AND THEN THE WINDOWS FAILED
"Emily Dickinson International Society Triennial Conference"
Cité International Universitaire de Paris
Paris, France
June 22 - July 1, 2016
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WRITING ON AIR
Grand Salon Fondation des Etats-Unis |
WRITING ON WATER
Parc Montsouris "LE CALME DE L'AIR" | "DE LA CHAMBRE" |
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After the collaboration (mutilation | editing) of the black swans
The school children, reading aloud the words on the water, "La Chambre — La Chambre — La Chambre — La Chambre — "
Many thanks to Carolyn Brass, Jefree Shalev and Yoshiko Lunberry for assisting with this installation; Antoine Cazé and Noëmi Haire-Sievers, in Paris, for the planning and authorization; and Michael Boyles, of UNF's CIRT, for his invaluable assistance on the windows.
I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
Between the Heaves of Storm –
The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset – when the King
Be witnessed – in the Room –
I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable – and then it was
There interposed a Fly –
With Blue – uncertain – stumbling Buzz –
Between the light – and me –
And then the Windows failed – and then
I could not see to see –
– Emily Dickinson (#591)
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
Between the Heaves of Storm –
The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset – when the King
Be witnessed – in the Room –
I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable – and then it was
There interposed a Fly –
With Blue – uncertain – stumbling Buzz –
Between the light – and me –
And then the Windows failed – and then
I could not see to see –
– Emily Dickinson (#591)
Window #1: Imagining Absence (A Room)
Creating a site-specific installation for a site that I did not know, for the windows of the Grand Salon of La Fondation des Etats-Unis (where the conference on Emily Dickinson was to be held), required me to think about a room into which I had not yet entered and to think of windows that I had not yet looked through—to think about seeing, and about seeing what I could not see. It required me also to imagine the space of a distant absence, and then to imagine the light of windows within that space, and then—"between the light—and me"—to imagine "the stillness in the room," and then "the stillness in the air."
True, I had looked at a number of photographs of the Grand Salon, and I had been kindly sent a diagram of the way the doors and windows were grouped together and the precise measurements of the individual panes of glass. I was then able, with this detailed information, to assemble a kind of composite view of the room, to shape something of its measured dimensions into a dimensionless mental image, a place anterior, interior, of a space and time to come.
From this detached point of view, and of an imagined seeing through imagined windows, I then began reviewing the many poems of Emily Dickinson in which she writes of rooms and windows—poems of seeing, of sight—and of looking through framed panes of glass onto a world in time, measured in motion, measured in the very phrase “and then . . . and then . . . and then,” a world which, when looked upon, dissolves . . . as if dissolved in the very act of looking. Dickinson was thus positioned poetically to see, to see something of sight, of a scene, onto a site, something site-specific, seeing her own specific seeing. But seeing what, one wonders, when a site is seen so specifically? And, from such a vantage, what remains to be seen at all? As Jacques Derrida wrote in his Memoirs of the Blind, “The staring eye always resembles an eye of the blind, sometimes the eye of the dead . . . Looking at itself seeing, it also sees itself disappear . . . Seeing the seeing and not the visible . . . The seeing eye sees itself blind.”
In my Dickinson readings, I returned again and again to her well-known poem of an impossibly posthumous death represented, of an “interposed” fly heard buzzing, and Dickinson’s striking description of the windows that “failed,” and of a sight that was not seen, that “could not see to see.” I kept this poem very much in mind as I thought further about that distant room, the Grand Salon, and its many windows, and my own anterior efforts to see interiorly what, from such distances, I could not see. A room that was a continent away, a room into which I would soon enter . . . would soon see.
Pictured distantly nonetheless was a framed pane of glass, and like the translucent film covering the iris of the eye, that imagined glass became the eye as window, “Blue—uncertain,” the words as windows, on windows, and a “stumbling buzz,” seeing with Derrida’s “eye of the blind…the eye of the dead”—a “vision [that] flitters in the room,” the flittering appearance of its own disappearance. It is at such a site, as non-site, that perception itself—“always subject to doubt”—rises (and falls) like a curtain, or like the lid of an eye, and where, as the earthwork artist and creator of Spiral Jetty Robert Smithson wrote, “To see one’s own sight means visible blindness.”
