The Soul's distinct connection

The Soul's distinct connection
With immortality
Is best disclosed by Danger
Or quick Calamity—

As Lightning on a Landscape
Exhibits Sheets of Place—
Not yet suspected—but for Flash—
And Click—and Suddenness.


    -F901, J974, 1865


This poem points us to a revelation. Since the landscape is dark, though, we don't know what that revelation is. All we have is the finger pointing into the dark. This poem bears witness to an experience of Truth. The revelation is best described by this witness as "the soul's distinct connection with Immortality."

This revelation, she tells us, is disclosed by danger and calamity. Dickinson is like Dante returning with Virgil from hell, albeit with far more brevity. What our harrowing witness reveals to us in this poem, in the fewest words possible, is just the word Immortality and our soul's distinct connection to it. Since these words "Immortality" and "Soul" are quite slippery ones, everything hinges on how you interpret them. Careful, don't fall!

What is a Soul? What is Immortality? (And how can Emily wield these words with such impunity?)

For most people Immortality means the self goes on forever. Immortality, though, is impossible. It is a self-negating paradox. To be mortal is to have flesh and blood, so one cannot be not mortal. 

The only way one could be immortal would be to live beyond the confines of the body. And for that to be there would have to be some way for the memories of the self to remain beyond the body. Something would have to carry the memories. One wonders, is there a back-up storage for the brain, like, in memories stored in the Cloud? Perhaps, who knows. Belief in this kind of perpetual self is a mere matter of Faith. There is no foolproof proof.

What makes most sense to me is that those memories just go. Like, the universe has to free up the Cloud to allow for new memories.

If Immortality is not some kind of living-forever of the self, then what is it? What kind of immortality is it that danger and calamity reveals? What is this "distinct connection"?

I suppose only those who have experienced intense danger and calamity would know the answer to this question. I don’t think I have ever quite felt this myself. I’ve felt terror, and have experienced some terrible things, but none of them made me see a flash of Immortality lighting up the landscape.

I've felt something akin to forever, but it was disclosed in an entirely different way than through Danger. Here's the story in brief. On the last day of a 41 day vow of silence I was sitting in a lake and looking at the moon and felt an overwhelming sensation. A connection to the universe is the best way I can describe it. I wept. It was an Everything at Once Everywhere non-duality kind of feeling. That felt akin to Immortality. The fear of death dropped away. There was not only no sense of Danger or Calamity, but there was NO MORE danger and calamity forever.

Danger, on the contrary, makes me want to hold on more dearly to life. When I face calamity, I feel the opposite of Immortality: I want to hold on to the temporal.

But what I do feel in moments of Danger and Calamity is a deeper sense of what is Real and meaningful to me, a connection to loved ones and to the earth and stars beyond. Perhaps love comprises a kind of immortality then? 

Yesterday Tom C, faithful Prowling Bee reader and writer, was in Queens and paid me a call. We had a talk about this poem, since I had been thinking about it. He told me his experience of going through extreme Calamity and Grief and how it gave him a real sense that Love is Forever. It doesn't diminish, Tom said.

There is something immortal in that feeling of human connection. In one of my favorite Dickinson poems she states that the smallest human heart’s extent reduces Infinity to nothing:

The Life we have is very great.
The Life that we shall see
Surpasses it, we know, because
It is Infinity.

But when all Space has been beheld
And all Dominion shown
The smallest Human Heart’s extent
Reduces it to none.

I’ve long been fascinated by Dickinson's conception of immortality.  It goes beyond the usual definition of the word. In one of her letters she writes, "It may be she came to show you Immortality." I suspect she was speaking of a young one who died. But she might just as well be speaking of herself too. So what is it she came to show us? The following quotes are all taken from her letters.

"No heart that break
but further went than
Immortality."

"Emerson's intimacy with
his "Bee" only
immortalized him."

"The 'infinite beauty' of
which you speak comes
too near to seek."

"Show me eternity, and
I will show you Memory-
Be you - While I am Emily -
Be next - what you have ever been -
Infinity."

"There is no first, or
last, in Forever-
It is Centre, there,
all the time."

"The risks of immortality
are perhaps its charm."

"A letter always seemed
to me like Immortality,
for is it not the Mind
alone, without corporeal friend?"

"Dear friend, can you walk,
were the last words that I wrote her.
Dear friend, I can fly-
her immortal reply."

"An hour for books
those enthralling friends
the immortalities"

"The immortality of flowers
must enrich our own."

"Amazing human heart-
a syllable can make
to quake like jostled tree-
what Infinite - for thee!"

"Show me eternity, and
I will show you Memory-
Be you - While I am Emily -
Be next - what you have ever been -
Infinity."

