When the Astronomer stops seeking

When the Astronomer stops seeking
For his Pleiad's Face—
When the lone British Lady
Forsakes the Arctic Race

When to his Covenant Needle
The Sailor doubting turns—
It will be amply early
To ask what treason means.
           

   

     -F957, J851, sheet 20, 1865

The poem is like the assurance a mother gives to her child. The child says "Mommy, will you always love me?" The mother says to assure the child, "I'll love you until pigs fly and the cow jumps over the moon.” Or think of the lyrics to the great Brian Wilson song, God Only Knows,

I may not always love you 

But long as there are stars above you 

You never need to doubt it 

I'll make you so sure about it

It’s an old trope, but Dickinson takes it to the next level. She gives three examples of impossibilities that will happen before she'll turn traitor, each with deep implications. The first extends all the way into space,

When the Astronomer stops seeking
For his Pleiad's Face—

In F803 we looked at a poem with a similar idea:  

My Secret as secure
As Herschel's private interest
Or Mercury's affair—

***

The astronomer. Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel lived from 1738 – 1822. He published his discoveries as three catalogues: Catalogue of One Thousand New Nebulae and Clusters of Stars, Catalogue of a Second Thousand New Nebulae and Clusters of Stars and, finally, Catalogue of 500 New Nebulae.

While making his observations Herschel made note of a new object in the constellation of Gemini. He called the new planet the "Georgian star" after King George III. In France, where reference to the British king was to be avoided if possible, the planet was known as "Herschel.” Eventually the planet was given the name of Uranus and because of it, Herschel became famous.

Herschel also pioneered astronomical and spectrophotometry using prisms and temperature measuring equipment to measure the wavelength distribution of stellar spectra through which he discovered infrared radiation.  

He discovered Titania and Oberon (moons of Uranus), Enceladus and Mimas (moons of Saturn) and the fact that Martian polar caps vary seasonally.

Herschel was sure that he had found ample evidence of life on the Moon and compared it to the English countryside. Herschel went so far as to speculate that the interior of the Sun was populated.

But Herschel had other notable “private interests.” His father was a court oboist and he followed suit, mastering the oboe and then violin and harpsichord. He composed numerous musical works, including 24 symphonies and many concertos.

 In 1766 Herschel became organist of the Octagon Chapel a fashionable chapel in a well-known spa in Bath.

Herschel's epitaph is: Coelorum perrupit claustra (He broke through the barriers of the heavens).

Friedrich Herschel had a son, John Herschel, 1782 - 1871, who was even more accomplished than his father. It is most likely John Herschel that Dickinson is thinking of here.

Sir John Herschel, like his father, was an English polymath; a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, botanist and experimental photographer who invented the blueprint. He originated the use of the Julian day system in astronomy, named seven moons of Saturn and four moons of Uranus, the seventh planet, discovered by his father. He made many contributions to the science of photography. John Herschel also translated the Iliad of Homer. He was friends with Tennyson, Dickens, Darwin, Faraday and many other luminaries of his day.

You could say he elevated astronomy to the level of art and it is in keeping that in the poem at hand, Dickinson has him searching for the Pleiad’s Face. 

In this line you see the man of science peering into the mysterious realm of love and mythology, a teleological bridge between man and the heavens. 

***

The Pleiades. "Pleiades" derives from the ancient Greek word plein (to sail'), because of the cluster's importance in opening the sailing season in the Mediterranean Sea. 

The Pleiades are the seven divine daughters of the Goddess Pleiō,. No one knows which came first, the word for sailing, Plein, or the name of the Goddess, Pleiō, but somehow the two merged to become the Pleiades and the season of navigation began with their heliacal rising in the heavens.

The Pleiades were companions of Artemis, a virgin Goddess over whom Aphrodite had no power, protector of children, especially girls, and animal cubs. Together they were nursemaids and teachers of the infant Dionysus. 

Enter the bad guy, Orion, who pursued the Pleiades, until Zeus saved them by turning them into doves, and then catasterizing them into stars. In the Odyssey, Odysseus sees Orion hunting in the underworld with a bronze club, slaying animals, which gives yo a sense of his character. It’s also worth noting that he was known as the most handsome of the earthborn, so basically a good looking lady-killer. 

Meanwhile Orion was also turned into a constellation by Zeus, destined to always chase, in place, the Pleiades through the night sky. It’s a constant reminder in the sky to all young lady-killers. This is what happens, boys!

Like Orion, the astronomer is destined to always pursue the lost sister across the sky. 

***

Which of the seven Pleiades in particular is the "Pleiad's face" the astronomer looking for? Merope.

The loss of one of the sisters, Merope, reflects an astronomical event wherein one of the stars in the Pleiades star cluster disappears from view by the naked eye. 

Merope was said to be the faintest of the stars, the "lost Pleiad", because she was the only one of the Pleiades to have married a mortal. 

Her sisters had relations with gods and bore them sons, but Merope married the mortal, Sisyphus, and lived on the island Chios. 

