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This is a poem of possession. The question is, possession by whom or what? I have classified this under the heading of "God" and suggest that Dickinson is describing the experience of religious conversion. However, another possibility is possession by poetic fervor. Dickinson may be describing the poet's relationship to her own poetic power or the compulsion to write. The fact that this force is male is no argument against this interpretation; male poets traditionally refer to their muse or poetic inspiration/fervor as the opposite sex or female. No matter how you interpret the unnamed "He," the way that the images function and Dickinson's attitude toward the possession are essentially the same. Dickinson uses the simile of a musician's playing to describe God's conversion technique. The initial approach is tentative; "He fumbles" with the keys, which represent the spirit or soul, and stuns "by degrees." The words describing the conversion become increasingly more violent after the "drop" "stuns you": "blow," "imperial thunderbolt," "scalps your naked soul." The conversion culminates in violence of cosmic proportions; winds (God) "take forests in their Paws." The savagery of God is insisted upon not only because he scalps, which is horrifying enough, but also because he scalps a defenseless victim ("naked soul"). Dickinson uses "paw," rather than hand, as the final expression of God's ferocity. Think of who or what has paws. God's blows are spiritual; therefore, the blow of the (piano) hammers is ethereal. (The meaning of ethereal being used here is heavenly or celestial.) Because of God's might and status, the thunderbolt is "imperial." The full force of God's assault paralyzes the universe, which "is still." Cynthia Griffin Wolff calls God's approach "the rape of conversion." Core Studies 6 Page || Melani Home Page |