If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking

Kinds of pain in this short poem range from explicit in “aching” (Line 3) and “pain” (Line 4), to the implied pain of the potential heartbreak in Line 1. The “fainting” (Line 5) robin may be in pain as well, but the distress isn’t as specifically identified. If each type of pain in the poem resembles the pain of a broken heart, as the first line might suggest, the poet may be referring to emotional or psychological impairment. The verbs “ease” (Line 3) and “cool” (Line 4) either physicalize the pain or extend the metaphor. Another unusual diction choice occurs when Dickinson uses “the aching” (Line 3) rather than “the ache.” Use of the gerund here gives a sense of protracted suffering over time, an ongoing, possibly endless agony.

Dickinson uses imagery of pain not only to represent physical and psychological suffering, but also to represent trauma, disappointment, and disillusionment. “After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes” depicts post-traumatic dissociation—a complete detachment from feeling. In “I Can Wade Grief,” Dickinson rates disappointment and dashed hopes as the cause of more suffering than grief, and acknowledges pain as a source of strength: “Power is only Pain— / Stranded, thro’ Discipline” (Lines 10-11). Dickinson finds it hard to trust the heights of happiness: Pain always returns, even in the form of the absence of happiness. In “Joy to Have Merited the Pain,” Dickinson explores how time moves faster in moments of ecstasy, but seems endless in loss. In “Pain – Has an Element of Blank,” pain does not know “Where it begun – or if there were / A time when it was not” (Lines 3-4).

Dickinson’s acceptance of pain as a place of stability and continuity isn’t as morbid as it might seem to modern readers. Having been educated in Calvinist Amherst, Dickinson would have been raised to believe that the human heart was naturally deformed and human will infected. Even as she moved away from church dogma, Dickinson still read Calvin, still interpreted nature as a Calvinist, and still examined the world for signs that redemption was possible.