If Sisyphus represents mortal man, what does that say about us? Check out his resume: Sisyphus was the founder and first king of Corinth. While king, Sisyphus was supposed to make Ancient Corinth a travel hub and a leader in navigation, but instead he infuriated Zeus by killing all guests to his palace in violation of the xenia. (Xenia is the ancient law of hospitality to strangers, and the root of term xenophobia.)

Likewise, Sisyphus and his brother Salmoneus were known to hate each other, and Sisyphus consulted the Oracle of Delphi on just how to kill Salmoneus without incurring any of severe consequences for himself. From Homer onward, Sisyphus was famed as the craftiest of men. He seduced Salmoneus's daughter Tyro, which eventually led Tyro to slay their children when she discovered that Sisyphus was planning on using them to eventually dethrone her father. Eek.

Sisyphus also is said to have betrayed one of Zeus's secrets by revealing the whereabouts of the Asopid Aegina to her father, the river god Asopus, in return for creating an Eternal spring to flow on the Corinthian acropolis.

Zeus ordered Thanatos to chain Sisyphus in Tartarus. But Sisyphus sensed him coming, and seized the opportunity to trap Thanatos himself in chains instead. This caused an uproar because once Thanatos was bound by the strong chains, then no one could die on Earth. Consequently, sacrifices could not be made to the gods, and therefore those that were old and sick suffered. 

The gods finally threatened to make life so miserable for Sisyphus that he would wish he were dead, so then he had no choice but to release Thanatos.

Before dying himself, Sisyphus instructed Merope not to perform the customary funeral rites for him. When he reached the underworld, he complained to Hades that his wife was neglecting him, and obtained permission to return to the upper world in order to reproach her. What a trickster! 

Once back in Corinth, Sisyphus did not return to the underworld and lived until he died of old age. In a later tradition, reported by Eustathius, Hermes forcibly carried him back down. (Kicking and screaming I'd imagine).

Eventually, as we all know, he was damned to endlessly push a rock back up to the top of a hill, a fate, according to Camus, not so unlike that of mankind's. 

***

Okay, so that’s the first example! Let’s look at the next one:

When the lone British Lady
Forsakes the Arctic Race

Like the implied reference to Herschel, this is also a wry reference to a mythic figure of the times.

The lone British Lady: Lady Jane Franklin (née Griffin, 1791 – 1875) was a British explorer and the second wife of the English explorer Sir John Franklin. During her husband's period as Lieutenant-Governor of Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's Land), she became known for her philanthropic work and her travels throughout south-eastern Australia. After John Franklin's disappearance in search of the Northwest Passage, she sponsored or otherwise supported several expeditions to determine his fate.

The  “Race” that Jane won’t forsake, then, is not the one to find the Northwest Passage first, but the one to save her husband who was lost in the pursuit. 

A bit more on this fascinating character of Lady Jane. As a young woman, Jane was attracted to a London physician and scientist, Peter Mark Roget, best known for publishing Roget's Thesaurus. She once said he was the only man who made her swoon, but nothing ever came of the relationship. 

On 5 November 1828 Jane married the explorer John Franklin. Not long after John Franklin was appointed governor of Tasmania, an island off the coast of Australia, where, in 1842, Lady Jane commissioned a classical temple, and named it Ancanthe, Ancient Greek for "blooming valley." She intended the building to serve as a museum for Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, and left 400 acres in trust to ensure the continuance of what she hoped would become the focus of the colony's cultural aspirations. A century of apathy followed, with the museum used as an apple shed among other functions, but in 1949 it was made the home of The Art Society of Tasmania, who rescued the building. It is now known as the Lady Franklin Gallery. This early investment into Tasmanian art has erupted as of late into one the best art scenes in the world. "Blooming valley" indeed. Dark Mofo is an annual mid-winter arts and culture festival held by the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania. Launched in 2013 Dark Mofo events take place at night and celebrate the darkness of the southern winter solstice, featuring many musical acts, large scale light installations and a winter feast. I met some people recently who live in Tasmania and they told me Dark Mofo was not to be missed.

Then things went awry in Tasmania for the Franklins. Wikipedia has it that in August a Sir John Yardley-Wilmot arrived in Tasmania announcing that he was the new appointed governor of Tasmania. Apparently, John Montagu, who had served as colonial secretary to John Franklin, but had been dismissed for his antagonism and insubordination towards Sir John, had returned to Britain with stories publicized in the British newspapers about their bad leadership. Montagu also accused John Franklin of being ruled by his wife, a claim that was believed by the Undersecretary of State for the Colonies James Stephen and Lord Stanley, who then ordered a recall of Sir Franklin.

This meant that Lady Franklin and Sir John had to leave their home quite hastily and sell many of their possessions and return to England. They would arrive in Britain the following year, and the Franklins set about to restore their tarnished reputation.