"Amazing human heart-
a syllable can make
to quake like jostled tree-
what Infinite - for thee!"

What do you make of all that? Immortality is tied in with a broken heart, with intimacy with a bee, with the cycles of nature, with memory, with what you have always been, with the eternal moment, with risks, with the written word (letters and books), with flight, flowers, and the power of the human heart.

She’s getting at the circumference of something profound here, and this poem is just another clue: Danger and Calamity.

***

Okay, ALL that said, and that was a lot, one thing we haven't broached yet is the word "distinct." Distinct means "identifiable, separate, clearly different from others." So then, Immortality, in this poem, is either about our distinct selves going on forever into the future, or its about the way we hold the distinction of each other in a forever way in our heart. I suspect for Dickinson, it is more about the latter.

***

Another thing worth mentioning here is the amazingly cool imagery of this poem, the way it conflates lightning and photography and spiritual insight together into one thing. It’s an awesome way to conceive of something larger than what it is we can ordinarily perceive. The lightning flash is like a 3D photograph, but of temporal landscape of Immortality! Whoa. 

     -/)dam Wade DeGraff

P.S. My cousin Mike DeGraff recently sent me some stand-up from Rory Scovel. The following bit flashed through my mind when I was writing this.

Rory Scovel: 'One time my daughter asked me, “What happens when you die?” And I was like, “I don’t know. And neither does anyone else. And anyone who tells you they know is lying to you." My wife was like, “Hey, why don’t we pull it back a little bit? Let’s pull it back.”'

P.P.S. I had a long philosophical conversation with AI about this poem. It was insightful, but ultimately, frustrating. It’s too long to post here, but if you are interested in AI's ontological take on the afterlife, this is good grist for the mill.

Twas awkward, but it fitted me —

Twas awkward, but it fitted me —
An Ancient fashioned Heart —
Its only lore — its Steadfastness —
In Change — unerudite —

It only moved as do the Suns —
For merit of Return —
Or Birds — confirmed perpetual
By Alternating Zone —

I only have it not Tonight
In its established place —
For technicality of Death —
Omitted in the Lease —


     -F900, J973, 1865



'Twas awkward, but it fitted me —

An Ancient fashioned Heart —

I love "Ancient fashioned Heart." The heart is not just old-fashioned, it's Ancient fashioned. That word Ancient is so deep in time. It's like saying, "My love has been around forever, and therefore it's not going anywhere soon." 

Why is this ancient fashioned heart awkward though? I think Dickinson is implying it's not the newest thing that counts, the new interesting person, it’s the tried and true, the old friend, the society of the soul. 

This "awkward" business is funny. Dickinson's poetry is awkward not because it’s old-fashioned, but rather because it’s always new and difficult to get used to. Suffice to say, the most important thing is that the heart, and the poetry too, are ever true:

Its only lore — its Steadfastness —

This line is funny also, because there is SO much lore that has been created about Emily Dickinson. Scores of lore. Emilycore. And yet here it is as if she is saying that you can set all that aside. The only lore she has for us is her Steadfastness. It's remarkable too because here she still is, her Ancient heart still travelling into the future, steadfast as ever.

In Change — unerudite —
 
Yet another funny line. To be erudite is to have deep and arcane knowledge about subject. It’s to be in the know. By saying “In Change — unerudite —" it’s as if she is saying that change, the newest knowledge, is not what she knows about. Maybe one can read a hint of fear here. The poem takes a turn at the end, and so we know change is imminent for this Steadfast heart.

It only moved as do the Suns —
For merit of Return —

Are you kidding me with these lines? Dickinson aligns her Ancient heart with the Sun. We get the idea that Dickinson's Heart moves as the Sun does. And the reason it moves is merely for the merit of returning again. But wait? What? The sun doesn’t move, does it? Rather the earth moves around the sun. The line is a kind of trick of perspective. Rather it is the lover, the reader, that is always returning to the Steadfast Sun of Emily’s Ancient Heart.

Still, this idea of moving, for the sake of returning, whether it is the sun or the earth, is shrewd. Dickinson is declaring eternal steadfast love, but she’s also acknowledging the dance.

"It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing"

Or Birds — confirmed perpetual
By Alternating Zone —

The birds perpetually fly south for the winter and north in the summer. Now Dickinson’s heart isn’t just the Sun, it’s the "confirmed perpetual" movement of life toward the Sun at all times, following it just as the birds do, from north to south in the winter and back again in the summer. 

The change is all contained in a larger love, just like the seasons are overseen by the sun. It’s a wonderful way to look at both the heart and the sun. The two become one, the heart and the Sun.

