Emily Dickinson’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”

Emily Dickinson’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”

Emily Dickinson’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” is the poem equivalent of a sculpture carved to represent grief; the poet has metaphorically carved from the rock of suffering a remarkable statue of the human mind that has experienced severe agony.

Introduction and Text of “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”

The speaker in Emily Dickinson’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” (number 341 in Thomas H. Johnson’s Complete Poems) is creating an intense drama that sets in center stage the bitter agony involved in experiencing utter torment.

The speaker does not name the origin of the certain type of “pain,” because she takes as her purpose only the illumination of the effect she is exploring. If the individual is grieving because of losing a loved one to death or possibly to the breaking up of a friendship, pain will affect that individual in a similar manner to one surfing from an fatal illness. The result of pain regardless of the cause is the issue, not the cause itself.

The tragedy of cause may be held in abeyance and explored separately. When pain itself is explored, it is not also necessary to make clear the original cause for the onset of the pain. The issue of pain itself and how the human heart and mind respond to that stimulus offer a sufficient quantity of material on which to focus.

The poem plays out in three stanzas; the first and third stand in quatrains, while the middle stanza is displayed in a cinquain. The poem features a masterful dramatization, resembling a sculpture set in stone. This poem testifies to the greatness of Emily Dickinson, not only as a poet but also as a lay psychologist.

That the poet was able to sculpt her poem from the stone of grief demonstrates her versatility and the ability to envision and craft into images the language of the heart and mind.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
A Wooden Way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

Reading of “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”

Commentary on “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”

The images that represent hardness, stillness, and cold combine to create the substance out of which this intense drama grows into existence. The images, while mostly concentrated in the visual, however, bleed over into the other senses. One can virtually hear the hardness and stiffness that afflict the heart and mind as the individual suffers the great agony described so colorfully and precisely.

First Stanza: Stunned by the Onset of Grief

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The speaker begins the scene with a rather dramatic claim that after the experience of some great event causing suffering, a state of solemnity visits the heart and mind of the sufferer. This simple claim puts a label on the stunned feeling which has accompanied the sudden arrival of grief.

That grief results from having experienced some great tragic terror or torment, and that intense feeling can be described as “formal,” as the next step of trying to accept and overcome that pain must be taken. The opposite emotion would then necessarily be “informal,” wherein the individual would remain content or perhaps even in the neutrality of emotion that would cause not feeling at all.

The usual non-suffering consciousness retains no special form, as it spreads out over the heart and mind, formless, shapeless, and unrecognized until nudged into existence by its opposite—or near opposite. The neutrally existing emotion remains neutral or unfeeling until it is forced by circumstances to feel in order to act.

After the suffering begins, the consciousness becomes aware of itself as it begins to feel the sensations of cold, hard, and/or stiff, as in the colorful image, the “Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs.” Time then lets loose its strict hold on consciousness, prompted by the intensity of feeling.

The suffering victim can fanaticize that she has been feeling this new way for an eternity. The personified heart begins to pose questions to the mind, trying to distinguish just how long the pain has been afflicting it: did it happen yesterday or was it ages ago? Such a “stiff Heart” can no longer sense time—minutes, day, years all seem irrelevant to the individual suffering from fierce agony because in such distress, it seems that such a state will never end.

Second Stanza: The Expansion of Formal Stiffness throughout Body and Mind

The Feet, mechanical, go round –
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
A Wooden Way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

The sufferer may seem to pass through her hours and days as would an automaton. The stiffness seems to expand throughout the body from the heart to the feet that are no longer driven by organic impulse but by some “mechanical” motor. They go but without purpose or desire.

The suffering individual seems to be just “going through the motions” of living, or rather existing, for she has become incapable of sensitive living. Her life has become “Wooden”; she pays no attention to important details. She might as well be “a stone”—her ability to enjoy “contentment” is simply like a piece of “Quartz”—inanimate, hard, and cold. She has become a cliché, attempting to carve out her existence on this newly found pice of rock that she has experienced as inordinate pain.

Third Stanza: Uncertainty of Outliving the Trauma

This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

This horrendous suffering has effected this hard, cold, stiff formality, and it has morphed into a dreadful “Hour of Lead, ” causing time to transform into an ocean of lead. The navigator on such a sea finds it virtually impossible to move forward.

Such pain must be overcome, if the individual is to continue living her life. Thus, the speaker must reach some satisfactory conclusion. So she arrives at the possibility that if the suffering soul can just manage to live through the painful event, she will still remember the experience.

The question then becomes how will looking back and recalling such pain affect the person’s life in future time. The speaker decides that recalling such an event will resemble remembering almost dying from freezing to death in the snow.

First, she will recall the freezing chill. Then she will remember nearly losing consciousness and remaining in a stupefied state of awareness. And finally she will realize that she can hold on no longer, and then she will allow herself simply to relax let go of all thoughts involving the trauma. As she remained in the throes of torment, the sufferer could not be assured that she could live through the event.

However, if she does outlive the tragedy, according to her conclusion, she should be able to look back and recall the pain as a cold, hard, stiff substance that stiffened her until she finally managed to control and lose the consciousness that felt that unendurable misery.

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