{"id":148234,"date":"2013-10-23T07:51:18","date_gmt":"2013-10-23T11:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"\/gazette\/?p=148234"},"modified":"2019-04-30T16:29:50","modified_gmt":"2019-04-30T20:29:50","slug":"the-digital-dickinson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2013\/10\/the-digital-dickinson\/","title":{"rendered":"The digital Dickinson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
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Standing in the Emily Dickinson Room in Houghton Library, Leslie Morris (pictured), is the Emily Dickinson Archive (EDA) general editor. Two years in the making, the EDA is a collaborative project of Harvard University Press and a growing number of repositories that own examples of Dickinson\u2019s original work. <\/p>

Stephanie Mitchell\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t

\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tArts & Culture\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t

\n\t\tThe digital Dickinson\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t
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\n\t\tCorydon Ireland\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\tSophisticated site gathers her poems, in her handwriting, for all to see and study\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n\n\n\n
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A biographer once praised reticent and retiring Emily Dickinson for \u201cthe modest littleness of her person.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what might this 19th-century poet make of the decidedly immodest archive of her poems being released today, bringing to light in one digital place most of her surviving manuscripts?<\/p>\n

What if those manuscripts were the very ones Dickinson hesitated to publish in her own lifetime, or \u2014 in bursts of cheerful immodesty \u2014 delivered to friends with fresh gingerbread or a bouquet of flowers? What if that archive revealed, in every variant, all of her known poems? And what if it showed the world how her handwriting began to slope and sprawl as she got older, and that she sometimes wrote poems on old bills, paper bags, or the backs of envelopes?<\/p>\n

Dickinson can\u2019t answer such questions. But her poems keep speaking, and her readers keep listening and interpreting her timeless celebrations of wit, observation, and the fragile ecstasies of the natural world.<\/p>\n

Interpretation will be easier with the new Emily Dickinson Archive (EDA), which goes online today at edickinson.org.<\/p>\n

The EDA is an open-access digital archive, available free to anyone. It collects many surviving manuscripts of the slight, shy poet who once called herself \u2014 with considerable irony \u2014 \u201cthe Belle of Amherst.\u201d Scholars and readers will be able to compare one manuscript with another; previously, they were separated by institutional divides.<\/p>\n\r\n\t\n\t

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\n\t\t\tIn Emily's own hand<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\t
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A storage box from Harvard\u2019s Houghton Library, which along with Amherst College has the largest collection of Emily Dickinson manuscripts. Photos by Stephanie Mitchell\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption>\n\t<\/figure>\n\n\n

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A ribbon and a rosebud grace this manuscript page from Dickinson, who treated some of her poems as one-off works of art.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption>\n\t<\/figure>\n\n\n

\n\t\"Dickinson\u2019s\n\t\t\t
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Dickinson\u2019s early writing was neat and linear as she made fine copies of her poems to stitch into \u201cfascicles,\u201d or little books.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption>\n\t<\/figure>\n\n\n

\n\t\"Dickinson\u2019s\n\t\t\t
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Dickinson\u2019s later handwriting was looser and larger, with wider spaces.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption>\n\t<\/figure>\n\n\n

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An earlier Dickinson manuscript, unbound from a fascicle Dickinson created.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption>\n\t<\/figure>\n\n\n

\n\t\"The\n\t\t\t
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The dashes in this manuscript are a feature of Dickinson\u2019s composition style much studied by scholars. They can slant up or down or be long or short.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption>\n\t<\/figure>\n\n\n

\n\t\"Houghton\u2019s\n\t\t\t
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Houghton\u2019s Leslie Morris, general editor of the Emily Dickinson Archive, studies a manuscript page.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption>\n\t<\/figure>\n\n\t<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\r\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a different experience to see everything integrated,\u201d said EDA general editor Leslie Morris<\/a>, curator of modern books and manuscripts at Harvard\u2019s Houghton Library.<\/p>\n

Two years in the making, the EDA is a collaborative project of Harvard University Press and a growing number of repositories that own examples of Dickinson\u2019s original work. The biggest are Houghton Library, Amherst College, and the Boston Public Library.<\/p>\n

Houghton contributed 1,820 manuscript images to the EDA, Amherst put in 1,670, and the Boston Public Library 643. The next-biggest contributor, with 45 images, is Yale\u2019s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.<\/p>\n

To put these numbers in perspective: There are 1,789 known Dickinson poems. But that number is still \u201cfluid,\u201d said Morris, because additional poems may be in private hands, unexamined.<\/p>\n