This was done, of course, by Lady Franklin, who was crafty as Sisyphus. Lady Franklin authored a book under the name of her husband defending his actions titled "Narrative of Some Passages in the History of Van Diemen's Land," which was a best seller and not only helped redeem (whitewash?) Sir Franklin's reputation, but also brought in a fortune.

Shortly after their arrival Sir John had applied to being in charge of leading a polar expedition in search of the Northwest passage. He won the commission and left in 1845, but, alas, never returned.

Lady Franklin traveled to Out Stack in the Shetland Islands of Scotland, the northernmost of the British isles, to get as close as she could to her missing husband. She sponsored SEVEN expeditions to find her husband or his records (two of the expeditions failed to even reach the Arctic).

By means of sponsorship and offers of sizeable rewards for information about him, she supported many other searches. Her efforts made the expedition's fate one of the biggest stories of the decade.

Ultimately, in 1859, Francis McClintock found evidence that Sir John had died twelve years previously, in 1847. Prior accounts had suggested that, in the end, the expedition had turned to cannibalism to survive, but Lady Franklin refused to believe these stories.

Although McClintock had found conclusive evidence that Sir John Franklin and his fellow expeditioners were dead, Lady Franklin remained convinced that their written records might remain buried in a cache in the Arctic. She provided financial support for multiple later expeditions that planned to seek the records in the 1860s.

Finally, in 1874, she joined forces with Allen Young to purchase and fit out the former steam gunboat HMS Pandora to undertake another expedition to the region around Prince of Wales Island. The expedition left London in June 1875 and returned in December, unsuccessful, as ice prevented her from passing west of the Franklin Strait. Lady Franklin died in the interim, on 18 July 1875. Many "Old Arctics" engaged in the Franklin searches were at her funeral. 

This woman had staying power! You see what Dickinson was getting at.

***

Okay, so that will do for the second example! How about the third,

When to his Covenant Needle
The Sailor doubting turns—

Note that the motif of sailing behind the first two examples comes to an apotheosis here, where Dickinson takes it into the metaphysical realm. The longing of the astronomer and the loyalty of the lone Lady has fallen into doubt. In doubt the sailor turns to the Covenant Needle of the compass. The Covenant referred to here, I believe, would be the Christian Covenant, the sacred binding promise from God to forgive sin through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The sailor, lost, doubting himself and his circumstances, turns to follow the Covenant Needle toward True North.

***

When all of these things happen? Then...

It will be amply early
To ask what treason means.

Look at all Dickinson accomplishes with that odd construction of "It will be amply early/ to ask..." 

First of all you get the funny sound of “amply early.” That sound adds to the slightly comical tone of the poem.

You also get a Dickinsonian paradox. If the betrayal never arrives, then the idea of "amply early” is ridiculous. What does early matter in the course of “never”?

But the paradox points toward something telling. "Amply early" subtly implies that it's NEVER too early to ask what treason means. Forget eternity, or even tomorrow, the betrayal may have already happened and you’re a little late on the uptake. You should've started, like, yesterday, "amply early." If you take the poem this way, it isn't about faithfulness at all, but about gullibility. This idea may be echoed in the seed planted in the sailor's "doubt" in the first half of this stanza.

As per usual, Dickinson allows room for both the positive and negative reading of the poem. 

.

  -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. To add to the interesting etymology of Pleiades in "Plein" and "Pleio," we also have a more poetic possibility: “flock of doves.” The Greek word pleiades has been connected with peleiai, meaning “doves," which of course is what the sisters were turned into before they became stars.

P.P.S. The Greek poet Hesiod mentions the Pleiades several times in Works and Days. Here is a bit of advice from Hesiod:

And if longing seizes you for sailing the stormy seas,
when the Pleiades flee mighty Orion
and plunge into the misty deep
and all the gusty winds are raging,
then do not keep your ship on the wine-dark sea
but, as I bid you, remember to work the land.

— Works and Days 618–623

The poet Sappho mentions the Pleiades in one of her poems:

The moon has gone
The Pleiades gone
In dead of night
Time passes on
I lie alone

The poet Lord Tennyson, who was friends with the astronomer Herschel's son, John as well as Lady Jane, mentions the Pleiades in his poem "Locksley Hall" from 1842. This poem is one Emily would have surely read. :

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Her Grace is all she has—

Her Grace is all she has—
And that, so least displays—
One Art to recognize, must be,
Another Art, to praise.

      -F956, J810, sheet 20, 1865



What a doozy!

David Preest's only commentary on this poem:

“This poem could refer to Emily’s own poetry. It is her only Grace, but she advertises it so little, that it takes skill to discover it, and another skill to be able to praise it as good poetry.”

I think this is putting the cart before the horse, but it's insightful. After all, this poem could be a manifesto for what I think it is that we are attempting to do with this blog. We are trying to master the art of recognizing what it is that Emily is doing in her poems, their essential Grace. Then we are trying to master the Art of adequately praising the poems, an art which, by the way, cannot be mastered. 

