"I only said—the Syntax—": Elision, Recoverability, and Insertion in Emily Dickinson's

Poetry
Author(s): John Schmit
Source: Style , Spring 1993, Vol. 27, No. 1, Language, Grammar, Prosody (Spring 1993),
pp. 106-124
Published by: Penn State University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42946024

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 John Schmit
Augsburg College

"I only said- the Syntax-": Elision, Recoverability,

and Insertion in Emily Dickinson's Poetry*

Emily Dickinson's poetic corpus offers evidence that she creates ambi-
guity and with it a variety of interpretive possibilities for the reader. By simple
elision, most of which is licensed by syntactic recoverability rules, she creates
indeterminacy. In instances of nonrecoverable deletion, readers are forced,
consciously or unconsciously, to supply uncertain details. There also exists a
number of instances of recoverable deletion for which alternative unlicensed
substitutions are possible. We are better able to read Dickinson's poetry, then,
if we understand the ways in which she elides words and phrases.
This understanding shows us the possibilities for recovering or inserting
those bits of language that standard grammar allows us to identify as missing.
By recovery, I mean the recognition of unique and unambiguous elided words
or phrases. Insertion, on the other hand, is the speculative addition of words
or phrases to lines in which the syntax gives strong clues of grammatical ill-
formedness caused by elision.
This study will look at elision both through an examination of syntactic
categories and a consideration of rules that Dickinson appears to have for-
mulated and that operate throughout her corpus. My first contention is that,
while specific recovery is often not possible in her poetry, Dickinson's elision
accommodates our grammatical expectations. In places where we cannot iden-
tify specific elided elements, we can often identify their grammatical categories.
A subsequent contention is that Dickinson's 1,775 poems show patterns of
elision from which we can derive some guidelines for making guesses as to
what should be inserted into syntactic positions that she appears to have left
empty.
A number of studies have addressed this question in the past, but the
consideration of elision in Dickinson's poetry is a far larger concern than those
studies or this can adequately treat in a few pages. Still, for the sake of ori-
entation it is helpful to review the discussion thus far. The question of how
to deal with elision is no less interesting now, but our ideas concerning the
treatment of poetic syntax are quite different. Few people, for example, discuss
grammatical rules for the generation of poetic discourse any longer.

*1 owe a great debt to Joseph Moldenhauer and Mackie J. V. Blanton for their insightful criticism
and copious commentary upon this manuscript.

106 Style: Volume 27, No. 1, Spring 1993

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Elision, Recoverability, Insertion in Dickinson 107

In 1971 Samuel R. Levin, in his article "The Analysis of Com

in Poetry," first proposed that we could recover deleted elements o
like many of Emily Dickinson's, elements that seem to have been
by "compression," the apparent elision of words and phrases that w
expect in normal syntax. In 1972 Eugene Kintgen attacked Levin's a
in "Nonrecoverable Deletion and Compression in Poetry"; the article
with a reply by Levin. Five years after that, Frank L. Coppay took h
Levin in "The Internal Analysis of Compression in Poetry."
Levin begins by assuming the existence and availability of a poe
petence: an ability to read, understand, and possibly even generate
terances, as well as an ability to say what is and is not consisten
poetic structure ("Analysis of Compression" 39). This poetic com
akin to linguistic competence, our unconscious knowledge of gramm
the resulting ability to generate acceptable sentences and understand
Given this poetic competence, readers would be able to recogniz
constituents and recover them according to the rules of the poetic
This intuition, Levin says, has "presystematic validity," informing t
whenever the poetic structure includes deleted elements ("Ana
Compression" 40).
The effect of these deletions induces a reader to believe that com
is present. Levin, however, refuses to be constrained by rules th
recovery only when the deleted elements can be recovered uniquely
ambiguously. (Such rules are universal in discussions of nonpoeti
Levin says instead that "the grammar and the speaker must coincid
ability to interpret sentences" ("Analysis of Compression" 41). G
sometimes unusual character of poetic syntax, one must be able to
for structures that would otherwise seem uninterpretable by the gr
the language proper. This notion of a "poetic competence" derives fr
work by Levin himself, as well as works by Manfred Bierwisch, Ro
kobson, M. A. K. Halliday, A. A. Hill, and Jan Mukarovsky, a host o
linguists of the era. All would have supported Levin's assertion that t
of poetry ought not to be constrained by normal linguistic rules.1
Talk of "poetic grammars" was largely discarded with the recog
that conventional grammatical rules give us most of what we need
preting poetry without creating new problems. Yet, Levin was corr
poetic licensing, in this case, for the reader. We have to be able to
compressed lines especially in poetry like Dickinson's. Strict constra
not desirable when one is reading the work of a literary artist whos
is ambiguity. Recoverability violations are necessary if readers are
the possibilities for explicating compressed lines. But again, this is
a form of systematic recoverability violation and an interpretive d
is informed by the grammar but operates outside of it.

