Emily Semaya

Emily Dickinson’s 320th published poem, colloquially titled “There’s a certain Slant of light,” in reference to the first line, explores feelings of deep heaviness and despair through the use of comparisons and metaphors. The poem is arranged in quatrains, with each stanza following an ABCB rhyme scheme, save for the final one which switches to ABAB. This pattern, in combination with the rhythmic meter which follows a pattern of seven to eight beats on lines one and three of each stanza and a consistent five beats on the second and fourth, creates a very natural sounding progression to the poem, in which the lines move into each other, piecing together stream-of-consciousness style thoughts into one coherent revelation, that is deeply internal and unavoidable despair in both us as individuals, as well in the natural world around us brought by Heaven. 

Dickinson draws from religious imagery and the irony that is feeling desperation despite experiencing things that are traditionally regarded as positive. The poem opens with a reflection on the sun’s rays, an image that would generally inspire feelings of elation and warmth, and is quickly negated by the speaker’s truth that this light, rather than creating said warm feelings, instead “oppresses, like the Heft/ Of Cathedral Tunes.” In this first stanza, not only does Dickinson introduce contrasting feelings regarding light, but also in reference to religion. Much like the sun’s rays, “Cathedral Tunes,” and religion in general, are designed to bring comfort to those listening, and enforce a closer bond between heaven and the world. Yet Dickinson regards the cathedral tunes as having “heft,” as weighing the speaker down physically and spiritually, thus furthering the feelings of desperation. The metaphors become more vivid in the second stanza; Dickinson continues to reference religious imagery, as she says that the slant of light creates a “Heavenly Hurt.” The weight that the slant of light gives is not a visible pain, but one that is deeply emotional, and can only be found internally. She, in this stanza, additionally addresses the very contradictions that she herself observes earlier. She says that there is an “internal difference/ Where the Meanings, are–,” or, in other words, there is a difference between what one is told they are supposed to feel and how they do in reality. The speaker continues to explore the internalization of such complicated feelings, conceding that “None may teach it– Any,” meaning that it is a feeling that there is no way to teach someone what despair will feel like. Moreover, the metaphors to a higher power continue, as Dickinson calls the heavy feeling “An imperial affliction” (a pain caused by an empire, or perhaps in Dickinson’s case an institution), “Sent us of the Air” (that seems to have come from the sky, sent by a higher power). This feeling of despair, although it is no one’s fault and may even be the natural way of life, as is implied by the heavenly references, creates a feeling “Like the Distance/On the look of Death.” 

Poem 320 evokes a sense of potentially eternal and unavoidable depression, it is a feeling deeper than fleeting despair, for it is cosmically bestowed and lasts until one feels as distant from their former reality as that of a corpse looking at the rest of the world. Moreover, the speaker– who is in this case an example of a dramatic monologue, meaning that it is the same speaker throughout the whole poem– is trying to grapple with a feeling of smallness and helplessness. The slant of light does not only refer to the actual light coming through a cloud on a winter’s day, but it is also the personal understanding of where one stands in relation to the rest of the world. Dickinson’s stream-of-consciousness connects the light coming through the cloud to religious references, as believing in religious institutions and following gods and deities inherently creates a paradox in which a believer will always be “less than” something else, and will always feel as though they are not fully in control of themselves, yet they also have to accept, and even embrace, this fact of life and reinforce that everything that happens to them, even this heavy feeling of despair, is God’s will, and He doesn’t make mistakes. This also connects to the concept of death that is looming throughout the poem: as Benjamin Franklin famously said in the late seventeen hundreds, nothing in life is certain except death (and taxes, although that is much less relevant in the context of this poem). While Dickinson may not be directly referring to Benjamin Franklin’s ideologies, the guarantee and inescapability of death is certainly one of the main concepts that Dickinson explores in this poem. The specificity of “Winter Afternoons” emphasizes this as well; Dickinson grew up and lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, and would have routinely seen all things in nature come to an end every winter. Thus, the slant of light that peeks through the clouds on said cold wintery days is none the more comforting than a shadow falling across the landscape, another metaphor she includes at the beginning of the last stanza to further emphasize the feeling of utter hopelessness. 

Moreover, there is a deep connection between nature, and the natural world, and the Godly/heavenly universe. One cannot exist without the other, as God brings nature to man, and nature in turn delivers God’s messages. This is evidenced by the “imperial affliction/ Sent us of air,” which is meant to explicate the delivery method in which the speaker’s feelings are arriving from, that is from air, from the heavens above. In the same vein, while both nature and humans may not be able to exist without heavenly influence, and vice versa, there is also a deep fear elicited by both parties. The paradoxes that appear in nature, such as warm light on a frigid day, promote feelings of deep discomfort. As with many Dickinson poems, the exact intended meaning is often convoluted, mainly because she wrote her poems for herself and not for the purposes of publishing, but the fact that they intended to be private simply adds to the intensity and feelings that come out of the poem: she is writing for herself, and expressing her innermost feelings, even if they are “oppress[ing].”