Her Grace is all she has—

This line may be applied to Dickinson, but I imagine Dickinson was thinking of someone besides herself when she wrote it. And, further, I'd guess that this poem was sent, probably with a flower or some other gift, to this very person, as Dickinson was wont to do.

To say “Her Grace is all she has” sounds almost, at first, like she is deprived, bereft of all but Grace. But then you think, wait, what else do you need besides Grace?  

Grace might mean beauty or elegance, but I think that here it has its original meaning of a gift that is unearned, a generosity that  goes beyond the need for reciprocation. To possess Grace is the ultimate self-sufficiency, yet there is a humility in having only Grace.

In the last line of the poem the author turns her attention to the Art of Praise, yet already in the first line the poet has mastered this Art. 

The next lines deepen the poem considerably,

And that, so least displays—
One Art to recognize, must be,

It is an art to recognize grace in those in which it seems least recognizable. 

Why is grace so difficult to recognize? There are two possibilities I can see. One reason someone might not display their grace is because they are afraid due to some past harm. Some people do all they can to put people off out of fear. In this case it can be very difficult to recognize their grace. (My brother Matthew has a term for this, Divinity-mining. If he encounters a shy or difficult person, he tries to recognize the divine within this person and draw it out from them. I've witnessed him work wonders with this art).

Another possibility, and the one I suspect Emily means here, is that Grace is hard to see because it is most genuine when it doesn't advertise itself. A person who possesses genuine grace may be least inclined to display it. Grace isn't a performance. The moment you deliberately exhibit your humility, you risk turning it into vanity.

The important thing is that, either way, Dickinson is all praise in the end. She doesn’t dwell on the negative, on the "least," except for to praise it as an attribute of Grace.

Another Art, to praise.

Why would praising grace require a different art from recognizing it? Well, for one thing, you have to put it into words. You have to make understood what is characteristically inconspicuous. The act of praise threatens to distort the very thing it celebrates.

There's also a possible religious dimension. If grace is a gift from God, it isn't something the recipient can claim credit for. To recognize grace is to perceive a gift and to praise it is to know where the credit belongs.

Suffice to say, the deepest quality is the least recognizable. But if we can only recognize it, and, further, if we are up to the (seemingly impossible) task of properly praising it, then we may are on our way. Is it possible?

Yes, it is, if the poem itself performs the problem it describes. Dickinson is praising a grace that "least displays," and she does so in a small, cryptic poem that refuses to explain itself.


   -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

drawing by Da Vinci

P.S. There is a beautiful example of a sliding modifier in this poem. It’s the phrase “must be.” Look at the way it can slide up to modify the art to recognize, or slide down to modify the art to praise,

And that, so least displays—
One Art to recognize, must be,
Another Art, to praise.

They both must be, first one and then the other.

The term "sliding modifier" originated with this blog. Is there a better word for this phenomena? If so, let us know. If not, we'll continue to use this one. One of my favorite examples of a sliding modifier ever is in Terrence Hayes' great poem, “The Golden Shovel.” It's the phrase "A shadow knocked straight" Check it out.

I sing to use the Waiting

I sing to use the Waiting
My Bonnet but to tie
And shut the Door unto my House
No more to do have I

Till His best step approaching
We journey to the Day
And tell each other how We sang
To Keep the Dark away.


       -F955, J850, sheet 20, 1865


The poet is tying her bonnet, shutting the door to her house and preparing for a Journey to “the Day.” If night equates to death in poetry parlance, then "the Day" would be the next life, perhaps Heaven. The phrase “No more to do have I” leads one to think that life is all but over and done for the singer of this poem.

 
The first line, “I sing to use the Waiting” is poignant if you equate singing with poetry itself. Dickinson writes poetry to “use the Waiting.” An entire life is reduced to waiting, yet the waiting itself becomes a way of living.

If you pair the first line with the last, “We sang/ to Keep the Dark away,” you begin to approach Dickinson’s poetics. The latter lines remind me of the letter Dickinson wrote to Thomas Wentworth Higginson in 1862, “I had a terror — since September — I could tell to none — and so I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground — because I am afraid.” One sings, one writes poetry, to align the self with the transcendence of music and beauty. It is a kind of incantation warding off fear.

 We are left with the puzzle of what is meant by the "We" of this poem, what is meant by “His best step approaching." If Dickinson is talking about meeting someone at Death, one might at first imagine she is referring to Christ, but the poem implies a shared history which complicates this reading. Both the poet and “He” have something to say in the end to each other about singing to keep the dark away. That doesn’t necessarily exclude Christ from the picture, but it’s a stretch to imagine Christ singing to keep the dark away and then telling the poet about it on the way to "Day." So what's going on?

It is tempting to posit a lover for the "He" of this poem; Wadsworth, or Sue, or whom have you. This is intriguing because it begs the question of why and how this meeting might happen before the poet journeys to Day. But I think this might be a too literal interpretation. After all, we can't know the answer to this question with any surety. Though I'm fascinated by Dickinson's private life, I prefer to read these poems as open to the reader as much as possible, and therefore read the "He" in this poem as the reader. This poem, for me, is about how we all meet, finally, in the profound shared space of our vulnerability. We all deal, at some level, with a fear of the dark and in poetry we may meet and walk hand in hand into the great beyond.

