From Emily Dickinson:
A Word made Flesh is seldom
And tremblingly partook
Nor then perhaps reported
But have I not mistook
Each one of us has tasted
With ecstasies of stealth
The very food debated
To our specific strength —
A Word that breathes distinctly
Has not the power to die
Cohesive as the Spirit
It may expire if He —
“Made Flesh and dwelt among us”
Could condescension be
Like this consent of Language
This loved Philology.
In this poem, we receive the Gospel According to Emily. As Matthew and Luke’s gospels are said to be derivative of Mark’s, so Emily’s is derivative of John’s, whose gospel starts,
In the beginning there was the Word [logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. […] And the Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us. […]
In the remainder of John’s gospel, a few additional lines stand out as pertaining to this poem:
John 3:6—That which is born of flesh is flesh; and that which is born of Spirit is spirit.
John 4:24—God is a Spirit.
John 6:4—Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life…
***
The more I recite this poem to myself, the more it feels like an internal dialogue wherein each line extends, responds to, or turns the line previous, with an air that is unplanned and spontaneous. It’s as if Dickinson is in her study reading the gospel of John, comes across the statement, “And the Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us,” and then looks up thoughtfully and speaks aloud—an accidental monologue wherein she reforms John’s notions in her own image.
Already in her first two words, she has transcended the gospel of John. For John, the Word made flesh had been from the beginning, had been with God, and even was God. But Emily’s is only a Word made flesh—one of an implied multiplicity. And what are the parts of this multiple? For John, logos signifies something beyond symbols—Word is his figuration of the Divine— a metaphor. The switch of article from the to a shifts the referent from something outside of language to the parts of language, so I can only assume the dictionary to be her multiple. Her new article exchanges the metaphorical “Word” for literal words.
“The Word made Flesh” is John’s figuration of God’s condescension—the enfleshment of a Divine Principle in the person of Jesus Christ. By shifting one element of that metaphor, “Word,” towards the literal, Emily constructs an entirely new metaphor. How can parts of speech be made flesh? I take it to symbolize that moment when a morsel of speech succeeds in meaning-making—the moment when a word’s contents seem tangible to the mind.
And this, says Emily, is seldom. Of course, in the second line it is discovered (surprisingly) that “seldom” refers to “partook” and not to the “Word made Flesh,” but the first line on its own is too arresting not to take it as a full, complete thought in its own right before reshaping its meaning in the second line. It is so arresting that upon each internal recitation, I take it as aphorism.
(And this is what I mean by the spontaneous, turning, unplanned feeling of the poem. This poem, more I think than any other I’ve sat with, transcends itself over and again by turning the thread of thought with each line.) (One more side-note on taking the first line as an aphorism: “seldom” is both adverb and adjective, enhancing the initial ambiguity of what it modifies. Were it instead “seldomly,” the entire cadence of the first stanza would differ, and this to the detriment of a poem so beautiful for ambiguity)
So what could “A Word made Flesh is seldom” mean as aphorism? There is a great irony in this first line that I find difficult to express. Christianity maintains that the Word was only made flesh once. Nothing is more seldom than once, and so Orthodoxy might turn its head at this line in surprise and ask, “well, what were you expecting?” Although the article shift distinguishes Emily’s “Word” irrevocably from John’s, the starkly religious context can only indicate that she is also saying something about religion in this aphorism. And what she seems to be saying contextually is the apparent opposite of what she is actually saying. If we take “Word made Flesh” (articles unconsidered) to represent some sort of Divine manifestation, then Emily troubles Orthodoxy by assuming most would find such revelation to be more commonplace than it is and then responding to this unvoiced assumption by saying not that it is actually more rare than supposed. Her aphorism responds to a question Christianity cannot ask.
Now let us reconsider the article. If I’m correct that she’s speaking metaphorically of the ability of words to convey meaning, then her aphorism is saying that words seldom work—the sense (as indicated by her allusion) being not for pragmatic, day-to-day tasks, but for the transcendent. And so her Orthodoxy-troubling aphorism troubles Orthodoxy yet again by maintaining that the sublime resists words: that which is meant to be signified by John’s “Word” itself resists signifiers.