Making scholarship easier<\/b><\/p>\n

Dickinson scholar Martha Nell Smith<\/a> of the University of Maryland, a member of the EDA advisory board, said the new archive will make scholarship easier. Until now, anyone interested in seeing Dickinson\u2019s poems had search for and request manuscript images place by place. \u201cInstead of doing that now,\u201d she said, \u201cI can go online.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith was an early believer in the power of digital critical inquiry and in 1994 opened the Dickinson Electronic Archives<\/a>, one of at least four sites that employ online tools in critical inquiry into the poet. Back then, doubt in the digital went deep among scholars, she said. \u201cPeople told me I was insane.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bringing the EDA\u2019s collaborating institutions together sometimes required overcoming wide-ranging jealousies of ownership and presentation that themselves dated back to the 19th century \u2014 \u201can immensely complex task,\u201d said EDA board member Marta Werner<\/a>, a Dickinson scholar at D\u2019Youville College in Buffalo, N.Y.<\/p>\n

The feuds were real, went deep, and lasted generations, said Smith, who has scholarly insights on the topic, adding, \u201cI\u2019ve made my profession reading these people\u2019s mail.\u201d For background, she pointed to Chapter 17<\/a> of Lyndall Gordon\u2019s 2010 book, whose title tells all: \u201cLives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family\u2019s Feuds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morris preferred to look ahead. This is just the beginning for the EDA, she said, calling the startup \u201cphase one\u201d of a project she hopes will become a template for open-access research resources. Morris also hopes the EDA will become the primary digital clearinghouse for Dickinson researchers. There are more digitized, autograph images out there, she said, and \u201cour goal is to get them all.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Morris cautioned that the site is only meant to be a neutral online space for gathering manuscripts. \u201cWe want to facilitate the scholarship,\u201d she said, \u201cnot make the scholarship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some scholars politely disagree. \u201cArchives are not neutral spaces,\u201d said Werner, \u201cand the presentation of documents is to some degree interpretive.\u201d But she praised the broader mission of the EDA, its \u201cstunning\u201d color images, its zoom feature that allows scholars to peer at stab binding holes and other manuscript oddities, and the digitally enhanced ability to compare one edition\u2019s text with another\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cMorris was far-sighted enough to see this future, and to move us closer to it,\u201d said Werner.<\/p>\n

Cristanne Miller<\/a>, a Dickinson specialist at the State University of New York at Buffalo and an EDA board member, called the archive \u201can extraordinary gift to Dickinson scholars, teachers, students, and general readers around the world.\u201d There is debate over how to read the manuscripts, but \u201cthese are the poems as Dickinson left them to us,\u201d she said, complete with an \u201caura\u201d of the author and clues to the puzzle of how she constructed a poem.<\/p>\n

Miller is preparing a readers\u2019 edition of Dickinson poems for Harvard University Press (HUP), a key player in the EDA venture and the main source of the electronic archive\u2019s scholarly commentary and transcribed text. (There is no way yet to digitally search handwriting.) In the past 50 years, HUP has also published the authoritative<\/p>\n

In 1955, HUP published \u201cThe Poems of Emily Dickinson<\/a>,\u201d edited by Thomas H. Johnson. Though many of the poems had appeared somewhere in print by 1945, this work was the first attempt at a comprehensive collection. \u201cThe Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson<\/a>,\u201d edited by R.W. Franklin, followed in 1981. It revealed to the world more than 800 poems bound into 40 \u201cfascicles,\u201d hand-sewn books Dickinson made to bring order to her writings. Most were dated by him from 1858 to 1864.<\/p>\n

In 1998, HUP published Franklin\u2019s three-volume variorum edition of \u201cThe Poems of Emily Dickinson<\/a>,\u201d a work that includes the poet\u2019s alternative readings, revisions, and variants.<\/p>\n

Perhaps more to come<\/b><\/p>\n

The Franklin and Johnson texts are the scholarly fundament of the EDA, a textual feature of the site that Werner and others hope will be expanded. But the EDA also includes the complete text of four editions of her poetry in the public domain, books that show, beginning in 1890, how Dickinson was first presented to the public.<\/p>\n

A phase two of the project should help in that regard, and Morris thinks it is possible, as long as the site\u2019s users find the EDA useful and more funding can be captured. (To date, EDA\u2019s financial support comes from Harvard Library\u2019s Sidney Verba Fund, Houghton\u2019s Emily Dickinson Fund, and HUP.)<\/p>\n

The heart of phase two would include digitized Dickinson letters; 1,049 are known, with 99 correspondents. (Smith speculated that as much as 90 percent of Dickinson\u2019s correspondence is lost, and with that poems that will never see the light of day.) A phase two would also link to other modern Dickinson collections, expand metadata, and add online image-navigation tools.<\/p>\n

