Gain — Satiety —
But Satiety — Conviction
Of Necessity
Of an Austere trait in Pleasure —
Good, without alarm
Is a too established Fortune —
Danger — deepens Sum —
-Fr865, J807, Fascicle 38, 1864
For some reason when I first read this I heard Julie Andrews as Maria Von Trapp, or maybe Mary Poppins, sing-saying it. “Children, repeat after me, "Expectation — is Contentment —…”
Come to think of it, there is something Governess-like in Emily Dickinson.
This one is tough syntactically from the very first line:
Expectation — is Contentment —
Is contentment the subject or object here?
Does this line mean that (our) Expectation is (to eventually have) Contentment?
Or does it mean that expectation itself, that is to say, anticipation, is where one finds true contentment?
Which of these two different ideas is meant by Dickinson? It seems like she must mean one or the other, right? But Dickinson does this kind of syntactically slippery thing all of the time, so we suspect she means both. This poem works either way that you interpret the line and both play into its meaning.
In the two ways to read this line, we actually have one entire idea, which is this:
We have the expectation that if we have what we want, then we will become content (first meaning). But anticipation is, ironically, where one may find true contentment (second meaning).
In the way that I processed the poem, the second meaning didn't kick in until I’d read it all the way through once. It’s like a coda, but one that you have to go back to the beginning of the poem to get.
OK, let's work through the rest of the poem.
Expectation — is Contentment —
Gain — Satiety —
Gain — Satiety —
We have an expectation of contentment, and that if we gain we will be satisfied.
But Satiety — Conviction
Of Necessity
Of Necessity
But satiety (feeling full) brings a conviction of a Necessity. Conviction and Necessity are both strong words. Necessity. Of what?
Satiety brings a...
Conviction
Of Necessity
Of an Austere trait in Pleasure —
Of Necessity
Of an Austere trait in Pleasure —
What does having an austere trait in our pleasure mean? Austerity means something like "restraint of luxuries", so I think an austere traitor would be showing constraint.
The next lines comprise an aphorism:
Good, without alarm
Is a too established Fortune —
If there is no alarm in our good, then it’s too “established." Don't allow yourself to get too comfortable, the good Governess is reminding us. You mustn't rest too easily in your feeling of satisfaction, in your happiness. Stay alert to pain.
Then she looks at the idea from a slightly different angle,
Danger — deepens Sum —
This is the third or fourth wisdom bomb she’s dropped on us in this poem. Danger deepens Sum. This could mean a couple things as far as I can figure it. One is that when we gain, the risk of loss makes our wholeness (sum) more meaningful. It “deepens” it.
Another possibility is that when we are are on the other side of gain, in expectation, the risk we take for that gain deepens it.
That all brings us back around to that first line again. Now that we’ve worked our way through the poem, the first line begins to take on its second meaning. Now we can see that because satiety is suspect, expectation (anticipation) is where true contentment lies.
The argument that Dickinson is making here is difficult for us to get because it's ironic. (I heard Elon Musk say in an interview recently that "fate is the ultimate irony maximizer." Hmm.) It’s not in gain that we find satisfaction, but in expectation. And if we, perchance, find ourselves in gain, well then, it is best to maintain a sense of austerity, which is to say, moderation.
This is the last poem of Fascicle 38. Emily perhaps wrote this poem to remind herself of what is “Necessary," but I'm convinced this is aimed for an audience who still needs to learn these lessons. I believe she wrote it for us, the Governess's charges. She’s helping us to understand the wisdom of valuing our desire over the satisfaction of desire, and once we have achieved our desire, the necessity of austerity. We are to keep in mind that danger “deepens the Sum.”
The next lines comprise an aphorism:
Good, without alarm
Is a too established Fortune —
If there is no alarm in our good, then it’s too “established." Don't allow yourself to get too comfortable, the good Governess is reminding us. You mustn't rest too easily in your feeling of satisfaction, in your happiness. Stay alert to pain.
Then she looks at the idea from a slightly different angle,
Danger — deepens Sum —
This is the third or fourth wisdom bomb she’s dropped on us in this poem. Danger deepens Sum. This could mean a couple things as far as I can figure it. One is that when we gain, the risk of loss makes our wholeness (sum) more meaningful. It “deepens” it.
Another possibility is that when we are are on the other side of gain, in expectation, the risk we take for that gain deepens it.
That all brings us back around to that first line again. Now that we’ve worked our way through the poem, the first line begins to take on its second meaning. Now we can see that because satiety is suspect, expectation (anticipation) is where true contentment lies.
The argument that Dickinson is making here is difficult for us to get because it's ironic. (I heard Elon Musk say in an interview recently that "fate is the ultimate irony maximizer." Hmm.) It’s not in gain that we find satisfaction, but in expectation. And if we, perchance, find ourselves in gain, well then, it is best to maintain a sense of austerity, which is to say, moderation.