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 108 John Schmit

In a more recent
deletion, Christann
syntax" of cryptic
which she encloses
for marking insert
Dickinson's poems a
"expecting indeterm
29). She suggests th
links between cons
practice, Miller arg
ments together and
"disjunctive" or "co
and logical associati
the possibility to w
Instead of insertin
a method of charac
tures (for exampl
description of the
Compression" 43). B
tions to prelexical u
deep structure for
Here I agree, but I
"embarrassing cons
tion; it is in part t
in that it fails to r
just a semantic on
lead, but I isolate s
salient syntactic an
example above both
frame like [V: -tran
These category fra
prelexical structure
identifiable, the inse
readers flesh out "c
recurrences in the
ferences about the
To begin with a si
example from a poe
Themself are all I have-
Myself a freckled- be- (lines 1-2; parenthetical references
are to lines in Dickinson's poetry)

In the first line we find a reflexive pronoun without an antecedent, a clear

violation of binding rules within government and binding (GB) theory and a

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Elision, Recoverability, Insertion in Dickinson 109

violation of well-formedness within any description of standard English

fact that "themself " is an ungrammatical form, apparently assigned a si
marker by a mechanism to which we have no access, requires its own s
one that I will not attempt to tell here.) GB theory (though any accoun
standard English would do) dictates that each of these reflexives must be
to an antecedent in the same clause. We know that this missing antece
a nominative plural noun or pronoun, and we can place it before "them
because antecedents of reflexives must precede them in order to govern
In the second line of this example, the head (the noun itself) of the s
noun phrase, "a freckled

formedness. We know the category, case, and (fro

ber of the missing word even though we cannot r
item. We know further that the missing noun m
pronoun "myself," since this second noun phrase
by the copula. As well, the reflexive pronoun
within its clause by a coreferential personal pron
clearly /, the first-person nominative singular f
subject of the sentence. This last example is of a
even though it is not conventionally licensed.
The point of this analysis is simply that, even
include at least three deletions, two of which can
(the possible noun antecedent of "themself" and
"a freckled

inserted for the deleted elements. This category

certain (and no doubt desired) indeterminacy wi
and recoveries in place, we might get the followi

[NP: + nominative, + plural] Themself are all I have

[I] Myself [a Freckled [N: + nominative, + singular]]

This much can be done by any account of sta

understanding of which tells us that items of th
lyingly present. In one case, at the beginning of
leads to unique recovery. In the other two cases
and "freckled [noun]," we can speculatively inse
erable. To do so we follow whatever clues are available from context and
familiarity with Dickinson. It would be unwise, for example, to insert girl as
the missing head of the noun phrase because Dickinson occasionally uses male
narrators, but any noun that fits the semantic context of a line such as "[I am]
a freckled [noun]" could be attempted.
The next level of analysis, then, is really explication and not recovery.
From my reading of the poem, I might attempt to flesh the lines out this way:

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1 10 John Schmit

My freckles Themself
I, Myself, am a freckle

I build these judgm

nonstandard form, an
or to the speech of a
of freckles as belongi
in the second line; (2
since "themself" is c
lower sentence of the
in the subject positio
antecedent of "them
using grammatical c
certainty of being t
that I am wrong, I a
rather wrong becaus
Still more remains
problems that reader
question is, "When
pressed?" Three thing
in which the second
which we recognize
a freckled- be- "; th
constituent is missin
as in parallel constr
generally in everyda
adjectives, of which
an unusual one. The
trouble. What happen
is missing, but we ca
This question is pre
first article when he
Levin undermines a
gives no real evidenc
in suggesting that th
bility does not dismi
syntactic competenc
For this reason much
Coppay is not about t
around Levin's intuit
Levin begins his art
he feels by his poeti

