Emily Dickinson (1830–86).  Complete Poems.  1924.

Part One: Life

I

SUCCESS is counted sweetest   
By those who ne’er succeed.   
To comprehend a nectar   
Requires sorest need.   
 
Not one of all the purple host           5
Who took the flag to-day   
Can tell the definition,   
So clear, of victory,   
 
As he, defeated, dying,   
On whose forbidden ear           10
The distant strains of triumph   
Break, agonized and clear.   

Oswald Golijov wrote music to Emily Dickinson poems several. I decided to investigate.
I understand the first four lines.
Does she says that people don't know the definition of success? I don't think so.

Golijov is by no means the only (or the first) composer to have set Dickinson!

Copland's songs are to me among the most beautiful and successful settings, but other Dickinson-loving composers include Simon Holt, Judith Weir, Julian Anderson (all of the preceding have set her at least twice), as well as John Adams (in one of his best pieces, Harmonium for chorus and orchestra) and several more.

This may be of interest: http://search.ft.com/ftArticle?queryText=%22Aaron+Copland%22&aje=true&id=060804006400&ct=0&nclick_check=1

Here is another poem of Emily Dickinson

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

I wonder if Don Basilio likes Emily Dickinson.

And here is the original context of reiner's quotation from Alexander Pope's Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot:

"Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires
True Genius kindles, and fair fame inspires,
Blest with each talent and each art to please, [195]
And born to write, converse, and live with ease:
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne,
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caus'd himself to rise; [200]
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserv'd to blame, or to commend, [205]
A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend;
Dreading ev'n fools, by flatterers besieg'd,
And so obliging, that he ne'er oblig'd;
Like Cato, give his little Senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause; [210]
While Wits and Templers ev'ry sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise.
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?"

Atticus was meant to refer to the influential critic, Joseph Addison.

"Obliged" is pronounced "obleeged".

It seems that art house cinema is now being shunted well into the witching hours by the terrestrial TV channels.     Earlier today, at 02.05 hrs. C4 transmitted  "Before Night Falls" (2000) based on the life of gay poet Reinaldo Arenas and his traumic life of poverty, under an oppresive regime in Cuba.   At around the same time, BBC 2 transmitted Jean-Luc Goddard's 'Eloge de l'Amour' so it was a pleasant surprise to discover this morning that I had managed to set both accurately.   

I viewed "Before Night Falls" this afternoon and, apart from having to make rapid adjustments to the juxtaposition in time, within the action, I was mesmerised by the narrative and Javier Bardem's performance of resilience and deep despair as Reinaldo.   His death-throes were almost unbearable to watch and he managed to convey his agony by stillness, although his eyes were full of fear.

       "I am that unpleasant child,
       always untimely...
       ...with the round dirty face...
       ...who before the big street lights,
       or the well-lit ladies...
       ...or the girls who seem to levitate...
       ...projects the insult of his round dirty face

      I am that angry and lonely child of always,
      that throws you the insult of that angry child of always
      and warns you:
      If hypocritically you pat me on the head
      I would take that opportunity to steal your wallet.

      I am that child of always
      Before the panorama of imminent terror,
      imminent leprosy, imminent fleas,
      of offences and the imminent crime.

      I am that repulsive child that improvises a bed
      out of an old cardboard box and waits,
      certain that you will accompany me

   Julian Schnabel's film conveys the many years of heartache, totally devoid of sentiment.   Reinaldo died in 1990.   He was 47 years old.    Three years after his death his book, 'Before Night Falls'was published.

     

Thanks for that, Stanley. I saw Before Night Falls in the cinema when it was released (around 1999 or 2000 I guess: I was a student at the time). I remember admiring it but I'd have to see it again.

Éloge de l'amour I've also not seen since its initial cinema release. I doubt I could ever come to feel, as I often do when watching Godard's work of the 60s, that this is some of the most interesting art ever made (in any medium), but it retains some value over and above the personal idiosyncrasies (stylistic and thematic: the love-hate obsession with America and Americans being among the most noticeable of the latter), I think. 'The poor are always with us,' as one character says (I think it's in that film). And the colour-saturated digital photography in the non-black-and-white half of the film is quite stunning.

I must have recommended the Greek director Theo Angelopoulos before on these boards but in case you missed it, do try and see some, Stanley. I'm not sure if his great 4-hour epic The Travelling Players, a masterpiece made in clandestine conditions during the Greek military junta in the early 1970s, is available on DVD, but Ulysses' Gaze (ca. 1990, starring Harvey Keitel as a Greek taxi driver travelling on a mysterious journey through the Balkan states: 'We Greeks are a dying nation,' he says) and the more recent Trilogy Part One: The Weeping Meadow have both had commercial releases. The Cannes-prizewinning Eternity and a Day, made between those two, is comparatively negligible and probably not the best introduction to his work.

Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

                                                                (Louis MacNeice)