I cannot live with You

Emily Dickinson

In Vain

I cannot live with you,

It would be life,
And life is over there
Behind the shelf

The sexton keeps the key to,

Putting up
Our life, his porcelain,
Like a cup

Discarded of the housewife,

Quaint or broken;
A newer Sevres pleases,
Old ones crack.

I could not die with you,

For one must wait
To shut the other's gaze down,
You could not.

And I, could I stand by

And see you freeze,
Without my right of frost,
Death's privilege?

Nor could I rise with you,

Because your face
Would put out Jesus',
That new grace

Glow plain and foreign

On my homesick eye,
Except that you, than he
Shone closer by.

They'd judge us-how?

For you served Heaven, you know,
Or sought to;
I could not,

Because you saturated sight,

And I had no more eyes
For sordid excellence
 I cannot live with You
Emily Dickinson

As Paradise.

And were you lost, I would be,

Though my name
Rang loudest
On the heavenly fame.

And were you saved,

And I condemned to be
Where you were not,
That self were hell to me.

So we must keep apart,

You there, I here,
With just the door ajar
That oceans are,
And prayer,
And that pale sustenance,
Despair!

This poem has been praised as her best love poem and may well be
her most famous love poem. In this heavily ironic poem, the final
expression and measure of the intensity of her love is her despair at
the lovers having to remain apart.

The poem is organized by the various lives they can't share: they
can't live together in this world; they can't die together; they can't
rise after death together; they can't be judged by God together,
whether destined for heaven or not. All they can do is maintain the
possibility of communication (the partially open door), though
"oceans" apart. Prayer or God offers no comfort or hope; all they
have is the "pale sustenance" (not a nourishing food), which is
despair.

This poem has an alternate reading: she rejects him to write poetry.

Life in this world: stanzas 1-3

Why can't they live together? Because it would be "life," but life
which is confined or restricted. She uses the metaphor of life as
porcelain locked up by the sexton (sexton: a church official whose
duties include maintaining church property, digging graves, ringing
 I cannot live with You
Emily Dickinson

the church bells). She refers to being together in this world as

"our life," a life locked up, not free, without passion or expression.

The reference to the sexton combined with the religious references

in the rest of the poem may signify the restrictiveness and
narrowness of conventional religion, which "kill." The cup
reference can be read as a reference to communion and would have
been a familiar association for Dickinson and her community.
However you read this metaphor specifically, its general meaning
is clear enough. The cup metaphor is expanded from the sexton to
the housewife, who prefers Sevres (Sevres: fine porcelain made in
the French town of Sevres). This extension to the housewife
suggests that the conditions and values of society are hostile to a
passion like theirs.

There is another way to read the opening two lines. She may be
rejecting her love for her art, i.e., writing poetry. When she says,"It
would be life," she may mean, "Living together would be real life,
but it would not be art." Dickinson wrote a number of poems about
poetry, and the topic of poetry runs through her letters.

Dying together: stanzas 4-5

They can't die together because she has to perform the last act
which the living perform for the dead, closing his eyes. She knows
he would be incapable of performing that act for her. On the other
hand, she cannot continue living once he dies; she uses metaphors
of cold ("frost" and "freeze") for death. She regards death as her
"right" and a "privilege," thereby making death a desirable state.
Nevertheless, because death would separate them, their dying
together is impossible.

Resurrection together: stanzas 6-7

The Grace referred to can be seen as Jesus's promise that the dead
will rise from their graves to life everlasting. Her total absorption in
her beloved, his importance for her, would relegate Jesus to
secondary status: her lover's face would outshine Jesus's. In
addition, she would be homesick unless her beloved were near her.
So resurrection together is impossible.

Final Judgment together: stanzas 8-11

As is appropriate to the topic of eternity, this grouping of four

 I cannot live with You
Emily Dickinson

stanzas is the longest in the poem. Initially, she imagines he would

be saved, because he served or tried to serve God; she did not,
implying that she would probably not be saved. One reading of
"saturated sight" is that she could see only him (that is, she cares
only for or is completely absorbed in him); consequently, she does
not care for the glories of Paradise. It is surprising, even shocking,
that she describes Paradise as "sordid." Sordid, today, generally
means dirty or depressingly wretched; an older meaning is having
an inferior nature. You must decide which meaning fits your
interpretation of this poem. Paradise is sordid in comparison to the
joys of her relationship with her beloved. She will not accept
heaven without him, and she regards any separation from him as
itself "hell."