The “best step approaching” the poet, then, is our own. “Best” is on us. Put your best foot forward. A "foot," in a Dickinson poem, is always, as far as I can tell, code for a metrical foot. Therefore "step" may be read as a metonym for poetry itself. Put your best song forward. 

This reading gives us some insight into the shut door in this poem, which suggests a withdrawal from ordinary social life into a private world of the writer. The tied bonnet is the tying up of the poems themselves. The poem becomes an image of the poet alone in her room, transforming isolation into art.

The last lines open that solitary world to the reader:

And tell each other how We sang
To Keep the Dark away.

          -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. This poem reminds me of the lines near the end of Whitman's Song of Myself. It's almost as if Emily and Walt are talking to each other through the poetry . 

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

P.P.S. Speaking of houses, The New York Times just published this terrific interactive commentary by A.O Scott on F466, "I dwell in possibility. Check it out. 

The good Will of a Flower

The good Will of a Flower
The Man who would possess
Must first present
Certificate
Of minted Holiness.


   -F954, J849, sheet 20, 1865

This poem begins with the good Will of a Flower. First, let’s state the obvious. Flowers may have a natural benevolence, but they don’t have wills. So then what are we talking about here? I’ll go out on a limb and say Dickinson probably had a woman in mind here. A flower attracting a bee may be seen as analogous to a woman attracting a lover. Flowers open up for bees as a woman might open for a lover. But the crucial difference between the two is that a woman does have a will. A flower opens for any bee willy nilly, but a woman will not.

If you want a woman’s good Will, her willingness, she must first be “certain” of your intentions. Here Dickinson jokingly gets at the idea of certitude with the term “certificate.” One must be wholly, certifiably, trustworthy. Holy.

                     

“Minted,” like Certificate, is another arch word choice here. Like certified, to mint a coin originally meant to stamp it with the official state seal. So here it means something like being officially stamped by heaven itself.

A modern equivalent to this sentiment might be heard in the Beyoncé song, “All the Single Ladies (Put a ring on it.)”

"Don't treat me to these things of the world

I'm not that kind of girl, your love is what I deserve"

Putting a ring on a finger doesn’t certify holiness, as a billion broken marriages can attest to, but that’s the idea anyway.

You can read the word possession in this poem in a couple of ways, and the reading of the poem changes depending. In the above reading, the one I think Dickinson largely means, we are talking about romantic possession, which is something different than merely possessiveness. She often uses the word “Mine” when writing about her beloved. There is a kind of possession that may be seen as pure, and therefore "holy." It’s that feeling of wanting to be loved by one uniquely special person, who is in turn loved by you, exclusively.

In this reading you are choosing a lasting love over temporary desire.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. One can't help but wonder if this poem was written for a suitor, and, even more tantalizingly, if it was sent to one with a flower.

P.P.S. An alternative reading, one that Dickinson may or may not have had in mind, but is suggested nonetheless by its vocabulary:

I mentioned in the comments to the poem previous to this one that in Billy Collins’ introduction to an Emily Dickinson Selected Poems he talks about the way she plays Latin and Anglo-Saxon words against each other. This poem is another good example of this. 

If you focus on the just the tone of the two languages, the poem takes on a different meaning. 

The language begins simply, directly. The flower has a good Will, a natural generosity. But look at what happens when Dickinson introduces the person who wants to possess the flower:

Must first present 

Certificate 

Of minted Holiness.

Possess, present, certificate are Latinate words, formal and bureaucratic.  And then comes the wonderful contradiction of “minted Holiness.” Minted suggests something manufactured, like a coin. Yet holiness should be inward and sacred. The poem's language shows us a conflict, natural goodness versus the human desire to own and regulate.

Just as He spoke it from his Hands

Just as He spoke it from his Hands
This Edifice remain—
A Turret more, a Turret less
Dishonor his Design—

According as his skill prefer
It perish, or endure—
Content, soe'er, it ornament
His absent character.


         -F953, J848, sheet 20, 1865

A strange poem which empties itself as it goes.

You start with something, "it," being spoken from “his Hands.”

Just as He spoke it from his Hands

It’s an evocative image, Hands that speak, almost biblical. Then you get the edifice itself, and, somehow, it remains. It abides, "just as" when it was created.

This Edifice remain—

“Edifice” is an odd word. It’s a bit empty, like saying "house" instead of "home." The house remains, yes, but what about the home? So, here you have something spoken into existence by his Hands, and what was built remains. But for what?

In the second stanza we will find out that his character is absent from the building. I’m thinking of Dickinson’s line, “Nature is a haunted house.” Somehow, in this poem, creation itself is called into question.

You get more clue into this “absent character” in the next line.

