Language
Perhaps the most striking characteristic of Dickinson’s work is her use of language. Enamored with words, she is particular about her individual word choices, and to best appreciate her work, we need to be equally careful when reading her poems.
For example, in “There’s a certain Slant of light” (#320/258) from your assigned reading, note the use of “Heft” in the first stanza:
There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons—
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes—
It is too easy to read “Heft” as simply a synonym for “weight” (as in “a certain slant of light . . . that oppresses like the weight of Cathedral Tunes”). The word “Heft” is a richer word choice. It does imply “weight,” but it has other meanings as well. The OED (Oxford English Dictionary) provides a number of other connotations for “Heft”:
—Weight, heaviness, ponderousness.
—The bulk, mass, or main part
—To lift, lift up
—To lift for the purpose of trying the weight
—To confine nature, to restrain
Dickinson, who was fond of reading the dictionary, would have been familiar with the multiple meanings of words such as “heft.” When we consider the other possible meanings for “heft,” we expose an ambiguity about “Cathedral Tunes” that we might have otherwise missed in assuming Dickinson meant only “weight.” (NOTE: In Christianity, hymns are nearly always directed toward God or another heavenly figure, such as the Virgin Mary or the Catholic saints.)
In selecting the word “heft,” Dickinson summons the qualities of religious music that elevate the individual, raising someone above the physical world into the spiritual—the very purpose of religious music. Included in this lifting up is the sense that hymns lift a person into a realm that is massive and unwieldy (ponderous), implying that the world of the divine is so massive it is difficult to handle. But in the word “heft” also connotes negative aspects of religious uplifting. The divine confines and restrains nature with its weight and mass. Furthermore, the passage may also be read as referring to the quest for truth in religion. One might “try the weight” of the divine of which hymns sing in order to test his or her ability to handle that divine.
We could consider this single word for a long time, unpacking its relevance to the poem as a whole. This richness of Dickinson’s word choice and reflects the importance of every word in her poems. In choosing “heft” over a less resonant word, such as “weight,’ Dickinson manages to connote both the positive and negative characteristics of religious experience, illustrating that the religious is both uplifting and burdensome.