Explication

Web Paper Project

Straight Paper

Super Paper

Determining the Text

Fascicles

Packet 29

H 157

Manuscript p.537

Manuscript p.538

Manuscript p.555

Tracing Stanzas

Comparing Stanzas

Placement of 1st

Franklin's Revision

H 155 Verso Manuscript

Revision Argument Conclusion

Placement of 2nd

Publishing History

"A Pit"

H157: 1st stanza

H157: 2nd stanza

Dickinson Stuff Home

The Houghton Library Dickinson Manuscript 157
R. W. Franklin

When The Editing of Emily Dickinson was published in 1967, Franklin had concluded that H 157 belonged to the poem "A Pit - but Heaven over it," (E45) which Thomas H. Johnson had numbered 1712. He also stated that the lines on H 157 "must then be either alternate lines or a conclusion to the whole poem. The former was most likely the poet's intention" (Franklin E46).

In 1980 he wrote, "I need to revise my argument.

After further attention to the problem, including examination of additional kinds of evidence, I believe that Mrs. Bianchi was mistaken and that Mrs. Bingham and Mr. Johnson were correct for the second stanza and I for the first" (HLB 246).

Line Added

In a strange, new twist in his discussion of H 157, Franklin reveals that on the transcript containing "A Pit," transcribed by Harriet Graves, "Between the final two lines ... Mrs. Todd squeezed a new one" (HLB 248). The lines were changed to read:

Its Circuit just the same Seed - summer - tomb - Whose Doom to whom

In order to explain how this might have happened, Franklin says, "While Graves made other kinds of mistakes, her nearly 150 surviving transcripts provide no other instance in which she failed to copy a whole line" (HLB 248). Franklin then conjectures that Mrs. Todd seems to have been trying to make sense of the poem's "incomplete ending, elaborating on 'Circuit' ... and introducing an end rhyme" (HLB 248).

The inference, that Todd thought that "A Pit" ending at line with the line "Whose Doom to whom" left the poem incomplete, coincides with Franklin's argument, number 5.

How Franklin Sees Packet 29

In preparation for Franklin's reasoning on how all the confusion (about the placement of the fragments/stanzas on H157) came into being, it's important to take a look at how he conceived the arrangement of the poems within the fascicle, or as he called it "packet", 29.

Image of page 254, Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol. 28, July 1980. Highlights added here, not present in article.

"Confusion comes from Emily Dickinson Herself"

Further in his article, Franklin attributes the confusion, about what really constituted the poems "I tie my Hat, I crease my Shawl" and "A Pit - but Heaven over it," to Emily Dickinson herself (HLB 249). He starts by describing H 155 (first on the list above). It was originally a single piece of paper, folded in two to form 4 sheets/surfaces for writing -- a, b, c, and d. [For more on Fascicles]

According to Franklin, H 155 had been torn in two. The piece which survived (H 155 a and b) has a small flap from the piece that was torn off. This flap has the letter A on it. "Since this letter would begin the second line, it identifies "A Pit - but Heaven over it" as the next poem (the second line of the other missing poem begins with 'T )" (HLB 249).

About the missing leaf -- the one that was torn off, that supposedly held "A Pit":

"Emily Dickinson copied 'A Pit' onto the recto of the missing leaf, filling it, and onto the verso down to the place in the poem where the Graves transcript ends. There, for some reason, she stopped. ... When she resumed copying, she turned to a different poem, 'A curious Cloud surprised the Sky' (1710), to fill out the sheet. The concluding lines of 'A Pit' she recorded on a separate leaf, this H 157, leaving the remainder of it blank" (HLB 249).

If she had attached H 157 right behind the "now missing" sheet, Franklin states there would have been no problem. This was her usual procedure. However, she hadn't finished the packet yet. When she finally did, the last poem she recorded was "I tie my Hat - I crease my Shawl" (H 19, see diagram above). She again ran out of room and added the last stanza of "I tie my Hat" to the bottom of the loose sheet, H 157, (which already had the conclusion of "A Pit"). "The result is that neither association is clear: the one set is separated from "A Pit - but Heaven over it" by several intervening sheets, the other from "I tie my Hat" by the lines for "A Pit" (HLB 251).