A Turret more, a Turret less
Dishonor his Design—

This edifice turns out to have turrets. This would make it a castle. A castle implies a king, a kingdom, and a whole hierarchy. It also implies protection. Turrets were originally built for guards, so that they could watch out for incoming enemies.

But turrets are ALSO ornamental. This poem plays with both ideas because in the second stanza adding a turret "ornaments" the builder's absent character.

Okay, so we have a structure that is both beautiful (ornamental) and functional (protects), and is "perfectly" made as is. So we need not add any more to what is already there, right?

But hey! Maybe we want to? Maybe we want to add to the design. God is like a busy father then, absent and not listening to our ideas.

Then we get the difficult second stanza:

According as his skill prefer
It perish, or endure— 
Content, soe'er, it ornament
His absent character.

This is a maddening stanza. I have made sense of it in my mind in several different ways, but I don't yet have an elegant solution.*  

My (current) best guess is that whether the Builder wishes his Edifice to Remain is at his discretion. It perishes or endures, according to what his skill prefers. If it goes, it goes, but if it endures then He is content that the edifice ornaments his absent character. 

The poem hinges a bit on the phrase "absent character." Is the emphasis here on "absent" or on "character"? 

Presumably the Builder wants his character to be seen because it is a good. But that word "absent" won't quite let you have that reading. There is something missing from the edifice. It's like a shell without the owner in it. 

So I don't know. 

The edifice shows character, perhaps, but also, more disturbingly, absence. 

In that sense, you may see this very poem as an edifice that points to the Lord's absent character. This poem, from this perspective, is punk, heretical. I take it as a push-back against a Lord of the manner.

If I was going to try to get at this poem from a biographical bent, this is what I would surmise: Emily’s father, Edward Dickinson, was famously controlling about his family and how the house was designed and kept. Remember that Emily lived in this house her whole life. There must’ve been some power dynamics over taste. Like many fathers (and especially back then), Edward Dickinson was a controlling presence, and yet was often absent.

***

That’s one take on the poem. It's a well-considered possibility. But I also can see there is a more surface-way to read this poem too.

This poem could be read as being about the tension between faith in the perfection of divine design and uncertainty about what that design actually means. We might believe that everything has been made according to a divine plan. But we cannot necessarily see that plan. We can only look at the world and try to understand the character of the being who made it. (A bit like a poem with many meanings).

In this interpretation, “Content, soe'er,” might mean that the structure remains content regardless. Its purpose is simply to testify to its creator, whether it perishes or endures. Yet the creator remains absent, leaving us to decide what the testimony means.

***

If you look at the recent batch of poems, and especially the ones that Dickinson wrote on this same piece of paper, sheet 20, you'll see that they all have these kinds of layered meanings in them. All levels of these poems can be useful depending on your needs, but it's worth remembering that, for the careful reader, there is often a more subtle and compelling reading lying in wait below the first. And sometimes that second one is a brazen reversal.

Is this poem more about the perfection of the King's Castle as it seems to be at first, or is it more about the absence inside the house that keeps it from being a home?


               -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

* I was listening to a podcast recently and a mathematician was talking about "style" and how the biggest compliment you could give a mathematician is to say her solution was elegant. This can also be true with Emily Dickinson. Her poems can be compared to difficult-to-solve math problems. An elegant solution to the poem must take account of all the words and their syntax and then present it in a way that is easy to follow. One of the most elegant Dickinson problem solvers I know of, by the way, is Susan Kornfeld, the creator of this blog. Hi, Susan. Thanks for letting us add turrets.

P.S. I picked up an Emily Dickinson Selected Poems at the local Sunnyside Book Swap a couple days ago. The selection had a forward by Billy Collins. I stood at the swap and read the intro and then put the book back for some lucky reader. The biggest takeaway I got from Collins' intro was his observations on the way Dickinson played the Anglo Saxon language off the Latinate for effect in her poems. The current poem at hand is a good example. "Just as he spoke it from his hands" is very Anglo Saxon. But the second line has a very different Latinate sound, "The Edifice remain." It is a subtle clue as to the meaning of the poem for me. The first line is full of substance. The second, like the more flashy and formal Latinate, is emptier. The home, in other words, has become an edifice.  

P.P.S. There are some good notes on this poem in the comments. See below. 

Finite — to fail, but infinite to Venture —

Finite — to fail, but infinite to Venture —
For the one ship that struts the shore
Many's the gallant — overwhelmed Creature
Nodding in Navies nevermore —


           -F952, J847, sheet 20, 1865

I had a teacher at Colorado State University, Dr. Richard Henze, a puckish professor with a gleam in his eye. He liked to read every text against itself, not as a practitioner of Deconstruction or some other critical stance, but simply because he enjoyed discovering the possibilities within a work of literature. It was a fertile ground for learning how to read Emily Dickinson. Her poems so often can be read against themselves. They “dwell in possibility.”

This poem is, for me, a good example of this.

