Irony Becomes Her

Heart to heart with Emily and Asaph

After great pain a formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?
The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.
--Emily Dickinson


When my soul was embittered,
when I was pricked in heart,
I was brutish and ignorant;
I was like a beast toward you.

Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
you hold my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will receive me to glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
--Asaph (Psalm 73)


These two passages came up in a paper I wrote in 2003-'04. I wrote it for a C.S. Lewis conference; the majority of it focused on his two works, The Problem of Pain and A Grief Observed.

I think I was aware, even at the time, that my life experience didn't yet include the "great pain" about which I was writing. But perhaps nothing can prepare you for it. Fearing it and anticipating it just empower it more; they don't prevent it.

Now I think I have had that pain -- a couple of times, in fact. The fear that I'm wrong and that something worse is around the bend may actually argue in favor of its strength rather than against. Minor pains don't make you fear another; major ones make you jump at every tremor that could portend another blow.

To me, both of these passages represent a calm after the storm -- when panic ceases, all emotional energy is spent and resignation (if nothing better) sets in. It is a numbness that seems naturally to follow after the contortions of pain. As I noted in my paper, Lewis knew it well; Emily and Asaph clearly have been there too.

But there is certainly a different quality in Emily's despair than in Asaph's gloom.

Neither can see deliverance from the darkness, unless one can find some semblance in Emily's "letting go" and Asaph's reception into glory -- both of which seem to hold the next life as the only visible relief. For the journey in this earth, the darkness appears to rule indefinitely.

The difference is that one of them isn't alone, failing flesh and heart notwithstanding.

And neither am I.

posted by Lynn @ 10:10 PM