Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind-
Analysis
Emily Dickinson is a poetess to be remembered. The lonely woman from Massachusetts spent most of her life being depressed inside of her home while writing some of the most beautiful poetry about the many details of the world. She's most known and famous for having been cooped up all the time inside her house, but still having a fantastic, wise, and detailed look at the world. Her complete set of poems delves into life, nature, love, and time. In her poem, “#1129”, she brilliantly uses her simple two stanzas and easy rhyme scheme to juxtapose truth, light, and lightning to symbolize enlightenment in society, but not without her trademark dash.
A very famous story in the realm of philosophy is by Plato in his book The Republic. The story was called “The Allegory Of The Cave” and it refers to and simplifies the idea of enlightenment. In the story, a man is chained to the inside of a cave with a few other individuals in front of a weak glowing fire that occasionally creates little shadow puppets on the wall. The people inside of the cave have always been chained down there and know nothing of what is outside the cave. The people in the cave have just been sitting against a wall looking at another wall with a fire behind it and sometimes they see shadow puppets made with the fire on the ceiling. All the people are trapped in the cave until the man breaks his chains and climbs up the hill to the outside world. His eyes take a long time to adjust to the sun's rays and it's too much of a painful shock to know that there was an entire world out there after being trapped inside the cave for so long. Emily Dickinson was using this story in her poem “#1129”.
Emily Dickinson's first lines in “#1129” deals with sugar coating the enlightenment from coming out of cave so they can handle it better, “Tell all the Truth, but tell it slant/ Success in Circuit lies“ (1-2). A Utopian society requires an enlightened public and an enlightened public requires the truth, but the truth is hard to handle. Emily is asking us to try to understand the truth in the world, but we sort of need to sugar coat it so it isn't so much of a painful experience for those who cannot swallow the fact that we have been lied to about what the world is really like. Slanting does not mean changing the truth it just means making it easier to understand and grasp, that way we'd have more success in creating a Utopian society if we were trying for one.
After the person leaves the cave and starts to taste and understand all that the real world has to offer they understand that the world is a beautiful place and life is so much more precious and wonderful than it was in the gloomy cave. This is written in the next few lines, “too bright for our infirm Delight, the Truths' superb surprise” (3-4). Infirm is defined as weak in body, so “our infirm Delight” means the pointless shadow puppets on the wall do not mean anything compared to the truthful, real, and beautiful pleasures of life outside the cave. Enlightenment is really just how life is better when you have a greater understanding of the world.
After the person exits the cave in the story and gains a greater understanding of life and has a feeling that he's better off out there, he decides that everyone is better off being outside the cave. He then goes back and tries to tell people of how wonderful it is outside, but only one person believes him and tries to leave the cave. When the other person tries leave the cave it's too much for him and he goes back inside. “As Lighting to the Children eased/ With explanation kind” (5-6). The other person that leaves the cave is not a child, but may be uneasy like one. The truth can be ugly and disturbing to those that didn't discover it on their own similar to a lightning bolt in the night waking a sleeping child. You absolutely do not try to scare a child more when they're already afraid, a sane person would try to calm the kid down with kindness, but still remember that children can handle just as much as anyone else.
The proverb “Children are our future” means that the way we raise our children today determines how our society will end up tomorrow. If we continue on our current path of raising unenlightened kids without the ability to think critically we will continue to see absolutely no improvement in society whatsoever. Children have the incredible ability to grasp huge issues in today's society, but the reason we never tell them anything important about the world is because we believe ourselves superior and we don't think they can handle it. We can improve and fix our society by simply being slowly blunt with the younger generations today. Hence the line, “As Lightning to the Children eased” (5). Lightning is scary at first, children will be afraid of what the world is really like at first, but eventually they can grow accustomed to the problems of today and see that no more come up in the future.
The last two lines are a message from the beautiful mind of Emily Dickinson that she wants to see something better, “The Truth must dazzle gradually/ Or every man be blind” (7-8). This major flaw of today will be the downfall of humankind for if people never learn to think, feel, and see at a very young ages, then “every man be blind” (8).
The point of view from this poem seems to be sort of a mix of first and third person perspectives. You can tell that this is one person talking to you, but they seem almost omniscient about life through the very small amount of two stanzas as if they were almost third person. “#1129” is an incredible poem for being so short. There's so much in so very few amount of words. Emily also leaves cool hints about the main points of her poem. All the most important words of the poem are capitalized
Poetry is about analyzing words on the deepest levels of poetic emotion to understand what the poet or poetess is trying to say without being boring and literal about it. Great poetry comes from any great piece of inspiration that the poet may feel during their life. Emily Dickinson obviously felt a lot of great things during her more probable frequent trips into self-discovery, life, love, nature, and time.