I also knew, from mapped and satellite sources, that across the street from the Grand Salon there was the historic Second Empire Parc Montsouris (part of Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann’s reimagining of Paris and its imagined modernization, opened in 1869, when Dickinson was, distantly and coincidentally, very much alive, and very much imagining a modernization of her own), and within that park, seen in those maps and photographs, was a large pond. It was then between these two imagined sites—the room of the Grand Salon and that pond, neither of them yet specifically seen—that this two-part, site-specific installation, this “writing on water / writing on air,” began to take shape. A room here; a park and a pond there; and, again from Dickinson’s poem of the interposed fly, it was suddenly decided that the lines of language—“the Stillness in the Room . . . the Stillness in the Air”—would be transported from that room into the “calme” of the Parisian park, translated out into the homophonically shared French “air ”: “Le Calme de l’Air . . . Le Calme de la Chambre.” Those words, written on water, point to, or echo, both the interior space of Dickinson’s 1862 poem and the exterior space, or room, of the Grand Salon, across the road from that 1869 park and pond.
While between the two sites arises the air of an absence, a kind of non-site between them—“Between [what Dickinson called] the heaves of Storm”—and a space of history between then and now, an absence between this room and that pond, “heaves” indeed of time taking place, “and then” of place taking time, “and then” of space forming and dissolving, as if floating “between the light—and me—.”
True, I had looked at a number of photographs of the Grand Salon, and I had been kindly sent a diagram of the way the doors and windows were grouped together and the precise measurements of the individual panes of glass. I was then able, with this detailed information, to assemble a kind of composite view of the room, to shape something of its measured dimensions into a dimensionless mental image, a place anterior, interior, of a space and time to come.
From this detached point of view, and of an imagined seeing through imagined windows, I then began reviewing the many poems of Emily Dickinson in which she writes of rooms and windows—poems of seeing, of sight—and of looking through framed panes of glass onto a world in time, measured in motion, measured in the very phrase “and then . . . and then . . . and then,” a world which, when looked upon, dissolves . . . as if dissolved in the very act of looking. Dickinson was thus positioned poetically to see, to see something of sight, of a scene, onto a site, something site-specific, seeing her own specific seeing. But seeing what, one wonders, when a site is seen so specifically? And, from such a vantage, what remains to be seen at all? As Jacques Derrida wrote in his Memoirs of the Blind, “The staring eye always resembles an eye of the blind, sometimes the eye of the dead . . . Looking at itself seeing, it also sees itself disappear . . . Seeing the seeing and not the visible . . . The seeing eye sees itself blind.”
In my Dickinson readings, I returned again and again to her well-known poem of an impossibly posthumous death represented, of an “interposed” fly heard buzzing, and Dickinson’s striking description of the windows that “failed,” and of a sight that was not seen, that “could not see to see.” I kept this poem very much in mind as I thought further about that distant room, the Grand Salon, and its many windows, and my own anterior efforts to see interiorly what, from such distances, I could not see. A room that was a continent away, a room into which I would soon enter . . . would soon see.
Pictured distantly nonetheless was a framed pane of glass, and like the translucent film covering the iris of the eye, that imagined glass became the eye as window, “Blue—uncertain,” the words as windows, on windows, and a “stumbling buzz,” seeing with Derrida’s “eye of the blind…the eye of the dead”—a “vision [that] flitters in the room,” the flittering appearance of its own disappearance. It is at such a site, as non-site, that perception itself—“always subject to doubt”—rises (and falls) like a curtain, or like the lid of an eye, and where, as the earthwork artist and creator of Spiral Jetty Robert Smithson wrote, “To see one’s own sight means visible blindness.”