 
Seen from one angle this poem is saying, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” To fail is finite. Failure has an endpoint. You try something, it doesn't work. But to venture is full of infinite chance. The moment you dare to attempt something, you enter a realm of possibility that has no clearly defined limits. The value of acting lies not so much in its outcome, but in the willingness to risk an outcome.

In this interpretation of the poem the strutting ship is the hero that made it against all odds. Rah rah! Go, Navy!

But I think this is missing an essential asymmetry in this poem between the one person who succeeds and the many who risk everything and disappear. At the end of the poem I think Dickinson's sympathy is less with the one who made it and “struts the shore” than it is the many gallant who tried. I think you can read it as a call against taking action.

Finite — to fail, but infinite to Venture —

“Infinite to Venture” is very similar to dwelling "in possibility.” We are dwelling in the infinite possibility of venturing, without actually venturing. It's being open to all possibilities without having to attach to any. It’s not in actually doing the thing where infinity lies, but in the possibilities being left open. To dwell in infinite possibility, then, means to not act.

This is akin to the Tao Te Ching’s “non-action.” From Google: “In the Tao Te Ching, "not acting" or "doing without doing" is known as Wu Wei (无为). It does not mean laziness or sitting completely still. Instead, it means acting in alignment with the natural flow of the universe rather than forcing, fighting, or trying to control outcomes.”

So I would like to venture this Taoist reading as one among the poem's infinite possibilities.

In the Rah Rah version of the poem, the hero is the strutting ship. In the Tao reading of this poem, the emphasis is on noticing instead, as I believe Dickinson does, the "nodding navies nevermore."

Seen in this light, this is an anti-war poem.

For the one ship that struts the shore

A ship strutting is a comical image. The verb “struts” makes the ship seem almost absurdly proud of itself. There is a connotation to the word "strut,"an implied criticism of how we understand success.

Many's the gallant — overwhelmed Creature

Now we turn our attention to the missing ships, the many brave creatures who were overwhelmed.

Gallant is a key word. These aren't cowards. They're courageous and noble. But they have been overwhelmed. The word Creature adds pathos to the scenario. It strips away the glamour of the venture. These are vulnerable creatures subject to forces greater than themselves.

Nodding in Navies nevermore —

This is a haunting line. Nodding suggests the bodies of sailors bobbing in the water, or the sunken ships rocking beneath the waves. And the word Navies scales up the tragedy. We're no longer imagining a single unlucky voyage but a maritime graveyard, a history of lost ventures. And the word “nevermore,” like it does in Poe’s famous poem The Raven, gives us a sense of finality. These creatures will never return. The stakes were too high.

The repeated N sounds in Nodding in Navies nevermore create a slow, almost hypnotic movement, as if the lost ships are still rocking in the water. It’s chilling.

So what’s Dickinson trying to tell us? The language of courage and adventure can conceal enormous suffering? The one ship on the shore is a poor consolation for the many lost at sea? Venturing is infinite in its possibilities, but those possibilities come at a terrible price?

It is the lost to whom Dickinson gives her attention. I read it as if she is, like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, stopping the sailor before he leaves shore. Instead of venturing upon your ideal, she whispers in his ear, dwell in possibility. 

        -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. Looking for more Tao of Dickinson I came across an article with this terrific reminder from Santi Tafarella, 

"The Tao of Emily is not the Tao of Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching, for Emily’s Tao includes entering into the Sturm und Drang of passions via the insight that the union and dissolution of opposites is the way of the world, whereas Lao Tzu calls for us to chill our passions via that very same insight."

Unable are the Loved to die

Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is Immortality,
Nay, it is Deity—

Unable they that love—to die
For Love reforms Vitality
Into Divinity.


     -F951, J809, sheet 20, 1865

This poem doesn't mean what I thought it meant. Upon a cursory reading it seemed to have the sweet faith-based belief in the eternal quality of Love. But then I got tripped up on the dash in the second stanza. Let's start with the first stanza though: 

Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is Immortality,
Nay, it is Deity—

This is comforting. You can't die if you are loved, for that love is immortal, "Nay, it is Deity."  If you are loved, it eases the dying. 

But that's only half the equation. How about the dying part? How about the loving part? 

This brings us to the second stanza. Look at the subtle move Dickinson makes.

Unable they that love—to die
For Love reforms Vitality
Into Divinity.

Has a dash in Dickinson a poem ever done so much?

If you read the poem quickly, you miss the dash. The poem is merely sweet: to be loved is to transcend death and to love is to transcend death. 

But the dash in that line that trips us up. It cheekily interrupts the sentence structure that the first stanza set up. "Unable are the loved to die" becomes "Unable they that love—to die." Why did that dash show up to interrupt that sentence? And then you realize it is because that dash is meant to interrupt that sentence for good. That dash is a period. If you stop at the dash, the poem takes on a whole new gravity. Death itself sneaks in the poem at that dash. Dash—Death.

Read the stanza again with a period (or at the very least a comma) where the dash is.

Unable they that love. To die
For Love reforms Vitality
Into Divinity.

