A Fresco Painting from Pompeii Paired with Emily Dickinson’s Bedroom Window (and One of Her Poems)

A bedroom fresco?

Whose bedroom?

Source: Spiegel

And here’s Emily Dickinson’s bedroom window:

Dickinson’s bedroom was at her family’s Amherst homestead. Emily’s room was on the second story of their home. Here’s one of her poems:

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind–

As if my Brain had split–

I tried to match it–Seem by Seem–

But could not make them fit–

The thought behind, I strove to join

Unto the thought before–

But Sequence ravelled out of Sound–

Like Balls–upon a Floor–

About Santi Tafarella

I teach writing and literature at Antelope Valley College in California.
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2 Responses to A Fresco Painting from Pompeii Paired with Emily Dickinson’s Bedroom Window (and One of Her Poems)

  1. Mary says:

    I’m intrigued. But what are you trying to say about the connection between the two?

    • santitafarella says:

      I thought the contrasts were interesting—the Pompeii image of the busy urgency of maneuvering to “put it in” contrasted with the emptiness and loneliness of Emily’s one chair bedroom. Then it seemed her poem matched the Pompeii scene. She was trying to bring two halves together, a maneuvering of words, not bodies—trying to put things in their right order.

      But she could not make them fit.

      Sex and poetry are analogous.

      —Santi

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