This is the last poem of Fascicle 38. Emily perhaps wrote this poem to remind herself of what is “Necessary," but I'm convinced this is aimed for an audience who still needs to learn these lessons. I believe she wrote it for us, the Governess's charges. She’s helping us to understand the wisdom of valuing our desire over the satisfaction of desire, and once we have achieved our desire, the necessity of austerity. We are to keep in mind that danger “deepens the Sum.”
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
Right on, Adam.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts:
Expectation — is Contentment —
Your second take on this line is the easy one. We just read from left to right. Expectation is contentment. If contentment is what you’re after, you should strive for perpetual expectation.
Your first take -- that we expect to be content if we get what we want -- I think is subtext here. I think we’d need to lose the ‘is’ to get to it.
Gain — Satiety —
But Satiety — Conviction
Of Necessity
Here’s the flip side of the first idea. Get what you want, and you’re satisfied. But satisfaction is negative hunger. Instead of something to hope for, you’ve something to loose. Fear for fancy. Now that you have it, you need it. A new need is a new weakness. We’re antsy by nature. All we can do is exchange forms of restlessness. Some forms are better than others.
Of an Austere trait in Pleasure —
Good, without alarm
Is a too established Fortune —
Danger — deepens Sum —
So, at a high level of abstraction, the theme of the first stanza is that attractive and motivating constructs like contentment and satiety, because we are inherently agitated, contain inherent contradictions.
The second stanza gives us more of the same. You know what’s a pain about pleasure? Unless your freaked out by it, it’ll blow you up. On the other hand, a good way to heighten pleasure is to risk pain. In other words, if pleasure is what you’re after, flaunt your weaknesses (and weaken yourself with contentment).
In short, instructions you could give to a robot to make it act human.
Well said.
ReplyDeleteTake note, Mr. ChatGPT.
It's funny though. The danger-of-getting-what-you-want thing ought to be a truism. But it seems to so often come as a surprise.
ReplyDeleteIn Samin Nosrat's new cook book, she writes about how after the success of Salt Fat Acid Heat she went into mourning. Being so thoroughly vindicated (about food, and I guess about people too) was like identity death. Like, she was a ghost, and needed to grasp around in the dark and construct a new value system (centered on something other than ambition). What she settles on seems sage enough -- just trying to take care of herself and her people, and focusing on food moves that keep working even after ego death (and in spite of a theory of food that obviates cook books). But the whole book has this ghostly feeling. Weird, for a cook book.
That's the thing about irony. It's always a surprise. But you are right, you'd think it would be easier to learn. I wrote a poem once that goes
ReplyDeleteKnew once
Now wants
New wants
New once
Now wants
No wants
Same idea.
from Wahoo!
to Whoa!
to Wah Wah
Nice. Yup, same idea. Evergreen.
ReplyDeleteA thought occurred to me today regarding the phrase 'Danger deepens sum." The reason we don't take off our masks is because we want the illusion. If the reality was bared, we might be bored. The thing that makes life interesting, perhaps, is the risk. And the eventual failure makes it meaningful.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking in terms of the Matrix. I was theorizing to myself that the Matrix had been created not by AI, but by ourselves, sculpted out of our mutual shared fantasy over millennia. We've designed it to be a maximum thrill.
Bored by reality? Bored by Volcanoes? Orangutans? Avocados? Impossible!
ReplyDeleteBored by worn out illusions? Yup, everyday. Worn out by how hard it is to comprehend reality? Sure. That too.
Maybe the reason for poetry (especially poetry like Emily Dickinson's) is to keep one's illusions fresh and spicy. And to have one's gaze nudged inwards, towards the illusion-making machinery, so that maybe you can reverse engineer it, and exercise a little more curatorial heft.
(The problem with the Matrix is that one's fantasies are meaningless. The reality is you're robot food. There's nowhere to go. No decisions to make. Nothing you could do that would change your fate, which is fate of all others. Even if there was some kind of icky battery-breeding program, and so some kind of selection process, and some kind of people-battery evolution, it seems unlikely that one's fantasies would be of any consequence. Outside of the Matrix fantasies are meaningful and useful. Even if the meanings are humdrum and are more or less the same for more or less everyone.)
"reverse engineer it, and exercise a little more curatorial heft." That's what I'm talking about. Maybe you could say that's what Emily's doing.
ReplyDeleteWhen I say we might be bored by reality, I mean the reality that's beyond identity, which is to say a reality beyond risk of loss. I just wonder about it, because we seem to be stuck in our identities and I sometimes wonder if we prefer it that way for all of its difficulties. Not sure if you've seen Pluribus yet, but it's a good exploration of said questions.
Is there such a thing as pleasure without pain? I don't know. It seems, though, one might enjoy an avocado without ever facing a volcano.
As to your take on Matrix, I would think that if you were in an AI Matrix, fantasies would still be meaningful on the personal level. Family and friends would still be paramount.
My half-formed idea was that it is our collective selves have created the Matrix, have created the ability to speed through the air on a plane a mile above the earth while simultaneously watching Drag Race and playing Brawl Stars and drinking a cranberry juice, but, to extend the thought, that we also need the risk of loss to truly enjoy it all.