from "1/2 Earth 1/2 Ether"
by Lisa Darms
I
There are two houses in Amherst. They share a plot of land and a historical significance, but in their present forms they also represent opposing sides in a dialectic of memory. The first house is The Homestead, former home of Emily Dickinson. It is spotless, somewhat spare, a container for scant Dickinson memorabilia. Here, one speaks in the hushed tones of an externally imposed sense of propriety. Volunteers lead you through the bare house, quietly but palpably exuding anxiety about each room’s historical authenticity. In the living room nothing original remains, except for the chaise lounge—which we are scrupulously informed has been reupholstered. I ask about the photographs of the poet that decorate the walls and bureaus—are they originals? No, the originals are too precious to be displayed: they are kept safely in an archive somewhere. We proceed up the stairs where we see a tiny white dress encased in glass—Emily’s dress—but little else remains that can be termed a genuine ‘artifact’. We are reminded that Dickinson was unknown at the time of her death, that no-one thought to preserve the kinds of material objects through which museum-goers hope to encounter the dead. The objects that remain are excessively clean, washed of all aura. The house is empty. If there are ghosts, they most likely reside in the garden where the poet liked to walk, and where shallow stone steps hold the shape of her footsteps.
Next door to The Homestead is The Evergreens, former home of Dickinson’s brother Austin and his family. Though uninhabited, this house has a presence. The home’s last occupant was Austin’s daughter, who left the interior untouched until her death halfway through the twentieth century, and today it remains exactly as it was in the late nineteenth century. When the heavy doors are unlocked, the first thing we experience is the smell: a smell entirely new, because it is entirely old. It is the smell of another century, and the cumulative odors of every hour of every day that has passed since then, the smell of time. Here, we speak in hushed tones from an inner compulsion, awe, or maybe fear. Here we are entirely unlike visitors to a museum, where our musings are orchestrated by the physical distance between ourselves and the precious and untouchable artifact. Here we confront dust and dander, and the edges of everything are unraveling. With every breath the particles of another age enter our bodies, and we are unsure if we are euphoric or frightened. As we breathe, we leave the contemporary world. Through this inhalation, our bodies enter the past by way of the present. While the art images we make are often referential or allusive, coy or quotable, and thereby empty and unaffecting, smell can never be appropriated or re-presented: it is always of the present.