I+Had+Been+Hungry+All+the+Years

On this page is an excerpt from the article //Thirst and Starvation in Emily Dickinson's Poetry// by V.Pollack from __Journal of American Literature__, 1979. (To read the whole article click on the PDF below.)

//Dickinson's fullest poetic statement of the relationship between external deprivation and internal inhibition is poem 579, "I had been hungry, all the Years." It was written in I862, before her own seclusion had hardened into an unalterable mannerism, at a time when her hopes for love and literary recognition were still very much alive. The narrative structure provided by the journey allows her to incor- porate the entire cycle of deprivation, self-deprivation, and self- sustenance. The poem records the death of the social self. After years of unsatisfied hunger, the speaker's "Noon" has come "to dine." The wonderful ambiguity of the phrase perfectly identifies her own effort with the cooperation of external circumstance. The moment she has been enlarging through anticipation, her moment of fulfillment, is before her. She had imagined this chance often enough, as she stared through windows into opulent houses where people were "eating" as a matter of course, knowing that she could not even hope for such abundant happiness. Trembling with eagerness, she draws the table close to her and merely touches the strange wine. Having anticipated some ultimate communion, her reaction startles her:// //I did not know the ample Bread-// //'Twas so unlike the Crumb// //The Birds and I, had often shared// //In Nature's-Dining Room-//

//The Plenty hurt me-'Twas so new-// //Myself felt ill-and odd-// //As Berry-of a Mountain Bush-// //Transplanted-to the Road-//

//Nor was I hungry-so I found// //That Hunger-was a way// //Of Persons outside Windows-// //The Entering-takes away-//

//In the past she has successfully shared "crumbs" with birds, and it is possible to read the poem as contrasting this overwhelming "ample Bread" with her accustomed spare, yet life-sustaining ration. But the poem goes further. Since the crumbs always left her hungry and frustrated, exiled from human society and reduced to the company of birds, the really significant event is the loss of appetite she expe- riences when the opportunity to merge intellectual anticipation and sensuous realization occurs. The self has been so completely defined by its starvation that food threatens to destroy it. The speaker can- not, in the end, conceive of the relaxation of restrictions as enabling growth and change. Thus she resists food in order to survive. A berry transplanted from a mountain bush to the public highway dies. Eat- ing crumbs in nature's dining room is better than not eating at all. But the loss in human relatedness is awesome.//