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Elision, Recoverability, Insertion in Dickinson 1 1 1

When Etna basks and purrs

Naples is more afraid
Than when she shows her Garnet Tooth-
Security is loud-

Levin comes to the end of the poem and thinks that he has missed something;
in fact, he has not, but he assumes that something has been deleted: "a fourth
term, to make the comparison symmetrical" ("Analysis of Compression" 42)
("basks and purrs," and "shows her Garnet Tooth" [and

his semantic-features analysis to suggest t

. .shows her Garnet Tooth and roars" ("Ana
ever, both Kintgen and Coppay argue well tha
to our understanding of the poem. Kintgen
functions unitarily; the two conjoined words
just as the phrase "rich and powerful" oppos
too, notes the functional equivalency of "
sponse concerning symmetric and asymmet
utive conjuncts fails to provide syntactic ev
nor does recovery of deletion seem essential
08).
In looking at parallelism Levin was on the right track, but we should
appeal to parallelism only when we see conclusive evidence- a necessary and
unfilled syntactic category- and such an environment may be difficult to iden-
tify. To illustrate this problem we can consider two other poems by Dickinson,
one in which parallelism seems obvious and one in which it does not; in the
first we can recover the deletions reasonably quickly and unambiguously, while
in the second we need to stretch a bit. The primary difference between the
two involves a question as to what it is that tips us off to the presence of
deletion.
Consider first, then, the final four lines of "I can wade Grief-" (252):

Give Balm- to Giants-

And they'll wilt, like Men-
Give Himmaleh-
They'll Carry- Him!

Here we find two recoverable deletions licensed by syntactic parallelism. W

see immediately that the first two lines are parallel with the third and four
There is no need to recover categories because we can recover the uni
lexical items that are missing. After "Himmaleh" in the third line we
recover to Giants, the deletion of which is licensed by a parallel in the fir
line. We can recover And before the fourth line because its deletion is licensed
by a parallel in the second.
Consider next a stanza from poem 495 that from its construction can be
read as a single sentence:

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 112 John Schmit

It's thoughts- and just

And Old Sunshine- about-
Make frugal- Ones- Content-
And two or three- for Company
Upon a Holiday-
Crowded- as Sacrament-

Our awareness of the rules for existential sentences allows us to insert "that"
between the complements in the first two lines and the verb they govern,
"Make" in the third line. Next, we might look at "about" in line 2; if it is a
preposition, then an object noun phrase is missing. But if "about" were a
adverb, there would be no missing noun phrase. Here, then, we know how t
recover a category, but we do not know whether or not we should. An awarene
of ambiguity suggests that we must make a choice. Likewise, in the fourth lin
"Two or three" can be read as pronouns. But if we read them as adjectives,
they would suggest a missing noun, leaving us yet another choice. And still
more ambiguity exists: does "Crowded- as Sacrament" modify "Holiday," or
is it parallel with "Content," describing a feeling? A choice between the
possibilities brings about a change in meaning.
What would happen, then, if we assumed that the last three lines were
parallel with the first three? In that case, the stanza might be fleshed out wit
some certainty (though we still have to make choices):

It's thoughts- and just One Heart-

And Old Sunshine- about- [oneself]
[That] Make frugal- Ones- [feel] Content-
And [it's] two or three [hearts]- for Company
Upon a Holiday- [that make frugal ones feel]
[As] Crowded- as Sacrament-

