes” would be quite profound, sound being heavier than light, but to the speaker that “certain Slant” causes the light to be as heavy as that heavy sound coming from the gigantic organs that deliver church music.Because church music is meant to be uplifting, the speakers words become paradoxical: how can an inspirationally uplifting hymn be oppressive?Second Stanza: “Heavenly Hurt, it gives us” The profundity of the “Cathedral Tunes” causes the speaker to experience a “Heavenly Hurt.” She confirms, however, that the “hurt” leaves no scar, because it is inside; it is the soul that is affected by the oppression or “Heavenly Hurt.” The speaker says that the pain is on the inside “Where the meanings are.”“Meaning” is very important to all human beings, whether they are yet aware of that fact or not. The speaker is keenly aware of the souls sensitivities to the “meanings” of physical things and events, and she is aware that they are internal not external.Third Stanza: “None may teach itAny”The speaker declares that no one can teach another how to become aware of the mystical attributes of the yearning for meaning. While“Despair”leads one in that direction, and the desire is universal, it comes to each one as simply as breathing. Ones spiritual development has to be right before one can entertain such divine cravings.Fourth Stanza:“When it comes, the Landscape listens”When the strong spiritual desire for understanding the nature of reality comes, everything seems to stop and listen. She speaker dramatizes that utter stillness by claiming,“Shadowshold their breath.”The quietness implied by“shadows holding their breath”is astounding; it is a miracle of striking awareness, undetectable to most and unceasingly secure to but a few.Then the speaker avows that when the sense of melancholy goes, when the“heavenly hurt” lightens into understanding, it is“like the Distance / On the look of Death.”Of course, it is not death itself, but merely like the blank stare that none can fathom, save those who can distinguish that profound melancholy in the“certain Slant of light”on“Winter Afternoons.”In this poem, Emily Dickinson treats an irrational psychological phenomenon akin to those recorded by Wordsworth in Strange fits of passion have I known (Down behind the cottage roof, At once, the bright moon droppd. . . . 0 mercy! to myself I cried, If Lucy should be dead!) and by Tennyson in Mariana (But most she loathed the hour When the thick-moted sunbeam lay Athwart the chambers, and the day Was sloping toward his western bower.) A certain external condition of nature induces in her a certain feeling or mood. But the feeling is more complex than Wordsworths or Marianas. The chief characteristic of this feeling is its painful oppressiveness. Oppresses, weight, hurt, despair, and affliction convey this aspect. A large component in it is probably consciousness of the fact of death, though this is probably not the whole of its content nor is this consciousness necessarily fully formulated by the mind. Yet here we see the subtle connection between the hour and the mood. For the season is winter, when the year is approaching its end. And the time is late afternoon (winter afternoons are short at best, and the light slants), when the day is failing. The suggestion of death is caught up by the weighty cathedral tunes (funeral music possiblybut hymns are also much concerned with deathDies Irae, etc.) and by the distance on the look of death. The stillness of the hour (the landscape listens, Shadows hold their breath) is also suggestive of the stillness of death. But besides the oppressiveness of the feeling, it has a certain impressiveness too. It is weighty, solemn, majestic, like organ music. This quality is conveyed by weight of cathedral tunes, heavenly , seal (suggesting the seal on some important official document), and imperial. This quality of the mood may be partly caused by the stillness of the moment, by the richness of the slanting sunlight (soon to be followed by sunset), and by the image of death which it calls up. The mood gives heavenly hurt. Heavenly suggests the immateriality of the hurt, which leaves no scar; the source of the sunlightthe sky; the ultimate source of both sunlight and deathGod. The hurt is given internally where the meanings arethat is, in the soul, the psyche, or the mind-that part of one which assigns meaningsconsciously or intuitivelyto life and to phenomena like this. None may teach it anythingBoth the sunlight and the mood it induces are beyond human correction or alleviation; they are final and irrevocablesealed. There is no lifting this seal this despair. When it goes, tis like the distance On the look of deathThe lines call up the image of the stare in the eyes of a dead man, not focused, but fixed on the distance. Also, distance suggests the awful distance between the living and the deadpart of the implicit content of the mood. Notice that the slanted ray and the mood are