Now the lover is unable not to die. “Unable they that love.” The lover is unable to go on forever, because the one being loved eventually must go. Heartbreak/death is built into the deal. The next sentence then takes on a gigantic weight. “To die for Love reforms Vitality into Divinity.”

To love means a willingness to take on the heartbreak of death, to take on mortality. It is the bravest thing one can do, die for love. This is Divinity a la Christ  And it is this kind of willingness to die for love that "reforms" vitality into divinity. "Reform" is such a perfect word here. It is the ease-of-being-the-loved-one "reforming" into the difficulty-of-being-the-lover.  

When you reform and the vitality of your life is given over to love, then you have the power to make the loved one Immortal. Opening yourself to heartbreak frees love.

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. Prayer of St. Francis: "For it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Twice had Summer her fair Verdure

Twice had Summer her fair Verdure
Proffered to the Plain—
Twice a Winter's silver Fracture
On the Rivers been—

Two full Autumns for the Squirrel
Bounteous prepared—
Nature, Had'st thou not a Berry
For thy wandering Bird?



       -F950, J836, sheet 19, 1865



I heard Malcolm Guite on the podcast Literary Life recently talking about his new epic ballad, “Gallahad and the Grail.” (4.69 rating on Goodreads!) He was talking about how easy it is to over-determine a poem in the act of “interpreting” it. He made a canny joke, “Lord, lead us not into interpretation.”

So yeah, reminder to self. Sometimes it's best to evade interpretation. The best way to do that is to look at the form, what it is that makes the poem different, and beautiful, formally.

With a poem like this I can take pleasure from it without needing to make sense of it. First there is the sound, the pleasure of words on the tongue. They insist on being read out loud. In fact, this one insisted on being sung. I got out my guitar and a melody immediately presented itself.

This one is SUCH a pleasure to sing. First of all, the rhythm is trochaic, which means each line begins with an emphasized syllable, on a down beat. On top of that the beat you are hitting has a spitting “TW!” sound. The way the sound of “TWICE” opens each couplet of the first stanza, followed by the emphatic “TWO” that begins the final stanza, drives the beat of the song. This emphasis softens considerably when we get to the plaintive final couplet which begins with the softer N sound of Nature, completely changing the tone on the final chordal run.

Another thing this poem does that lends itself to melody are the runs of “feminine” ending rhymes, and especially the repetition of the “er” and “ure” sound. For me that drop in emphasis on the second syllable corresponds to a drop of a note on the musical scale. The melody I gave to this song naturally seemed to descend.

There is also the pleasure of the images. It’s cool imagining Summer personified and proffering “fair Verdure” to the “plain.” And how about that image of a silver fracture on a river?

A third pleasure is in the logical structure. Summer proffers fair verdure which then seems to result in a silver fracture on the frozen river. So the suggestion is, to me, (edging into interpretation now), that Summer is the lover that is offering "fair verdure" and the result is a rejection by winter, leaving one fractured and frozen. It’s a remarkable way to see the progression of summer into winter.

The second stanza does something equally astonishing, but the poetic logic of the poem now says: “Like a squirrel in autumn, I saved and saved for winter, but what did it get me?  Now, alas, it’s spring time and I don’t even have a berry.” I want to interpret that on a personal level too. Like a squirrel in autumn, one invests in someone, invests enough to hopefully get through the tough times together, only to result in spring coming up with no fruit from the relationship. 

It's got to have a personal meaning, right? Because if you are just talking about actual seasons, then it doesn't really make sense, because there are always berries for the birds. The song-bird is the poet and she is searching for sustenance.

In looking at the poetic logic of the poem the meaning begins to become more clear. But there's more, we are sure of it, so we look for clues. That brings us to the next great pleasure in reading a Dickinson poem, the wrestling match with meaning. With Dickinson there is almost always the pleasure of the riddle. It's akin to the pleasure of solving a mystery.

This guessing is precisely where interpretation can start to become, perhaps, too personal. Lord, lead me not into interpretation. So I’ll ask you for yours instead. Here's my first question for you. Why are there two sets of seasons in this poem? And why do we have "Twice" given to us twice, followed by "Two," and then end on zero, on no berry, none? 

Perhaps there is a personal reason for these two sets of seasons for Dickinson? But any biographical interpretation begs a question. How personal are Dickinson’s poems in the end? Did Dickinson intend for her poems to have universal resonance or didn't she? My understanding is that she was able to write in both personal and universal modes simultaneously, and even the most obscure poem is meant, in part, to be for a general audience. Using the word “Twice,” for instance, is meant to invoke a specific meaning for a reader. But what? What is “Twice” doing here then, on a broader level?

Another question. Where is spring in this poem? How come it is missing? 

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff


P.S. Here's the song as it came out when I picked up my guitar. 

P.P.S. Here's an acrostic written last week by one of my HS students. I thought it put the over-determination problem beautifully. 

Letting

All

Unique 

Readers.

Amusingly

Scholars

Create

How

Readers

Exactly

Imagine

Bright

Excellent

Reading.