Here I have chosen to insert a pronoun as an object for "about," but the sen
of the lines would change little if "about" were read as an adverb. The rest
follows directly from the assumption that the first three lines are parallel t
the last three, an assumption that I made based on the frequency of elision
licensed by parallelism in Dickinson's poetry.
In the face of such ambiguity readers have two choices: they may focu
on syntactic (and subsequently, though less certainly, on lexical) expectations
or they may focus on possible interpretations (a set of semantic expectation
to tell them what to expect, since before they have a "sense" of the lines the
may have an incomplete understanding of the sentence structures necessary
to create that sense. A set of possible paraphrases may provide clues to the
syntactic pattern that arises most naturally out of the lines. In either case,
readers may be guided by an aesthetic sense.
While context makes recovery possible, it does not always lead to unique
recovery. Separating syntactic from semantic context, though, helps us avo
the kind of problem that Levin found with reading "When Etna basks a

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Elision, Recoverability, Insertion in Dickinson 1 1 3

purrs." A poem like the one below may have either, both, or neither
two characteristics previously examined: parallelism and syntactic elis
cause recovery here is dependent on thematic considerations, this poe
onstrates the limits of semantic context in solving problems of inserti
meaning of the following poem ( 1 206), for example, seems to hinge o
nitions of "Show" and "Play":

The Show is not the Show

But they that go-
Menagerie to me
My Neighbor be-
Fair Play-
Both went to see-

If we say that the first instance of "Show" means a presented program, but
the second means the real, the desired spectacle, then we can speculate as to
the meaning of the lines. This assumes that the ambiguity here is lexical rather
than syntactic. Either definition can be substituted for either occurrence of
"Show" in the first line. This choice, then, leads us to an interpretation of the
poem. The word "But" in line 2 provides a solid hint of syntactic parallelism.
If we make this assumption we can uniquely recover a parallel deletion
in the second line (although "but" demands that we omit "not" in the re-
covery). The rest has to follow solely from semantic expectation:

The Show is not the Show

But [rather] they that go- [are the Show]
My Neighbors] [are]
[A] Menagerie to me-
[But it is all] Fair Play-
[We] Both went to see- [each other]

(I have reversed the third and fourth lines to normalize the syntax.) As in "I
can wade Grief," Dickinson declines repetition. We might note that "Neighbor"
in the original fourth line is used collectively, as one would find it in the Biblical
setting "Love thy Neighbor," but I have made it plural so that it better agrees
with "Menagerie," an argument to which it is bound by a copula.
Anything inserted in the fifth and sixth lines must depend on semantic
intuition because of the ambiguity of the noun phrase "Fair Play," which could
mean either "clean sport" or "an attractive drama." I selected the former and
made the choice to depict this noun phrase as the complement in an existential
sentence. I could also have chosen the latter to provide a contrast, informed
by what could be contrastive syntactic parallelism with the first line: the show
is not the show itself, but what we see is an attractive spectacle. The first
insertion of the last line involves an insignificant choice; one could choose
freely among "[We] Both," "Both [of us]," or simply "Both," standing inde-
pendently as a pronoun. The final insertion, [each other], is based on my

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 114 John Schmit

impression that "se

lines this way:

[It was a] Fair Play-

[That we] Both went

"Both" went to see

of lexical ambiguity
indicates that possi
There is also a con
discourse determin
to a discussion of what Bierwisch would call "textual microstructure" and
"macrostructure" (112-13). He equates macrostructure roughly with genre,
though this equivalence is never overtly expressed, giving as examples the
construction of fables and the interlacing of episodes. The textual microstruc-
ture, he says, includes the structural qualities that lie in the recording area of
short-term memory; during the process of understanding, he says, they can be
reconstructed. Perhaps a better distinction would be that the microstructure
(in this case, the poem) includes that which is unique to individual texts, while
the macrostructure (a poetic corpus) is a collection of those features that are
found throughout a collection of related texts.
A question could then be posed concerning Emily Dickinson's poetry:
are 1,775 poems sufficient to comprise a macrostructure? Given this number
of texts linked to each other by common features- elision and ambiguity, for
example- we might expect one poem by Dickinson to inform our reading of
another. Certainly those who have read the corpus of her poems have had a
greater opportunity to discover the features of Dickinson's poetry (and possibly
intuit rules that Dickinson has invented for her poetic syntax) than those who
have read only a few poems. Subscribing to a notion like macrostructure would
allow us to describe Dickinson's poetic idiolect in terms of a feature set, which
would be more accurate than describing it in terms of a grammar. Through
the experience of a specific task such as reading Dickinson's poems, we in-
tuitively identify a set of macrostructural features.
An example of this intuition might be found in a pair of poems that
appear to be constructed in parallel fashion with each other. "I can wade
Grief-" bears a strong resemblance to "Give little Anguish-" (310). Each
poem exhibits recoverability by parallelism. Here again is the recovered version
of the former:

Give Balm- to Giants-

And they'll wilt, like Men-
Give Himmaleh- [to Giants]
[And] They'll carry- Him!

