Civilization Spurns the Leopard
Civilization—spurns—the Leopard!
Was the Leopard—bold?
Deserts—never rebuked her Satin—
Ethiop—her Gold—
Tawny—her Customs—
She was Conscious—
Spotted—her Dun Gown—
This was the Leopard's nature—Signor—
Need—a keepe—frown?
Pity —the Par —that left her Asia—
Memories— of Palm—
Cannot be stifled—with Narcotic—
Nor suppressed—with Balm—
The first line of Dickinson’s poem leaps off the page like a wild cat about to strike. It is brilliant, beautiful, ridiculous and unforgettable. It carries a note of challenge, as if the speaker dares us to contradict her—though her voice is tinged with mockery.
(Liza Voronin)
So “civilization,” and implicitly ourselves as civilized beings, spurn the “leopard.”
“Spurns,” of course, carries the meaning to reject, but with an added possibility of violence. But what is the origin of this hatred? Dickinson answers our question with another: “Was the Leopard—bold?” In other words, was the leopard too much—too fearless – too alive – for our tame, tea-drinking society?
By contrast, the leopard’s native “deserts” never “rebuked her satin.” We see, against a bleak vista of sand, the sheer, glossy, luxurious pelt of the cat. But if she thrived there, maybe that’s because all other life had been wiped out. Are those dry wastes the remains of civilizations that were foolish enough to let the leopard escape?
Dickinson transforms our view of the desert landscape, however, by identifying it as Ethiopia—one of the most ancient countries on earth and mentioned in the founding texts of Western literature: The Bible, The Iliad and The Odyssey. And at this point, after the explosive opening, the voice of the poem appears to waver. “Tawny—her Customs —She was Conscious—Spotted…” These words deliberately fail to cohere, evoking the mind of someone standing back, suspending judgment, watching and musing…
The essence of this leopard remains perplexingly elusive. Her consciousness is particularly unexpected.
Her “spotted” black and white coat might even indicate, in symbolic form, an awareness of duality – of good and evil – raising her beyond any brute animal. Moreover, she is described as a lady: dressed in “satin”, sheathed in a “gown”, dazzling in “gold.”
With the confident statement, “This was the leopard’s nature,” Dickinson reasserts her authority, rebuking the male proxy of civilization, the shadowy “Signor”. This Spanish word means master, so the leopard becomes implicitly a slave.
Why does the keeper frown? Is it out of wrathful disgust—or out of compassion? Why is there no joy in his triumph? Perhaps he is afraid the leopard is on the brink of breaking free…
Alas, this doesn’t seem to be so. The second stanza finds her sadly downtrodden. To “pity” the leopard is to see her as an essentially tragic figure—a creature of suffering beyond redemption.
On the most obvious level, she has become a miserable zoo animal, caged up, floppy, zoned-out. Her “Asia,” perhaps used in a general sense to designate the East (it literally means “sunrise”) is now a dim, cloudy dream.
The first line sets up a strong thematic contrast of civilization and the leopard, of human structures and the natural wilderness beyond, a battle between law and freedom and, as they become more extreme, tyranny and anarchy. Yet the poem as a whole is far more riddling than that – and a range of stimulating, contradictory readings present themselves for our exploration.
It may be that Dickinson is commenting on the slave-trade—turning our understanding of what constitutes civilization and savagery inside out. In this sense, the poem reminds us that Western civilization savagely enslaved Africans, seeing them as little more than animals, despite their own cultures and customs stretching back millennia.
The contrast of the female leopard and the male keeper suggests a feminist interpretation too. Have women been kept imprisoned by the “narcotic” and “balm” of polite society—tranquilizing drugs, habits and words?
The leopard may be Dickinson herself, whose behavior and verse were far too unconventional to be accepted in her day. In my own life, I have seen certain astonishingly creative individuals destroyed by their inability to conform. We have probably all known ‘leopards’ like that.
On a personal level, we can relate the leopard and the keeper to the battle between our inner desires and our external duties to society. We can’t act on every whim or fancy, yet we mustn’t suppress that idiosyncratic thought – that unexpected inspired idea – that could be our moment of genius.
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) was an American poet who lived a reclusive life in Amherst, Massachusetts. At her death she left 1,800 unpublished poems. Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.
