A reading of a classic Dickinson poem

‘Tell all the Truth but tell it slant’ is poem number 1129 in Emily Dickinson’s Complete Poems. It’s immediately recognisable as an Emily Dickinson poem: the use of the quatrain form, the characteristic dashes, the almost telegraphic style. But what does it mean to ‘tell all the Truth but tell it slant’? The short analysis below attempts an answer to this question. What is the meaning of this short and justly celebrated poem?

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind –

In summary, Dickinson says that we should tell the truth – the whole truth – but tell it indirectly, in a circuitous and round-the-houses fashion. The truth, she says, is too bright and dazzling for us to be able to cope with it in one go. We can be overwhelmed by it. The second stanza introduces the one simile of the poem: the way that lightning and thunderstorms are explained to children in kinder terms (‘eased’), so as not to frighten them. Dickinson concludes by saying that the truth, if shown too directly, has the power to blind us.

In other words, we might analyse Dickinson’s poem as follows: she is arguing that we humans cannot handle too much truth, that we, to borrow T. S. Eliot’s words, cannot bear too much reality. We are imperfect creatures, and the truth is too pure and good for our ‘infirm’, or diseased and weak, ‘Delight’. Dickinson is writing before the phrase ‘being economical with the truth’ was coined, but her poem raises a similar question. Is this the same as flat-out lying? It would seem not, though the word ‘lies’, couched as so often in its potential double meaning (be supine/tell falsehoods), is there in the poem’s second line.

One of the most compelling readings of this poem was offered by another poet, Anthony Hecht (1923-2004). Hecht argued that ‘the Truth’ which Dickinson refers to might be interpreted specifically as religious truth (Jesus’ words ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life’ in John 14:6, for instance), and that we are not meant to understand the ‘Truth’ of God directly. This is why we need holy texts that address themselves to us in the form of riddles and symbols. What makes such an analysis of ‘Tell all the Truth but tell it slant’ persuasive is that Christianity is full of such references to being ‘blinded’ by the truth. For instance, there is 1 Corinthians 13:12: ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.’

And certainly, Dickinson associates truth with light in this poem, suggesting that this truth carries the potential for enlightenment, whether religious, spiritual, or otherwise. Another of her poems begins, ‘There’s a certain Slant of light’; here, we have the truth being told ‘slant’, and then ‘Lightning’, suggesting a dazzling, bright light (the ‘Light’ of ‘Lightning’ coming to us via the ‘light’ peeping out from ‘delight’). The repeated open ‘i’ sounds in the words Dickinson chooses to end her lines – ‘lies’, ‘Delight’, ‘surprise’, ‘kind’, ‘blind’ – call to mind the eyes and the importance of the visual, of seeing the truth. And the words ‘dazzle’ and ‘blind’ in that second stanza call to mind the idea of staring directly at the sun. Dickinson doesn’t mention the sun in this poem, but this may be what she is hinting at in the final two lines of the poem.

‘Tell all the Truth but tell it slant’ has a great opening line, and Emily Dickinson puts forward the ‘argument’ of the poem using powerful and memorable imagery. But ultimately what sort of ‘Truth’ she has in mind – if she does have a particular truth in mind here – remains unstated. And perhaps that is what gives the poem its power; when it comes to the truth the poem itself seeks to tell, it cannot help but ‘tell it slant’.

Continue to explore Dickinson’s poetry with this pick of her ten greatest poems, her beautiful poem about dying, and her enigmatic poem about a snake in the grass. If you want to own all of Dickinson’s wonderful poetry in a single volume, you can: we recommend the Faber edition of her Complete Poems. We’ve offered more tips for the close reading of poetry here.

Image: Black/white photograph of Emily Dickinson by William C. North (1846/7), Wikimedia Commons.