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Elision, Recoverability, Insertion in Dickinson 1 1 5

Compare these lines with the first five of the latter poem:

Give little Anguish-

Lives will fret-
Give Avalanches-
And they'll slant-
Straighten- look cautious for their Breath-

Both poems use the same construction toward the same end. A compar
between the giving of relief and pain achieves the same result in each cas
relief brings wilting and fretting while a heavy load brings strength and straig
ness.

If we want help in recovering or inserting deletions in the second p

we can look at the first for clues. For example, we sense from their sy
similarity that in the second poem a prepositional phrase is missing in
of the first and third lines, and a conjunction is missing in the second
"Lives" replaces the pronoun "they" in each of the other lines parallel
we can assume that to lives or something equivalent to it should be this
prepositional phrase. With their deletions recovered and some spec
insertions added, the lines of the second poem might look like this:

Give little Anguish- [to lives] <or> [to Giants] <or> [to
people] <or> [to them]
[And] Lives will fret-
Give Avalanches [of Anguish] [to lives] <or> [to Giants]
<or> [to people] <or> [to them]
And they'll slant- [themselves] [and then]
Straighten [themselves]- [and] look cautious for their
Breath-

If we subscribe to the notion of macrostructure, the insertion of to lives or to

people in line 1 is in some sense recoverable by parallelism with the earlier
poem in which the syntactic object, "to Giants," is overt. The syntactic ca-
tegorization frame would look like this: [PP: +[NP] <or> +[Pro]]. Then, to
use a feature set like Kintgen's, any noun phrase that has semantic character-
istics like [+ human-like, + large, + strong] is contextually appropriate and
could be suggested for insertion. The contrast of "fret" ("ripple," "interlace")
in line 2 with "straighten" in line 4 gives further evidence of parallelism within
the stanza. The rest of the insertions are superfluous.
Another problem arises here. What happens, for example, when insertions
are made into the first structure of a parallel string? Can they license recoveries
in later parallel structures? Of course, the answer is no, but this is precisely
the effect that insertion in parallelism has. The "recovery" of of Anguish and
to people in the third line is motivated by parallelism with prepositional phrases
in the first line, but neither is actually licensed. Even though "Anguish" is

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 116 John Schmit

overt in the first

speculative associat
Another macrostr
Dickinson's curiou
that identical clause

As we pass Houses m
If they be occupied
So minds pass minds
If they be occupied

In the second line o

in the fourth line
conditional situatio
on parallelism: her
parallel. Thus, whil
be aware of the nec
been compressed.
Based on this assu
pressed into the "if
can attempt specul

As we pass houses m
[Whether or not] the
So minds pass minds
[In the event that] th

If this interpretati
interpreting other
the corpus, we nee
syntactically. To se
similar if clauses in

I know of people in t
Who would be very g
To know the news I k
If they the chance ha
Tis this expands the
And swells the scantest deed-
My right to walk upon the Earth
If they this moment had.

Here the previous ordering of the if terms (conjunctive, subjunctive) is re-

versed, but one possible reading of this poem would allow the same interpretive
insertions as in "As we pass houses" to be substituted in place of "If":

[Assuming that] they the chance had had

[Whether or not] they this moment had.

