In 1862, Emily Dickinson wrote (#341),

After great pain, a formal feeling comes --
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs --
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round --
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought --
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone --

This is the Hour of Lead --
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow --
First -- Chill -- then Stupor -- then the letting go --

Compare Dickinson's poem to E.M. Cioran's 1937 aphorism, from Tears and Saints:

After great pain, a voluptuous feeling comes, as of infinite happiness. I agree with the saints on this point: he who has sipped the cup of suffering to its last dregs can no longer be a pessimist.

Are these two assessments at odds? What is it that follows the moment of great pain?--"a formal feeling," or a "voluptuous feeling?" Dickinson's formal feeling is serious and grave, and traces a kind of sacred stoicism in the pained consciousness. "Tombs," the reference to crucifixion, "a stone," "the Hour of Lead," and the final image of death--all of these work to describe an acute and distinct kind of fundamentally unshakeable perception. Cioran's short lines are not altogether at odds with Dickinson's; he too acknowledges the rock-bottom. But Cioran finds a kind of unreasonable happiness in this feeling, born (I presume) out of the understanding that, after great pain, "things can only get better." Dickinson's description of aftermath is in the tradition of seriousness; Cioran's stems from the absurd.

The literary artist must consciously consider how he or she will respond to questions like this: what follows great pain? And, perhaps surprisingly (to some), there are very many wrong answers. Here, again, my favorite old question of "The Truth" rears its beautiful head, and readers willing to play the comparative game must decide whether Cioran and Dickinson can both be right.

Before answering, consider some prospective first lines of my hypothetical poem:

1. After great pain, a dire feeling comes --
2. After great pain, a queasy feeling comes --
3. After great pain, an angry feeling comes --
4. After great pain, a tawdry feeling comes --
5. After great pain, a guilty feeling comes --
6. After great pain, a virile feeling comes --

Would any of these be as good as Dickinson's? I would say #1 has a chance, depending on subsquent lines, but the rest are implausible and almost immediately recognizable as ________. Something. Call it "inauthentic" or "predictable" or, if you're daring, "untrue." But this _________ should not be a throw-away concept for literary scholars simply because it is difficult to talk about and impossible to quantify. Part of the great joy of literature comes in moments of earnest disagreement over aesthetic judgment: is Dickinson's poem more "True" than Cioran's aphoristic lines?

Or, if you prefer abstruse theoretical questions: do you object to the capital T in "True?"

[crosspost]