DEATH is a dialogue between
~Emily Dickinson
The spirit and the dust.
“Dissolve,” says Death. The Spirit, “Sir,
I have another trust.”
Death doubts it, argues from the ground.
The Spirit turns away,
Just laying off, for evidence,
An overcoat of clay.
As the death-poems go, this one is pretty hopeful. The notion of death as a dialogue is an evocative one, though the metaphor quickly gets mixed in the third line. In the first two lines, death is the dialogue between spirit and flesh. In the third line, however, Death is a participant in the dialogue, and is talking with the Spirit. There is an implicit equation between Death and dust, death and body, as opposed to Spirit.
The dialogue begins with an imperious command from Death to the Spirit to “Dissolve,” and the dialogue quickly becomes an argument. The Spirit refuses the order, Death doubts this, and argues “from the ground,” implying that Death now inhabits the “dust” of flesh and that Spirit is already ascending to “another trust.”
The Spirit refuses to be drawn into the argument. Death is arrogant and bossy, but the Spirit finds expression in actions rather than words. It turns away, and lays off the trappings of the flesh.
It’s a very Puritan reading, this notion of the body as dust. It’s the reading many of us have been taught to accept—that flesh is somehow other than us, that our bodies are just shells for our souls. The body in this poem feels superfluous—while we’re told initially that Death is a conversation between flesh and soul, we quickly learn that the body here is silent—it’s Death and the Spirit that get to speak. The physical is almost extraneous, not really a part of the deceased, but merely “An overcoat of clay.”
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