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Elision, Recoverability, Insertion in Dickinson 117

If an examination of macrostructural features can provide a clue in a

such as this, then it could yield similar results in other cases involv
recovery and speculative insertion throughout the corpus. This case
dicates that certain lexical items or syntactic constituents can be co
a way that leads us to "feel compression" when in fact there is not
recovered. This situation should cause us to question what "compres
poetry really is, as well as to speculate on the possible poetic effects o
sion.
At the most general level we can say that a poet will use langua
attention to the response that he or she wishes to elicit from the r
Michael Riffaterre says, "The author's consciousness is his preoccup
the way he wants his message to be decoded ' (157). While Riffaterre
the ways in which the author limits the reader's freedom of percep
can say conversely that Emily Dickinson controls the medium in su
that it cannot unambiguously be decoded. She forces the reader
various decodings and thus to see multiple interpretations and oppo
of perception.
When elements that cannot be uniquely recovered are elided fr
poems, possibility and ambiguity become an inherent part of attem
coding. Moving to the more specific effect, Jakobson says, "Ambig
intrinsic, inalienable character of any self-focused message, briefly
feature of poetry" (370-71). The layering effect of similarity and c
the levels of analogy, the overlap of schemes or tropes, the layers of
(poet, persona, and indirect speech) all are causes of ambiguity a
effect. Thus, if ambiguity exists and the poet's function is to cont
control) the decoding of the poem, ambiguity can be controlled
trolled). Dickinson decontrols her poetry through "compression": the
deletion or conflation of selected lexical and syntactic elements wit
poems to allow the possibility of perception.
Finally, to impose a more subjective view of poetic language
consider the function of poetic language that Hill describes. To dist
between poetic and ordinary language, Hill differentiates between (
dividual's microlinguistic or preliterary world; (b) style, the microlite
itself; and (c) the metalinguistic, metaliterary world of things: wh
objective reality (387). Between what is objectively real and what ha
in ordinary language is style, a poet's unique set of features for cr
world. The poet's hope is that through poetic style reality can exte
the microlinguistic world. Dickinson's compression could be seen as a
to disrupt the microlinguistic consciousness and thereby force reade
amine their preliterary reality; for a poet like Dickinson, who has
concern for metaphysics, this suggestion seems entirely reasonable.
Emily Dickinson knew how some discourse deletes and recovers e
almost unconsciously. In another poem (1035) she imitates a prosaic
lampoons our habits of correspondence:

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 118 John Schmit

You'll get my Letter

The seventeenth; Rep
Or better, be with m
Yours, Fly. (9-12)

These lines suggests an awaren

attempt to get the largest ret
money on telegrams. She might
elisions without any awarene
2) shows that Dickinson was a
she admits her habit of inco
creates:

Happy- Letter! Tell Her-

Tell Her- The page I never wrote!
Tell Her, I only said- the Syntax-
And left the Verb and the Pronoun- out! (2-5)

Everyone who reads Dickinson's poetry must eventually find the page she
never wrote.

Appendix: Types of Elision in Dickinson's Poetry

As there is not sufficient space to argue each of these examples, I

make only summary comments about each group of examples. A few o
elisions are uniquely recoverable, but as a rule I have not included gram
ically licensed elisions. Many more elisions are recoverable from dis
context if not from syntactic context. Readers may disagree with some o
examples, since at times they reflect the way I read Dickinson's poems,
believe that a grammatical justification exists for each one. I would emph
again, however, that anything substituted for these category and phrase mar
would be insertion, not recovery.

Elided Nouns

These are primarily examples of noun phrases from which the noun
has been elided. In some cases a good argument can be made that these p
include substantive adjectives, but I include them because a macrostru
argument suggests that the ambiguity that we find elsewhere in Dick
poetry could be present here as well.

163 Tho' she wear a silver apron-

I, a less divine [N]- (3-4)
163 Still, my little sunburnt bosom
To her Rosier [N], (7-8)

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Elision, Recoverability, Insertion in Dickinson 119

218 Are there two [N] (2)

366 A sweeter [N] to obey, (18)
476 But since the last [N]- included
both [N] - (5)
476 As Children- swindled for the first [N] (27)
483 A Wonderful [N] - to feel the Sun (7)
483 The Single [N] - to some lives. (16)
495 And two or three [N]- for Company- (4)

Elided Noun Phrases

Most of these are examples of missing objects for transitive verb

few cases there are clauses without overt subjects. Some may argue tha
lines read well enough without any speculative insertion of noun phr
would argue that these examples help show the range of possibilities
ferent readings.