I also knew, from mapped and satellite sources, that across the street from the Grand Salon there was the historic Second Empire Parc Montsouris (part of Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann’s reimagining of Paris and its imagined modernization, opened in 1869, when Dickinson was, distantly and coincidentally, very much alive, and very much imagining a modernization of her own), and within that park, seen in those maps and photographs, was a large pond. It was then between these two imagined sites—the room of the Grand Salon and that pond, neither of them yet specifically seen—that this two-part, site-specific installation, this “writing on water / writing on air,” began to take shape. A room here; a park and a pond there; and, again from Dickinson’s poem of the interposed fly, it was suddenly decided that the lines of language—“the Stillness in the Room . . . the Stillness in the Air”—would be transported from that room into the “calme” of the Parisian park, translated out into the homophonically shared French “air ”: “Le Calme de l’Air . . . Le Calme de la Chambre.” Those words, written on water, point to, or echo, both the interior space of Dickinson’s 1862 poem and the exterior space, or room, of the Grand Salon, across the road from that 1869 park and pond.
While between the two sites arises the air of an absence, a kind of non-site between them—“Between [what Dickinson called] the heaves of Storm”—and a space of history between then and now, an absence between this room and that pond, “heaves” indeed of time taking place, “and then” of place taking time, “and then” of space forming and dissolving, as if floating “between the light—and me—.”
“Between the heaves of Storm” — and a space of history between then and now. . .
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Window #2: Imagining Amherst (A Room)
In the spring of 2016, I travelled to Amherst in order to visit for the first time the historic home of Emily Dickinson. It was, I suppose, the windows from Dickinson’s second floor room that interested me most (in large part because of this anticipated installation for the Dickinson conference, and the windows of that particular room, the Grand Salon). Within her room, I wanted to look from Dickinson’s windows onto the surrounding garden, to see the yard below, the houses across the road, and the home of her brother Austin and (“a hedge away”) her sister-in-law Sue.
Photography inside Dickinson’s home is not permitted, to take pictures from the poet’s windows not allowed. (I’m not sure why; and at the time I wondered what difference could it make?) Still, photographed or not, to stand beside the actual bed within which Dickinson died in 1886 is a powerful and haunting experience: to feel the actual absence in that room, in the stillness of that air, to look at the light, to see out from those interior windows from which no exterior pictures could be taken.
Later, outside the house, I stood on the lawn below and photographed the windows of Dickinson’s room up above. It was early afternoon; the sun reflected brightly off of those panes of glass on the second floor. Staring into them, nearly blinded by the glare, I could barely see anything at all.
PostScript: Months later, in Paris, when the "writing on water" installation was completed on the pond of the Parc Montsouris, a new and unexpected resonance would arise and align with the Dickinson room that I had visited earlier that spring. For, once installed, the lines of language floating on the Parisian pond—"Le Calme de l’Air . . . Le Calme de la Chambre”--remained in place for several days before the large swans (for whom that pond was a home, a kind of room, or "chambre," in which they lived) intervened, mutilating (see Window #4 below) many of the words with their big red beaks, leaving the letters in an illegible jumble at the center of the pond.
However, the two words "La Chambre" were left mysteriously intact, undamaged by the swans, and so those words stayed written on the water for the duration of the installation. It was as if, with the swans' editorial involvement, the stillness, "Le Calme," had violently vanished from the air and suddenly only the room remained: "La Chambre" floating alone on the pond, alongside the swans that now floated tranquilly alongside it.
Photography inside Dickinson’s home is not permitted, to take pictures from the poet’s windows not allowed. (I’m not sure why; and at the time I wondered what difference could it make?) Still, photographed or not, to stand beside the actual bed within which Dickinson died in 1886 is a powerful and haunting experience: to feel the actual absence in that room, in the stillness of that air, to look at the light, to see out from those interior windows from which no exterior pictures could be taken.
Later, outside the house, I stood on the lawn below and photographed the windows of Dickinson’s room up above. It was early afternoon; the sun reflected brightly off of those panes of glass on the second floor. Staring into them, nearly blinded by the glare, I could barely see anything at all.