If there is a phase three for the EDA, it might focus on Dickinson artifacts, Morris said. Houghton owns the poet\u2019s teacups, along with her tiny cherrywood writing desk and much of her library.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, visitors to edickinson.org<\/a> can use the zoom function on poems, call up scholarly annotations, compare transcriptions, download images for free (as long as credit is given to the right repository), and sign on to take their own digital notes.<\/p>\n

For now, such annotations would remain private. Elsewhere at Harvard, curators are experimenting with the idea of shared annotations that might create communities of online scholars, both professional and amateur. One example is the Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. digital suite<\/a> at the Harvard Law Library.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s great,\u201d said Smith of the prospect for shared annotations and amateur scholarship. \u201cI have been arguing for this for years. \u2018Untrained eyes\u2019 can see things that sometimes my overtrained eyes can\u2019t see.\u201d In the context of Dickinson, crowdsourced research might be valuable \u201cif it\u2019s curated and handled well.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that would be the future. Viewers of the EDA also can search the texts of poems, either by first lines or by typing in one of the more than 9,275 words Dickinson employed. Contemporary meanings of each word are available by incorporating the work of another partner, the Emily Dickinson Lexicon<\/a> at Brigham Young University.<\/p>\n

Through the green slats<\/b><\/p>\n

Manuscripts are the place to start for understanding how Dickinson made her poems. Fewer than a dozen were set in type in her lifetime, and only one with her permission. \u201cSuccess is counted sweetest\u201d appeared in \u201cA Masque of Poets<\/a>,\u201d an 1878 collection of anonymous verse. Dickinson had unconventional approaches to \u201cpublishing,\u201d a term she distinguished from \u201cprinting.\u201d She viewed setting a work in type as an act that took a poem\u2019s life away. Wrote University of Wyoming scholar Jeanne Holland: \u201cShe resisted the inflexibility of print.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had told you I did not print,\u201d Dickinson bristled in an 1866 letter to a friend. A few years earlier, in 1862, the same resentment echoed in these lines:<\/p>\n

They shut me up in Prose \u2014
\nAs when a little Girl
\nThey put me in the Closet \u2014
\nBecause they liked me \u201cstill\u201d \u2014 <\/i><\/p>\n

Instead of the stillness of print, Dickinson favored the action of sending a penciled poem out to a friend, along with a gift. People often ask: Why didn\u2019t Dickinson publish her poems? \u201cShe did,\u201d said Smith in answer. \u201cShe sent her poems out in her letters.\u201d<\/p>\n

But following her death in 1886, conventional publishing was the means at hand. A first volume of her poetry appeared in 1890, touching off a rush to print more, in 1891, 1896, 1914, and onward. It\u2019s that enduring drive to know Dickinson better that the EDA is trying to capture.<\/p>\n

Because the archive is not tied just to what can be set in type, it might help to understand Dickinson\u2019s methods for self-publishing. After 1864, she wrote on whatever was handy in her busy household. She found time at night, early in the morning, or while baking bread or skimming milk to scribble on notepaper, discarded bills, paper bags, and old programs. (Werner co-authored \u201cThe Gorgeous Nothings<\/a>,\u201d a book about poems that Dickinson wrote on the backs of envelopes.)<\/p>\n

In an essay, Holland called these scraps the poet\u2019s \u201cown domestic technologies of publication.\u201d They were often multimedia artifacts too, wittily combining paper and handwriting with stamps, clippings, pressed flowers, and other items. (Houghton owns one poem pinned with a rose.) \u201cPlayfulness organizes much of Dickinson\u2019s late writing,\u201d Holland wrote, \u201can aspect easy to miss when we do not see the manuscripts.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the \u201ctechnologies\u201d of the poet\u2019s later manuscripts were domestic, so were her sensibilities. Dickinson willingly shut herself into a house, but it wasn\u2019t the closet metaphor of her childhood. It was a place that made possible quiet engagement with the natural world around her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that Emily Dickinson wrote most emphatic things in the pantry, so cool and quiet,\u201d remembered a friend in 1904. \u201cThe blinds were closed, but through the green slats she saw all those fascinating ups and downs going on outside.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Dickinson gone, and only her manuscripts left to represent her, scholars and all can only peer through green slats again \u2014 not quite seeing, but doing so with joy.<\/p>\n

They also can pore over manuscripts, metadata, comparison texts, and annotations. \u201cShe\u2019d be very amused by us,\u201d said Smith. Or perhaps Dickinson would simply remind us that searches for meaning in art can only go so far. She wrote in 1879:<\/p>\n

To see the Summer Sky
\nIs Poetry, though never in a Book it lie \u2014
\nTrue Poems flee \u2014 <\/i><\/p>\n\r\n\n

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