Word Gems: Poetry: Emily Dickinson: I cannot live with you

I cannot live with You –
It would be Life –
And Life is over there –
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to –
Putting up
Our Life – His Porcelain –
Like a Cup –

Discarded of the Housewife –
Quaint – or Broke –
A newer Sevres pleases –
Old Ones crack –

I could not die – with You –
For One must wait
To shut the Other’s Gaze down –
You – could not –

And I – could I stand by
And see You – freeze –
Without my Right of Frost –
Death's privilege?

Nor could I rise – with You –
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus’ –
That New Grace

Glow plain – and foreign
On my homesick Eye –
Except that You than He
Shone closer by –

They’d judge Us – How –
For You – served Heaven – You know,
Or sought to –
I could not –

Because You saturated Sight –
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise

And were You lost, I would be –
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame –

And were You – saved –
And I – condemned to be
Where You were not –
That self – were Hell to Me –

So We must meet apart –
You there – I – here –
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer –
And that White Sustenance –
Despair –

Outside of her poems, some of Emily Dickinson’s most famous words are “I am one of the lingering bad ones” (The Dickinson Properties). She penned these words to a friend in her account of the faith of everyone around her. She lived in a place and time in which the culture was embracing Christianity, and Emily Dickinson expressed on multiple occasions that she wished she could buy into the message like so many people around her were doing. She continued to claim, however, that she could not.

This feeling of her own inability to accept the message she wished to accept comes through in many of her poems including ‘Because I Could Not Stop For Death‘, ‘Departed to the Judgement‘, and ‘I Heard A Fly Buzz – When I Died‘ as well as many others. This belief comes through strongly in ‘I Cannot Live With You’ in which the speaker refuses a marriage offer. She addresses her lover in this poem, offering every possible outcome of a union between the two of them, and claiming that all would end in despair.

I can't live with you because living with you would mean being fully alive, and life is something that exists elsewhere. It's over there behind the shelf that the churchyard keeper locks up; he puts away our lives as if they were his dishes.

Our lives are like a china cup that a housewife throws out because it's too old-fashioned or because it's broken. She'd prefer some fancy new French china; old cups just crack.

I couldn't possibly die with you, because one of us would have to watch while the other's eyes closed for the last time. You couldn't do that.

And what about me? Could I stand there and watch you die without wanting to claim my own right to die in that same moment?

I couldn't be resurrected with you on Judgment Day, either, because I'd prefer your face to Christ's.

Jesus's glorious visage would look dull and unfamiliar to my lovelorn eyes; I could only be happy if you were there, nearer to me than he was.

How would the heavens judge us? You were faithful to your religion, or tried to be. I couldn't be so faithful.

That's because your lovely face filled up my eyes. I didn't have any room left over to look at such a cheap pleasure as Heaven.

And if you were sent to Hell, I'd be in Hell too, even if all the heavens praised me as the greatest person who ever was.

And if you were sent to Heaven, and I to Hell (where you wouldn't be), it would be my own lonely self that would be my Hell.

Therefore, the two of us can only meet at a distance: you over there, and I over here, with only an open door between us: an open door made of distant oceans, and prayers, and that pale, blank nourishment: hopelessness.

The nearly ceaseless endorsement of the miraculous “happily ever after” ending in love stories and poetry has created the pervasive belief that but one type of love matters: consummated love. However, love is not always so simple, nor so ideal – some love is destined never to be realized fully or even at all. Yet it is still meaningful, even if it does not follow the traditional” path that ends with fulfillment. This closing segment of Emily Dickinson’s twelve-stanza poem “I cannot live with You” is the culmination of the speaker’s struggles with a would-be lover, a struggle arising from the speaker’s separation from this person. Though she desires to be with the unnamed individual, she cannot – it proves impossible for her to either live or die with her beloved due to their circumstances, and the poem, like their relationship, “ends” unresolved.

In “I cannot live with You,” the speaker navigates the frustrating unachievable nature of her love, and through this exploration, Dickinson illustrates the futility of seeking to consummate a love that is not to be and speaks to the immense pain that being separated from it causes.

While there are glimmers of hope in the uncertainty of the would be lovers’ predicament, which could mean the love is worth pursuing, each instance of hope is minimized and shown to be fleeting. There is some promise in the speaker’s saying to her absent lover, “So We must meet apart -.” Although the lovers are not together, they are, in some respect, able to “meet.” Capitalizing “We” indicates the significance of the individuals as a whole – as two that have become one. Making “We” a proper noun endows it with more meaningfulness, and in fact invests it with agency of its own. “We” makes space for itself in the poem in the same way that “We” make space for ourselves in the world – the word itself is stronger and more imposing with a capital first letter, just as two individuals are stronger and take up more space when they are together. However, despite the hope of togetherness the word suggests, “We” is quickly torn apart. The two would-be lovers are no sooner brought together then they must meet apart.” Not even a line is devoted to the possibility of “We” – it is a futile wish in the face of the certainty that they must be separate. This considered, the “So” beginning the line also feels like submission, rather than a potentially fruitful attempt at problem solving. There are no better alternatives, “So” the speaker must accept this defeat. The speaker and the subject are quickly made pointedly distinct from one another once again when the speaker refers to them as “I” and “You” as they are named through most of the poem. In fact, in only three instances does the speaker use inclusive, plural pronouns, and in each, the idea of togetherness is similarly dismantled.

Hope is to some degree reestablished later, when the speaker describes herself and the subject of the poem as being in different places, between which is the Door (is) "ajar.” Though these two people are in different locations, whether physically or emotionally, a link between them remains – the Door is not shut, but rather is only “ajar.” This luminal space indicates a possible transition from the way things are now, which is characterized by separateness, and the way things could be there is potential for the space to be crossed. However, this is the only link between the two places – it is “just” the Door providing any kind of potential connection – nothing else creates the possibility of unity The fact that “Door” is capitalized also calls attention to it, reinforcing its prominence as a barrier between the would be lovers, and again, endowing it with an extra strength. The noteworthy instances of dashed hope in a poem about two would-be lovers highlights their desire for romantic or sexual union, but also the ultimate lack of fulfillment, and the uselessness of seeking it.

The separation of the speaker and the subject ultimately dominates the space of the poem, and although there are examples of hopefulness, they are eclipsed by the prominence and inescapability of disunion. There are numerous dashes, and they are often very close together. All but one line in this passage, and nearly every line in the rest of the poem, ends with a dash, which means that nearly every line begins in its own singular way after a pause, rather than in a fluid way as continuous lines do. Caesura in the line “You there – I – here” is particularly significant, as the dashes on either side of “I” very noticeably create a considerable space between “You” and “I” even within the context of a single line.