Living apart: stanza 12

The only possibility left is to live apart, a partially open door

allowing their only contact. "Oceans" suggests a great separation
physically; turning to prayer would seem to be futile in view of her
rejection of resurrection and paradise. All that is left to support
them in their love is despair.

If you adopt the reading that she is rejecting love for her art, then
this stanza reads a little differently. Though they do not meet
physically, they will meet in her poetry. She will write poetry
("here"), and he will read her poetry ("there"). The poet needs
solitude or apartness to write poetry.

The last stanza is seven lines, almost twice as long as any of the
other stanzas. This length emphasizes the idea of the stanza, their
separation; also it gives the impression of a long or stretched out
time for her loneliness and aloneness.

"I cannot live with you" is another poem of not-having, a form that
exclusion often takes in Dickinson's poetry. Notice as you read her
poems how often the speaker or another figure is excluded or cut
off from the joys and successes of life. Such poems Dickinson have
contributed to her being seen as the poet of exclusion.

SUMMARY

This poems coherence results from the opposition of tensions that arise from
Dickinsons dual understanding of life. To live with the beloved is impossible,
 I cannot live with You
Emily Dickinson

for it would be life. Life is, on the other hand, something eternal, the key to
which resides with the church sexton, who keeps the key to the Lords
tabernacle. The cups of human life, however, hold no sacramental wine; the
housewife discards them when they break or crack and replaces them with
newer ware.

The speaker cannot die with the beloved, for the gaze of the Other intrudes;
it can be shut neither out nor down. This apparent rival that spies on any
possible pact is the metaphysical divine other that has first rights in matters of
death as well as life. Similarly, it is impossible for the speaker to stand by/
And see youfreeze; the single death of the beloved denies death to the
devoted speaker.

Even a joint resurrection of the lovers is impossible; this would anger Jesus
and obscure the face of the redeemer. To this dual understanding of life the
poet thus adds the stages of the Christian experience: life, death, judgment,
and resurrection. When the beloved looked upon the homesick Eye, grace
would Glow plain, but it would be foreign to him who sought a higher grace.
Furthermore, They d judge Us, saying that he sought to serve Heaven even
though she could not.

The speaker could then no longer have her eyes on paradise; both would
suffer damnation, but she would fall the lower, and they would still be apart.
The effect would be the same even if the beloved were forgiven. The only
alternative, Despair, becomes their connection; their only conversation is
their joint prayer, which allows them to link the immanent and the
transcendent
 I cannot live with You
Emily Dickinson

Themes and Meanings

This poem is a critique of the traditional paradigm for human life set forth by
Christianity. By means of the metaphor of a love relationship, the speaker
delineates the inadequacy of this paradigm as a model for human existence
and affirms a superior, individual definition of Life. What first appears in the
poem to be a renunciation of love becomes, in fact, a renunciation of those
ways of viewing life that interfere with the higher vision of the lovers.

The speaker renounces those definitions of life which do not provide

Sustenance. Life that is susceptible to decay, mutability, andmore
importantthe authority of others (the Sexton, the Housewife, They, or
God Himself) is life that can be and needs to be Discarded. The speaker,
from the beginning, implies that the two lovers can create a different kind of
life that is not perishablean eternal life: A newer Sevres pleases. Similarly,
power over death is appropriated by the lovers. If, as the speaker
metaphorically asserts, to die is to have ones sight freeze, then the lovers
will be looking at each other so steadfastly that only they can stop the gaze of
each other, only they can bring about death.

The speaker goes on to eradicate the possibility of traditional resurrection

when she says, in effect, that her beloved is brighter, more enlightening, and
more of a sun to her Eye than Jesus: Her lover, in other words, is...

(The entire section is 580 words.)