PostScript: Months later, in Paris, when the "writing on water" installation was completed on the pond of the Parc Montsouris, a new and unexpected resonance would arise and align with the Dickinson room that I had visited earlier that spring. For, once installed, the lines of language floating on the Parisian pond—"Le Calme de l’Air . . . Le Calme de la Chambre”--remained in place for several days before the large swans (for whom that pond was a home, a kind of room, or "chambre," in which they lived) intervened, mutilating (see Window #4 below) many of the words with their big red beaks, leaving the letters in an illegible jumble at the center of the pond.
However, the two words "La Chambre" were left mysteriously intact, undamaged by the swans, and so those words stayed written on the water for the duration of the installation. It was as if, with the swans' editorial involvement, the stillness, "Le Calme," had violently vanished from the air and suddenly only the room remained: "La Chambre" floating alone on the pond, alongside the swans that now floated tranquilly alongside it.
Window #3: Through Keshia’s Eye
In my university classes, I routinely have students memorize and recite from their choice of class readings. Two years ago, in a course in which a selection of Dickinson poems was covered, I had a student, Keshia, who was completely blind, having lost her sight from an illness just a few years before, at the age of fifteen. On Keshia’s scheduled day for her recitation, she announced to the class that she had memorized and would then recite Dickinson’s poem about blindness that begins “Before I got my eye put out.” There was, from those of us in the room, a collective sense of astonishment, surprise, and a certain tense delight at what Keshia had selected, as she, standing before us all, proceeded to recite the poem, by heart, flawlessly.
Immediately following her recitation, Keshia spoke of the power of that poem for her and the understanding registered within it of, what Dickinson called, those “creatures” with their possessive “finite eyes” (those vainly believing “The Meadows – mine – / The Mountains – mine –” . . . mine, mine, mine . . . ) and of another kind of seeing, a more cautious, soulful sight “upon the Window pane,” a less possessive vision that Keshia knew now so well. Among those of us respectfully listening that day, there was indeed a stillness in the room, a stillness in the air, a moving sense of beauty and awe at what we had just witnessed.
Later, Keshia gave me a copy of that Dickinson poem printed out in braille, explaining that it was with this that she had worked upon her memorization and recitation. I then watched Keshia as she ran her fingers across that page’s upraised lines, seeing what I could not see.
Immediately following her recitation, Keshia spoke of the power of that poem for her and the understanding registered within it of, what Dickinson called, those “creatures” with their possessive “finite eyes” (those vainly believing “The Meadows – mine – / The Mountains – mine –” . . . mine, mine, mine . . . ) and of another kind of seeing, a more cautious, soulful sight “upon the Window pane,” a less possessive vision that Keshia knew now so well. Among those of us respectfully listening that day, there was indeed a stillness in the room, a stillness in the air, a moving sense of beauty and awe at what we had just witnessed.
Later, Keshia gave me a copy of that Dickinson poem printed out in braille, explaining that it was with this that she had worked upon her memorization and recitation. I then watched Keshia as she ran her fingers across that page’s upraised lines, seeing what I could not see.
Window #4: Reading Mutilations
When I first came across the mutilated manuscript of Dickinson’s “One Sister have I in our House,” I was intrigued but also excited by the look of those remarkable two pages. Initially unaware of this poem’s complex backstory, I approached these pages, their heavily repetitive and looping lines, with an innocent eye, one trained to look at such marks graphically, stylistically. In fact, the art historian in me was immediately reminded of the artist Cy Twombly’s “blackboard” paintings from the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, and Twombly as, what Roland Barthes called, “a painter of writing,” his graphic marks creating what further on Barthes describes as a “silence, or, to be more accurate, a very faint buzzing of the surface.”
It was only later (after I’d already decided that I wanted to use these winding lines in my installation on the windows of the Grand Salon) that my initial aesthetic reading, or seeing, of these pages was disrupted by the assertion by most that these marks over the poem about Sue were almost certainly not done by Dickinson herself and were instead far more likely made, after Dickinson’s death, by the brother Austin or Mable Loomis Todd, both of whom had ample reason to try and deny the poem, to cover over evidence of an open wound.
