Circumference

As mentioned before, 1862 was Emily Dickinson's most productive year, writing more than one poem a day. The number of letters to friends and family written that year is also exponential  This is the time that is always pointed to as Emily's greatest year, not only because she was writing so many poems and letters, but this was also the time that she came into herself as a writer. She had become a fully developed poet with her own style and attributes. We can also gather what Emily might consider her "calling" as a poet through the poems and letters that were written during this time. Emily used striking and interesting words to describe what she calls "her business."

In a letter to Dr. and Mrs. J.G. Holland during the summer for 1862 Emily writes, "...I shall understand, and you need not stop to write me a letter. Perhaps you laugh at me! Perhaps the whole United States are laughing at me too! I can't stop for that! My business is to love." This relates closely to what was talked about in my pervious post titled "Write Me Soon?" In this letter to the Hollands, Emily is mourning the time it has been since she received a letter from them. She suggests that they are laughing at her for her impatience and want of a letter back. However, she tosses off the notion that what she is doing is unworthy - instead she says that her business is to love. She determines to continue to love in the way that she see fits because that is her business, that is her calling.

Not only did Emily see love as her business but also "circumference." This term comes from a letter to T.W. Higginson written in July of 1862, where she simply says, "My Business is Circumference." Higginson was a magazine editor and a correspondent of Emily's for a number of years. Higginson is one of the very few people who Emily let see her work, and one of the even fewer people that Emily requested critique from. Emily was open with Higginson about her work and her thoughts about it, and was genuinely interested in what he had to say about it – she wanted to improve her poetry. In a letter to Higginson she wrote about her poems saying, "While my thought is undressed—I can make the distinction, but when I put them in the Gown—they look alike, and numb." Higginson attempted to help Emily develop her writing, but Emily rarely changed her poems to match the critique she received. She felt too strongly that what was expressed through her poems needed to be expressed, and the critique Higginson gave her often took away what needed to be said. She refers to Higginson's critique as surgery in a letter from April of 1862 saying, "Thank you for the surgery—it was not so painful as I supposed."

This places some context for the quote, "My Business is Circumference." Emily wrote this to Higginson as he was helping edit and critique her writing. She wanted help and sought advice, even to the extent of calling herself Higginson's Scholar, and always signing her letters to him in that way. However, she also knew that she was called to write what she needed to write and couldn't let Higginson's editing get in the way of that.

But, this leaves us with one large question: What does Emily mean when she says "circumference."

Scott Donaldson, who has authored many American literary biographies, wrote an article titled "Minding Emily Dickinson's Business" that can help us understand what the term "circumference" meant to Emily. He starts the article by reminding the reader that "she never chose words casually. (574)" This, I believe, is an important point. We can tell by the numerous drafts and the laborious and intricate metaphors in her poetry and letters that she never took her lexicon lightly. So, when she chose the word "circumference" we can know that it was on purpose. This word also shows up in 17 of her poems and, as Donaldson shows us, all seem to point in the same direction – "[F]or Emily Dickinson, the word circumference...came to stand for the unreachable goal she was always questing toward–the goal of perfect perception and ideal comprehension. (574)"

Donaldson continues to expand on this concept throughout the short article. He says that often circumference is thought of as the thing that encapsulates an area, holding in whatever is inside the circle. However, this seems contrary to the way that Emily uses the term. Donaldson points to an author that Emily admired, Sir Thomas Browne, for the answer. "Browne defined it 'as a sense of boundlessness radiating out from a center...'" In seeing the term this way, we can imagine how Emily thought that her business was circumference. She felt that her business, her calling, was to reach out as far as she could into the boundlessness of circumference. A good example of this is Poem 798:

She staked her Feather—Gained an Arc—
Debated—Rose again—
This time—beyond the estimate
Of Envy, or of Men—

And now, among Circumference—
Her steady Boat be seen—
At home—among the Billows—As
The Bough where she was born—

This poem shows the way a bird might achieve circumference. Going up, farther than anyone would have imagined, including the bird. She is able to be in a place so much more like home than any other, a place great and beautiful, a place like no other. Emily was seeking to find this place of circumference for herself and others through her poetry.

Donaldson points the Poem 798 as one that shows that circumference is used in terms of space, but he also says that Emily used this poem in terms of time too. In Poem 802 she writes, "Time feels so vast that were if not / For an Eternity— / I fear me this Circumference / Engross me Finity—" The last two lines here really show the boundlessness of circumference. It is so much larger than the finite nature of the speaker.

Circumference is the term that Emily uses when she has no other word. It is the greatness of all that the world is and ever could be. It is the enormity of the universe and what exists after life. Donaldson says, "Circumference stands for the provinces of nature and of God which Emily Dickinson was never able to know in this world but never to cease seeking knowledge of... (579)" She uses this term to refer to all life - everything from art, to nature, to love, to faith. It is all in the realm of circumference that Emily is seeking for in her writing, but feels she never finds in her human life.

In a couple of poems, Emily points to death as a possible way of truly finding circumference. This may be because it was the one place that she hadn't had the ability to look herself. This can be seen well in  Poem 943:

A Coffin—is a small Domain,
Yet able to contain
A Citizen of Paradise
In it's diminished Plane.

A Grave—is a restricted Breadth—
Yet ampler than the Sun—
And all the Seas He populates
And Lands He looks upon

To Him who on it's small Repose
Bestows a single Friend—
Circumference without Relief—
Or Estimate—or End—

Circumference is the place of ultimate home. It is the place where one feels completely free, where one can express anything and everything. Circumference is knowing that all is within the grasp of one's hand and one is not idle in pursuing it. Emily Dickinson said that her business was circumference, her business was to help others understand this vast boundlessness that she was searching for. She wanted to understand and receive circumference, and she wanted to bring you into it.