Volume 43, Number 11 · June 20, 1996
Emily Dickinson's Banquet of Abstemiousness
By Roger Shattuck
Forbidden knowledge—for example the closed door boldly lettered 'keep out'—usually arouses our curiosity. Other forms of forbidden knowledge may provoke self-restraint and withdrawal. In the latter context, eight lines of a single poem by Emily Dickinson, because they describe the rewards of renunciation, bear comparison with Madame de Lafayette's 200-page novel, La Princesse de Clèves, about which I wrote in the last issue.[1] We must approach Dickinson's poem unhurriedly and without disturbance, as we would approach a brook trout lurking in a pool.
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