ESSENTIAL oils are wrung:
The attar from the rose
Is not expressed by suns alone,
It is the gift of screws.The general rose decays;
But this, in lady’s drawer,
Makes summer when the lady lies
In ceaseless rosemary.
I was unemployed for a long time after I finished my masters, and if there’s one thing that I heard over and over–and which helped my peace of mind exactly none–it’s this: yes, life is hard now, but this trying time will make you stronger. If there’s any true piece of advice that people hate to receive more than this, I’d love to know it.
Dickinson’s point here is that in order to extract the attar (literally, the rose’s essential oil), you have to put the rose through the ringer. You can’t ask it nicely, or wait for it to dry in the sun–you have to process it. Leave the roses on the vine? They’ll decompose. But their essential oil, the perfume that remains after the extraction, will last forever. This will preserve the smell of summer even in the coldest months, even when the lady who purchased it–or for whom it was purchased–has died, and only rosemary (the herb of remembrance) remains of her.
So the roses went through a process and the bit that was left–the distilled oil–comes out fragrant, long-lasting, desired. Part of me wants to find this beautiful. Part of me is very tired of having to be personally distilled in order to come out the other side stronger, smarter, or at least employed.
This is the first Dickinson poem that has wholly embodied melancholy this year. Here’s to coming out the other side as fresh as rosewater.
The Emily Project 