I had, however, very much wanted to believe that it was Dickinson’s own pen that had made those marks, offering in the gestural record a signatory trace from an admired hand now long gone, a Twombly-esque “paint[ing] of writing,” interposing Barthes’ “faint buzzing” above the swirling silence of that manuscript. But such easy readings were finally denied me, as the plot of this page thickened into a more peculiar palimpsest, with the marks losing some of their immediate impact and initial lyricism, becoming in its place (or in addition) potential evidence of outside suppression. As the hand that made the lines over the words was no longer to be imagined as Dickinson’s, but rather as coming from someone who had something to hide, the silence of this poem became instead the site of a silencing, those “buzzing” marks, like the buzz from Dickinson’s interposed fly, no longer seen as cancellations created by the author, but deafening mutilations made by someone else.
And so it was those mysterious lines that I later enlarged and printed onto transparencies, placing them onto the windows of the Grand Salon, and through which one could then see, see through. But seeing what? Of course, we know that whoever made those marks, and for whatever reason, he or she was unsuccessful in eradicating Dickinson’s poem about her beloved neighbor and sister-in-law Sue, for another, unmutilated version of the poem existed elsewhere, having been previously sent to Sue, presumably unbeknownst to the one doing the mutilating.
And so the apparently violent desire for erasure that is so forcefully recorded on these still powerful pages failed in its misguided efforts and, seen instead, is the more densely, complexly graphic act of an intervention, a willful layering of indecipherable longing and loss, Barthes' “painter of writing” become a painter of writing’s erasure.
It was only later (after I’d already decided that I wanted to use these winding lines in my installation on the windows of the Grand Salon) that my initial aesthetic reading, or seeing, of these pages was disrupted by the assertion by most that these marks over the poem about Sue were almost certainly not done by Dickinson herself and were instead far more likely made, after Dickinson’s death, by the brother Austin or Mable Loomis Todd, both of whom had ample reason to try and deny the poem, to cover over evidence of an open wound.
I had, however, very much wanted to believe that it was Dickinson’s own pen that had made those marks, offering in the gestural record a signatory trace from an admired hand now long gone, a Twombly-esque “paint[ing] of writing,” interposing Barthes’ “faint buzzing” above the swirling silence of that manuscript. But such easy readings were finally denied me, as the plot of this page thickened into a more peculiar palimpsest, with the marks losing some of their immediate impact and initial lyricism, becoming in its place (or in addition) potential evidence of outside suppression. As the hand that made the lines over the words was no longer to be imagined as Dickinson’s, but rather as coming from someone who had something to hide, the silence of this poem became instead the site of a silencing, those “buzzing” marks, like the buzz from Dickinson’s interposed fly, no longer seen as cancellations created by the author, but deafening mutilations made by someone else.
And so it was those mysterious lines that I later enlarged and printed onto transparencies, placing them onto the windows of the Grand Salon, and through which one could then see, see through. But seeing what? Of course, we know that whoever made those marks, and for whatever reason, he or she was unsuccessful in eradicating Dickinson’s poem about her beloved neighbor and sister-in-law Sue, for another, unmutilated version of the poem existed elsewhere, having been previously sent to Sue, presumably unbeknownst to the one doing the mutilating.
And so the apparently violent desire for erasure that is so forcefully recorded on these still powerful pages failed in its misguided efforts and, seen instead, is the more densely, complexly graphic act of an intervention, a willful layering of indecipherable longing and loss, Barthes' “painter of writing” become a painter of writing’s erasure.
Window #5: Collecting Cancellations
The manuscripts of Dickinson’s poems and letters not infrequently reveal, in addition to those more mysterious mutilations described above, the poet’s own cancellations, words crossed out on the page, generally adjacent to the words eventually chosen. Remarkably, these handwritten manuscripts that were once so difficult to view (requiring travel and institutional permission) are now, with astonishing ease, available on-line, in high-resolution, for all to see.