And then, as though this were not puzzle enough, the sentence extends into the second line that reveals the true verb of the sentence—not “is” but “partook.” A Word made Flesh is partook: this is the skeleton of the first clause we are given, stripped of modifiers. Notably, she writes it in the passive voice. Who is partaking? Is it her? Is it someone else? Is it a crowd of people? Is it all people? “Partake” holds communal connotations. To partake is to take your part in a collective experience. It also evokes communion—of which John’s Jesus says, “whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life…”
And so Emily revises her statement about language. The aphorism is undone (and is, grammatically, a part of its own undoing). It’s not that words seldom touch transcendence, but that we seldom partake—and tremblingly when we do. (I love the constriction of the mouth in the repetitive “leeenglee”—a vocal reverence that evokes, to me, the constricted repetitions of ritual). It’s as though Words ready and willing to be made Flesh surround us on all sides, but we seldom think to take our part in them. If the first line already transcended John, in the second, we have transcended that transcendence and entered a new realm entirely.
But what can we say of this new place the poem has taken us? As if the first two lines had been some negation (they weren’t), Emily begins her third line with a mystifying “nor.” The following “then” indicates that the trembling part we have taken in a Word made Flesh has constituted such an event that whatever comes next is separate. And now a “perhaps,” which I sense modifies “nor,” making that befuddling negation befuddle us further by the speaker’s uncertainty. I think it best to extend the grammar skeleton thus: A Word made Flesh is partook then reported. So what is it that we can say of this new place the poem has taken us? We would like to report it, but we are befuddled by strange and tentative negations that stand in our way.
And this is, once more, a clever attack on conventional Christianity, whose Christ commands his disciples to go into all the world and report what has happened. “The Word made Flesh was partook then reported” could be a brief, slightly poetic, and entirely accurate account of the disciples of Jesus in the gospel of John.
But maybe we’re missing something. Emily herself wonders as much in the last line of the first stanza. Have I not mistook? The parallel takings in “partook” and “mistook” amplify the tension of her double-take. Even when we feel to have tremblingly partaken in the communication of something sublime, how do we know we have not mistaken, instead? By this point in the poem, so many possible meanings have floated through the mind that I cannot tell to which her question points. Or perhaps she does not question the potential meanings at all, but the entire project. Have I not mistook in trying to compose a poem about words becoming flesh? Have I not mistook in trying to use words to get at my meaning? Like the aphorism of the first line, this question arrests. And as the second line of the first stanza turns in a surprising direction that clarifies the direction of her thought, so the next line clarifies her question.
...
I’m very interested in the relationship and contrast between “condescension” and “consent.” She uses “consent of language” as a way to reframe the notion of “condescension.” In a way, these two words are synonyms. But in another way, they are antonyms. Importantly, both carry connotations with right, rank, power, and kingship (thus the religious use to refer to the descent of the “king of kings” into mortality).
Both words mean “to yield,” but it’s the directionality that differs. “Condescension” generally implies voluntarily waiving a superior position—to yield one’s rights of status. “Consent,” meanwhile, generally implies yielding when one has power to oppose; hence the phrase, “consent of the governed.” The directionality of “condescension” is from high status to low, of “consent,” from low status to high.
The implication of the statement “Could condescension be this like consent of language?” would be that language is both above us and beneath us. We yield to it; it yields to us. And this parallelism is itself paralleled in the final line which renames “this consent of language” as “this loved philology.” “Loved,” a quotidian word (and missing a definition of the “lover,” who I imagine as all of us), carries the directionality of “consent,” while “philo” carries the weight of Greek, implying love with the directionality of “condescension.” Could “philo” here indicate the love that language has for us? Understanding “Logos” as “the Word,” could “philology” be a stand in for the love of God?
And not just any “consent of language” but this consent. Where does the demonstrative point? Most immediately to the biblical passage.. But the quote is borrowed to complete the conditional “if” statement of the previous four lines, which is itself an extension of the simile “Cohesive as the spirit…” This simile only reframes her (aphoristic) comment, “A word that breathes distinctly/ Has not the power to die.” And this aphorism seems to follow from the logic of the eight lines that precede it, which are all the consequences of her own first thought, “A Word made Flesh is seldom.”
Could condescension be that language comes down to us from the past and yet consents to our creative (mis)uses of it? Could condescension be that language allows for our partaking yet consents to our mistaking, as well?
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