1 72 And yet, [NP] as poor as I,

Have ventured all upon a throw! (3-4)
1 72 Defeat means nothing but Defeat,
No drearier [N], can befall [NP]! (1 1-12)
267 [NP] Charged us to forget Him- (3)
280 And finished knowing- [NP] then- (20)
281 'Tis so appalling- it exhilarates [NP]-
So over Horror, it half captivates [NP]- (1-2)
286 A second more, [NP] had dropped too deep (4)
289 Inviting to [NP]- (5)
339 From flasks- so small-
You marvel how they held [NP]- (14-15)
341 The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore [NP] (3)
347 That frightened [NP]- but an Hour- (8)
355 For deeming [NP]- Beggars- play- (8)
355 To lack [NP]- enamor Thee- (9)
393 A few- and they by Risk- procure [NP]- (3)
433 [NP] Knows how to forget! (1)
438 Because she breathed against [NP] (3)
443 We came to Flesh- upon [NP]- (16)
(or [Pro] = which w/ antecedent Errand ?)

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 120 John Schmit

456 So well that I can live without [NP]- (1)

459 The Peace cannot deface [NP] (or [S]?)- (2)

Elided Verbs

For the most part I have not included examples of missing copulas,
one may cite instances within Dickinson's canon for which more tha
linking verb could be inserted.

1 63 Tho' she wear a silver apron-

I, [V] a less divine [N]- (3-4)
1 96 Tim-shall [ V]- if I-do-
I - too - if he- [V] (23-24)
(both [V]s = die, 1. 21)
212 Least Rivers- [V] docile to some sea.
My Caspian- [V] thee. (1-2)
28 1 How easy, Torment, now- (7)
284 As I -[V or VP] toward Thee- (3)
427 That every sigh- may lift you
Just as high-as I [VP]- (18-19)
438 Deny! Did Rose her Bee-
For Privilege of Play
Or Wile of Butterfly
Or Opportunity- [V] Her Lord away? (4-8)
446 And could she, further [V], "No"? (12)
448 Himself [V]- to Him- a Fortune- (or) [V] (15-16)
(second preferred by scansion)

Elided AUX

Some of these are tense markers for perfect constructions. Most, t

are modal auxiliaries. Dickinson uses a great number of subjective verb
out modais, and so some of these insertions might be unnecessary.

293 Without that forcing, in my breath-

As Staples- [AUX] driven through (11-12)
307 His Name- [AUX] remain- (9)
([AUX] = would)
(there are many subjunctives of this ty
322 Deposed- at length, [AUX] [V:linking] the Grave- (26)

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Elision, Recoverability, Insertion in Dickinson 121

327 The Meadows- [AUX] [V:linking] mine-

The Mountains- [AUX] [V:linking] mine- (9-10)
334 And [AUX] just sipped- me- (8)
373 [AUX] One accost me- (24)
384 Bind One-The Other [AUX] fly (8)
469 The Territory Argent- that
Never yet- [AUX] consumed- (7-8)

Elided Adverb

These do not constitute a particularly interesting or numerous cl

elisions, but they occur occasionally.

263 So [Adv] greater than the Gods can show, (21)

445 And would it blur the Christmas glee
[Sub. Adv.] My stocking hang too high (17-18)

Elided Pronoun

In this class it is most often the case that we are only able to
missing pronoun because we know from context which one to expec
most of these instances are found in the same context as that of elided noun
phrases.

242 No Lightning, scares [Pro] away- (8)

242 As if an Axle, held [Pro]- (16)
293 [Pro] Could dimly recollect a Grace- (13)
360 A Book I have- a friend gave [Pro] ( 1 3)
400 To earn a Mine- [Pro] would run (5)
4 1 1 When [Pro] that you met it with before- (23)
435 'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, [Pro] prevail- (4-5)
466 Or Gold- [Pro] who am the Prince of Mines- (5)
487 An Ample Letter- How you miss [Pro]-
And would delight to see [Pro]- (5-6)

Elided Determiner

We know from any standard English grammatical paradigm that

miners must occur in these contexts. In most cases they are articles,
do not know whether they would be definite or indefinite.