It was with these manuscripts that I began moving through Dickinson’s materials, collecting her cancellations, and knowing that, unlike those earlier examined mutilations whose incriminating marks were done by someone else, these other marks were almost certainly the author’s own, offering me something of what I’d sought, but lost, before: a kind of signatory trace of Dickinson’s indexical engagement with the page, of that actual hand that long ago held the pen. Looking closely, zooming in on the computer screen, Dickinson’s words, crossed out (usually with just a single line or two often quite elegantly written—at a slant—through the words), seemed nevertheless so resonant, even with their still-visible variations; so revealing, even with their still-readable rejections.
One of the early cancellations that I came across, and preserved, was from Dickinson’s poem that begins “I like a look of Agony / Because I know it’s true—,” with the words “Death comes” crossed out in the middle of that short poem, but with those two words still left visibly hanging in the manuscript between the stanzas. This cancellation in particular strikes me as quite poignant, with the two cancelling lines (graphically mirroring Dickinson’s crossing of T’s) crossing through the word “Death,” while only one line crosses through “comes.” It is as if the more aggressive beginning gesture of two cancellations over “death” has given way to a weakening realization, an intimation of death’s imminence, with energy remaining only for that single line crossing over the word “comes.”
These, and other, cancelling marks through Dickinson’s words again bring to mind Barthes’ image of the “painter of language,” but suggest now also something of Derrida’s "writing under-erasure" (sous rature), a cutting through language—as if telling an agonizing truth at a slant—that offers a way of saying and unsaying that which cannot be said, of seeing what cannot be seen. For Dickinson’s cancellation of "Death," of a death that comes, is nonetheless inscribed on the page as a gestural sign, a high-resolution reminder of writing’s in-capacity to represent the unrepresentable, the impossibly posthumous hearing of a fly when I die, Barthes’ “very faint buzzing of the surface” at the sight of a site-specific death. There, in the cancelling marks, the lines through the language leave upon the page and the poem the legible trace of an absence, the absence of presence—a something as nothing; a nothing as something—and of a death written, and un-written, printed on the page.
It was with these manuscripts that I began moving through Dickinson’s materials, collecting her cancellations, and knowing that, unlike those earlier examined mutilations whose incriminating marks were done by someone else, these other marks were almost certainly the author’s own, offering me something of what I’d sought, but lost, before: a kind of signatory trace of Dickinson’s indexical engagement with the page, of that actual hand that long ago held the pen. Looking closely, zooming in on the computer screen, Dickinson’s words, crossed out (usually with just a single line or two often quite elegantly written—at a slant—through the words), seemed nevertheless so resonant, even with their still-visible variations; so revealing, even with their still-readable rejections.
One of the early cancellations that I came across, and preserved, was from Dickinson’s poem that begins “I like a look of Agony / Because I know it’s true—,” with the words “Death comes” crossed out in the middle of that short poem, but with those two words still left visibly hanging in the manuscript between the stanzas. This cancellation in particular strikes me as quite poignant, with the two cancelling lines (graphically mirroring Dickinson’s crossing of T’s) crossing through the word “Death,” while only one line crosses through “comes.” It is as if the more aggressive beginning gesture of two cancellations over “death” has given way to a weakening realization, an intimation of death’s imminence, with energy remaining only for that single line crossing over the word “comes.”
These, and other, cancelling marks through Dickinson’s words again bring to mind Barthes’ image of the “painter of language,” but suggest now also something of Derrida’s "writing under-erasure" (sous rature), a cutting through language—as if telling an agonizing truth at a slant—that offers a way of saying and unsaying that which cannot be said, of seeing what cannot be seen. For Dickinson’s cancellation of "Death," of a death that comes, is nonetheless inscribed on the page as a gestural sign, a high-resolution reminder of writing’s in-capacity to represent the unrepresentable, the impossibly posthumous hearing of a fly when I die, Barthes’ “very faint buzzing of the surface” at the sight of a site-specific death. There, in the cancelling marks, the lines through the language leave upon the page and the poem the legible trace of an absence, the absence of presence—a something as nothing; a nothing as something—and of a death written, and un-written, printed on the page.
Copyright © 2017 Clark Lunberry. All rights reserved.