I Heard a Fly Buzz
by Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
Between the Heaves of Storm –
The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset – when the King
Be witnessed – in the Room –
I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away
What portions of me be
Assignable – and then it was
There interposed a Fly –
With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz –
Between the light – and me –
And then the Windows failed – and then
I
could not see to see –
|
A. The Atheist Reading: The narrator is dying; she
expects Christ (“the King”) to come at her death but all she gets is a fly.
B. The Damned Reading: The narrator is dying; she
expects Christ but gets a fly, a fiendish, satanic creature.
C. The Saved Reading: Here there are at least two
possibilities, which I’ll get to.
Let’s look at the atheist reading first, since I think
we can dispel it quickly. In support of such a reading, the poem ends with no dramatic
post life experience. Christ doesn’t come. The moment of death is dramatized
with a failing of the senses: “I could not see to see.“ A fly is an insect that hovers over carrion,
a dead piece of flesh that has no further consciousness. The fly, then, would serve as an emblem for
materialism, supporting an absence of an afterlife.
However, there are strong arguments that undermine
it. First we know that Dickinson was a
believer. She may have evolved to an unconventional
Christianity, but it was still solidly Christian. Just two poems before “I Heard a Fly Buzz” in
Dickinson’s catalogue of poetry is a poem clearly displaying her faith, “I live
with Him—I see His face.” This poem was
probably written within days of our poem under analysis. (For an account of Dickinson’s faith in her
poetry, see In Light of Christ: Writings
in the Western Tradition by Lucy Beckett, Ignatius Press, p. 424-30.)
Of course she may have suspended her faith for the
sake of this poem but there are way too many examples of her being not just a
religious person, but a devout person. More
importantly, while the poem does end with a failure of sensation, the poetic
stance is of a person looking back in time.
It’s in past tense: “I heard a fly buzz,” a sort of circling back from
the ending experience. She has died, and
she’s recalling those final moments in an afterlife. Some sort of consciousness is there, implied
by the narrative voice, only not of a flesh and blood, living consciousness. If she was really suggesting atheism, she
could easily have taken a different poetic stance and come out with a very
similar poem.
The damned reading is rather interesting, and I
think harder to disprove. Is a fly a
sort of inversion of the normal dove emblem of the Holy Spirit? Is it some sort of demonic angel? Is it Satan himself, sometimes referred to as
Beelzebub (or other times it’s the name of one of his deputies), a name with a
“buzz” sound to it? This time we can’t
rely on her biography or other supporting poetry to contradict this. In humility any Christian knows their
salvation is not guaranteed, and she may have taken this fancy and dramatized
the possibility.
Still, there is one thing the poem lacks to support
that reading. There is no rationale for
her going to hell. The center of the
poem is about an organized preparation: the acceptance of imminent death, the waiting
for “the last onset,” the willing away of “keepsakes,” the signing away of the
“portions” of the self. Such preparation
of the end would typically include a confession, a setting right of one’s trespasses. I love the phrasing, “Signed away/What
portions of me be/Assignable.” It’s not
just material articles she’s alluding to—that would be redundant to willing
away her keepsakes—but an inner part of her, a signing away of her sins. She has made her peace with God and there
would be no reason for going to hell.
Unless her point is that even then you can still go to hell. But if that
were so then she rhetorically would need more to flesh that point out since it
goes against common understanding. With
that, this reading is not probable.
So let’s look at saved readings. Here there are two possibilities.
Let me take the simple one first. The fly is a sort of weird angel, come to
draw her heavenward. Or it could be
Christ Himself, the King in a rather humble insect mode. Death would be seen not as some great
momentous event as expected at the beginning of the poem, but a rather
ordinary, common event. The rhetorical
device here would be contrast, the expectation of Christ the King versus the reality
of the humble fly, and that would be analogous to the expectation of death as
momentous verses common. That is a possible
reading but it doesn’t really explain that last stanza.
All three of the above readings cannot explain why the
fly moves “with Blue uncertain stumbling Buzz.”
That is the most remarkable line of the poem. Why is it blue and why does it stumble? Would Christ stumble? Would Satan stumble? Certainly a fly over carrion would not be
stumbling.
Another way to read the poem is that the fly is her
soul coming out at the moment of her death, that moment of stillness “between
the heaves of storm.” The last six lines dramatize that fraction of a second
where the soul has come out and the body is momentarily still functioning. Christ the King is there in the light, coming
from the window. Flies are drawn to
light, and so interposed. Her soul is
drawn to Christ, as a fly is drawn to light.
Her bodily eyes in that moment of death are seeing her soul as a fly
leave her body and head toward the window’s light. “And then the windows failed” is a wonderful
way to phrase her death. Windows don’t
fail, unless they break, and that’s not what’s happening here. It’s how her eyes would sense her death, a
failing to further function.
So why is the buzz stumbling and blue? First let’s appreciate that line. The sound effect is wonderful, alliterating
the bilabial “b” consonant (blue, second syllable of stumbling, buzz) to
simulate the fly sound. Second,
stumbling is what happens when one is unsure of one’s self. She, in the form of a soul, has just crossed
over into a new mode of existence and hasn’t gotten her bearings and balance
yet. But why blue? Sounds don’t have color. A description of one sense with another
sense, here describing sound as a color, is a form of synesthesia, a description
of a perception that is so intense that it crosses senses. Death has just occurred,
Christ is shining before her, all experiences that she has never felt. The new perception is unlike common
perception, a sort of camera filter transitioning hue. Why blue?
Besides the alliteration, perhaps it’s suggestive of the sky, the path
toward heaven, perhaps suggestive of peace, perhaps suggestive of death—a sort
of black with light—perhaps suggestive of a body of water, of a new beginning.
I hope you enjoyed the poem and my analysis. So which reading makes most sense to
you? Or is there another reading
altogether you can think of? If there is anything you can add, please do. I also hope next time you see a fly in the
house you will think of this poem as I do.
I leave you with a clip of a dramatized reading of the poem.