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 122 John Schmit

209 [Det] Leopard breathes- at last (4)

285 Winter, were [Det] lie- to me- (14)
400 Say- [Det] last I said- was This- (22)
427 Wear you on [Det] Hem- (9)
433 [Det] Globe did not teach it (11)
49 1 Show me [Det] Division [Pro] can split or pare- (6)

Elided Preposition or Prepositional Phrase

I would guess that there are few of this type of elision because
importance that prepositions have in marking grammatical function.
dance of such elision might create too much possibility even for Dic

398 The other side [Prep] the Block- (4)

410 And tho' 'its Years ago- [Prep] that Day- (15)
439 But proves [Prep] us (6)
473 Nor introduce- my soul- [PP] (6)
(depends on definition of introduce)

Ambiguous Elision

Here are a few more examples for which it is difficult even to say w
has been elided.

200 I stole them from a Bee-

Because- [Prep] Thee-
Sweet plea-
He pardoned me! (1-4)
(because the phrase or clause c
we do not know whose it is)
243 [NP] [V] No Trace. . . (or)
No Trace. . .dissolved as utterly. . .
[NP] discloses just a Hue (9-15)
284 if All - is All -
How [can] [NP or Pro] larger- BE (5-6)
325 All these- [NP] did conquer- (or)
All these- did conquer [NP] (5)
339 Thy flower- be gay-
Her Lord- away! (21-22)
(missing subordinator? missing [
clamation point?)

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Elision, Recoverability, Insertion in Dickinson 123

352 But smaller bundles- Cram [NP or PP], (or)

But smaller bundles- [NP] Cram [PP], (8)
360 Industrious until- [S] (8)
(or) Industrious until-
The Thimble weighed too heavy- (8-9)
413 -but they say
Himself- [Prep] a Telescope
Perennial [-ly] beholds us- (11-13)
(Telescope = apposition or means? Perennial

Missing Existential (It is. . . .)

Like missing linking verbs, these pose little trouble to our understanding.

433 (3)
439 (3)
452 (16) (I am. . .?)
470 (8) (That is. . . .)
483 (13)

Ambiguous Contraction

306 Eternity's disclosure (13)

(poss. or copula?)

Notes

1 Such discussions were numerous during the decades of the sixties and seventies.
For the best examples, including those of the critics mentioned here, see Seymour
Chatman and Samuel R. Levin's Essays on the Language of Literature and Donald C.
Freeman's Linguistics and Literary Style.
2 Also see Miller's "Dickinson's Language: Interpreting Truth Told Slant."
3 For an explanation of binding rules see Noam Chomsky's Lectures on Govern-
ment and Binding (183-84); a more simple account can be found in Andrew Radford's
Transformational Syntax (362-95).

Works Cited

Bierwisch, Manfred. "Poetics and Linguistics." Trans. Peter H. Salus. Linguistics and
Literary Style. Ed. Donald C. Freeman. New York: Holt, 1970. 96-115.

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 124 John Schmit

Chatman, Seymour, a
Boston: Houghton, 1
Chomsky, Noam. Lec
Dickinson, Emily. Th
Boston: Little, 1955.
Coppay, Frank L. "Th
19-38.

Freeman, Donald C. L
Halliday, M. A. K. "T
23.

Hill, A. A. "Poetry and Stylistics." Chatman and Levin 385-97.

Jakobson, Roman. "Linguistics and Poetics." Style and Language. Ed. Thomas A.
Sebeok. Cambridge: MIT, 1960. 296-321.
Kintgen, Eugene R. "Non-recoverable Deletion and Compression in Poetry." Foun-
dations of Language 9 (1972): 98-104.
Levin, Samuel R. "The Analysis of Compression in Poetry." Foundations of Language
7 (1971): 38-52.

Miller, Christanne. "Dickinson's Language: Interp

to Teaching Dickinson 's Poetry. Ed. Robin Ril
New York: MLA, 1989. 78-84.

Mukarovsky, Jan. "Standard Language and Poetic

49.

Radford, Andrew. Transformational Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981.

Riffaterre, Michael. "Criteria for Style Analysis." Word 15 (1959): 154-74.

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