[lit-ideas] Re: Dickinsoniana

  • From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2015 07:39:37 -0400

We are considering Donald Glancy's literary criticism: "all of Emily
Dickinson's verse can be sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas", which
got us humming.

Now, the implicature is not of course that Dickinson KNEW that. For it may
well be that a poet writes verse that is sung to a LATER tune.

The earliest known version is found in Christy's Plantation Melodies. No.
2, a songbook published under the authority of Edwin Pearce Christy in
Philadelphia in 1853.

Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) would be 13 years old
when the second issue of Christy's Plantation Melodies came out, and she
might have been charmed by the tune.

When we speak of 'sub-text' we are talking Griceian. Vide Holdcroft, "Forms
of Indirect Communication". Suppose a poet presents as subtext this (or
that). Unless he intends his addressee to recognise the sub-text as part of
the con-text, it would not be 'communicated' -- a hint is just a hint.

In a message dated 8/23/2015 3:12:05 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx focuses on the lyrics to the tune according to Donald
Glancy
all of Emily Dickinson's poems can be sung, and asks:

"Possible sub-text here?"

I like that: especially the 'possible'. The use of 'sub-text' has a
different 'sense' (shall I say) in Derrida's work, but then as Geary remarks,
"EVERY word, and punctuation marks, has a different sense in Derrida --
especially when he lectured at Yale!".

Ritchie continues:

""[Y]ellow babies," was the term in the Lee-Custis household for babies
resulting from master-slave relationships"

-- which may lead to further sub-texts. Sometimes Grice speaks of
idiosyncratic communicative practices. Was this a 'code'? We don't think so.
Was
this generalised to the borough of the Custis-Lee household (for Grice:
Whitehead & Russell is equivalent to Russell & Whitehead). Was the practice
generalised to the township, and so on. It may all lead indeed to the SOURCES
for Chrsty's Plantation Melodies, No. 2 -- of which there MUST be an
annotated edition!

From a linguistic Griceian analytic point of view, 'yellow' (when
'collocated', as linguists have it) before 'baby', to refer to 'resulting from
a
master-slave relationship' may be figurative ('or not,' Geary adds).

When collocated before 'rose' it must literally refer to either:

a. Rosa banksiae
b. Rosa foetida
c. Rosa hemisphaerica
d. Rosa persica

But we know that since Burns, or before, 'rose' has always attained a
'figurative' implicature (never 'sense')

In the case of Burns, he is careful to avoid the implicature (Grice's
example: You ARE the cream in my coffee, not "You are LIKE the cream in my
coffee"). It may be argued that Burns turns the metaphor into a simile for
reasons of scanning:

O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That’s sweetly play'd in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry:
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee well, my only Luve
And fare thee well, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.

In the "Yellow Rose" case the metaphor is blatant:

There's a yellow rose in Texas, that I am going to see,
No other darky [sic] knows her, no darky only me
She cryed [sic] so when I left her it like to broke my heart,
And if I ever find her, we nevermore will part.

Geary once said that roses don't smell (and that Shakespeare is
personifying the rose when he -- Shakespeare -- says that a 'rose by any other
name
would SMELL' -- "Roses don't have noses"). In this case, the yellow rose
cries, which ENTAILS that the rose has eyes.

"She's the sweetest rose of colour this darky ever knew,
Her eyes are bright as diamonds,they sparkle like the dew;"

"the sweetest rose of colour" should entail: 'the sweetest rose of yellow
colour', but some find the addition of 'colour' otiose. The interesting
thing is that the singer instead omits 'yellow' and adds the 'otiosity'.

"You may talk about your Dearest May, and sing of Rosa Lee,
But the Yellow Rose of Texas beats the belles of Tennessee."

Since Ritchie is investigating Lee, this Rosa Lee may be some keyword.

"When the Rio Grande is flowing, the starry skies are bright,
She walks along the river in the quite [sic] summer night:"

Entailment: the rose has feet. (Strong suggestion that the implicature is
that a 'HUMAN' object of affection -- or legged animal? -- is meant here).

"She thinks if I remember, when we parted long ago,
I promised to come back again, and not to leave her so."

The rose has a brain, or at least she is able to think, and in conditional
terms ("she thinks if I remember..."). Further evidence that this is an
implicature and that the rose is code for a legged human rational thinking
animal: a person.

"Oh now I'm going to find her, for my heart is full of woe,
And we'll sing the songs togeather [sic], that we sung so long ago
We'll play the bango gaily, and we'll sing the songs of yore,
And the Yellow Rose of Texas shall be mine forevermore."

And she was!

Cheers,

Speranza


There's a yellow rose in Texas, that I am going to see,
No other darky [sic] knows her, no darky only me
She cryed [sic] so when I left her it like to broke my heart,
And if I ever find her, we nevermore will part.
She's the sweetest rose of color this darky ever knew,
Her eyes are bright as diamonds,they sparkle like the dew;
You may talk about your Dearest May, and sing of Rosa Lee,
But the Yellow Rose of Texas beats the belles of Tennessee.
When the Rio Grande is flowing, the starry skies are bright,
She walks along the river in the quite [sic] summer night:
She thinks if I remember, when we parted long ago,
I promised to come back again, and not to leave her so.
Oh now I'm going to find her, for my heart is full of woe,
And we'll sing the songs togeather [sic], that we sung so long ago
We'll play the bango gaily, and we'll sing the songs of yore,
And the Yellow Rose of Texas shall be mine forevermore.
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