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Analysis of Poem Safe in their Alabaster Chambers

Superficial attention to the 1861 version of Emily Dickinson's poem 216 ("Safe in their Alabaster Chambers") might produce readings that say, roughly, that the dead in their tombs await the last judgment while the universe and human history, unheeded by the dead, continue on their course, headed toward their own inevitable ends. (Though the first stanzas of the two versions of 216 are nearly identical, this stanza is examined here specifically in relation to the second stanza of the 1861 version.) The timelessness of death--the cessation of any relationship between the dead and time--appears to dominate the first stanza of the poem. But "the Resurrection" of the poem is the resurrection of the body and this doctrine periodizes death, that is, relates it to time. The death of the body is a stage in existence: life of the body, death of the body, resurrection of the body. The body's death is impermanent and is, therefore, inherently related to time.

In each phase of the body's cycle the nature of time is, however, very different. Temporality dominates the first two phases. In the life of the body the span of time is defined by the body's own continued existence (and the likely end of that existence, which can be projected by the simple knowledge of the spans human bodies can last). The second phase is also dominated by the temporal. But in this phase the body is rendered, it seems, indifferent to time's span. During the death of the body, prior to the Resurrection, temporal concerns have no effect; human life/history goes by and the universe ages but the dead are not involved with them. The third phase, following the resurrection, is life everlasting, infinite--all time and no time.

In the brief superficial reading of the poem the passage of time is unimportant to the dead in their tombs. This standard irony (the importance of temporal affairs, e. g., "diadems" and "doges," is ultimately completely unimportant) persi...

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Analysis of Poem Safe in their Alabaster Chambers. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 22:19, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1691177.html