I only have it not Tonight
In its established place —

Ugh, crushing lines. The way Dickinson wields a “not” is wicked. (See F891.) Dickinson’s heart is steadfast, so why isn’t in its established place? It must be because the lover’s heart wasn't as constant? 

For technicality of Death —
Omitted in the Lease —

Either someone literally died, and Emily’s Steadfast heart can’t follow them into death, or for some reason the other person could not be steadfast in return. (Who knows what that reason might be, but it's worth mentioning, perhaps, that Dickinson's two greatest loves, Sue Gilbert and Charles Wadsworth, were married to other people.)

Here Dickinson switches her tone from the eternal language of nature, of birds and suns, to a legal language. Her father and brother were lawyers, so this kind of terminology in her poems often has, I've noticed, a bit of a bite. The poem begins so earnestly and grand and ends in a "technicality? " A broken lease due to the cause of death? 

There’s the tone to me in those last lines of an icy finality. Either Emily’s begrudging the business-like transaction of death, or she's bitter because of a lover's neglect, as if to say, hey! you broke a contract with the Sun!

      -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Our Lady of Sorrows at the Church of the True Cross, Salamanca, Spain

Experience is the Angled Road

Experience is the Angled Road
Preferred against the Mind
By — Paradox — the Mind itself —
Presuming it to lead

Quite Opposite — How Complicate
The Discipline of Man —
Compelling Him to Choose Himself
His Preappointed Pain —

  

         -F899, J910, 1865

The first thing that stops me in this poem is the adjective "Angled." In a letter to T.W. Higginson Dickinson writes, "I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine." "Angled" starts to shine when you look at it. 

Experience is the Angled Road 

Here "Angled" means that the road isn't straight. But Dickinson could've used other words, like windy for instance. Why use "Angle?" Well, for one, it gives the impression of a sudden sharp turn. Experience leads to sharp, painful, turns. But there is another meaning of "Angled Road," which is the idea of something being "angled" for. That one word carries the "paradox" of this poem. You are not expecting the road to angle, and yet you are angling for just that. Neat.

The next thing that stops me is to wonder what is doing the preferring?

Experience is the Angled Road
Preferred against the Mind
By — Paradox — the Mind itself —

Is it “Paradox” or the “Mind" that is doing the preferring? It depends on how you punctuate the lines. Both readings are fitting, but one has an emphasis on fate and one on freewill, which is an undercurrent throughout this poem. Either the mind prefers something against itself (against its own desire,) or the principle of Paradox itself is preferring it for us, because that’s just how life is. 

Either way the first stanza is basically saying that Experience is a road with surprising turns, and though the mind would prefer an easier and more straight-forward path our actual experience takes us a different way.

Experience goes against what the mind thinks it wants and yet it is still preferred. Why? How could we prefer something that we don’t want? 

No pain, no gain. We choose experiences we know may hurt, like starting a new relationship after a painful breakup, or committing to something grueling like marathon training, because they promise us meaning and growth, and maybe even self-respect.

Quite Opposite— How Complicate

It's fun to say this line, the way the K, P and T sounds interweave, and the rhyme of Opposite and Complicate. "Quite opposite— How Complicate." 

There is a great scene in the movie "The Five-Year Engagement" where Jason Segal is telling Emily Blunt why instant gratification can be a wiser choice than self-discipline.

It's complicated!

The word "Complicate" also describes the syntax of this poem. That may or not be on purpose, but it's apt.

          — How Complicate
The Discipline of Man —

The word "Discipline" clues you into the idea in this poem that something is being "angled" for. The complication is that we are of two minds; satisfaction in the moment as opposed to a long term gain. 

Compelling Him to Choose Himself
His Preappointed Pain —

How complicated human discipline becomes, since our goals compel us to choose our own suffering. We are forced to participate in our own struggle.

This poem is funny. It's a God's eye view of the tragi-comedy of being human. The Self must act in spite of the self to become the Self. Haha! Good luck, humans!

On one hand the mind doesn’t want pain, especially in lieu of pleasure, but on the other hand, there are great benefits to be had from choosing pain. So what's a girl to do?

"Preappointed" is another word that stops me cold. Does "Preappointed" mean that the pain is fated? On one hand it is probably true that pain is fated no matter what "road" you choose. But here "Preappointed" seems directly tied into discipline, so the one doing the preappointing is either fate or the self, it's up to you. Have your pain now or later. Just like with the word "Angled," this word encompasses the paradox of this poem. 

The question this poem begs for me is what it is that is "Compelling" us to "Choose" pain. This is a question worth leaving open.

       -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S.  A story I love that asks the same open question is Cream by Haruki Murakami. Check it out if you get half a chance.

P.P.S. I've never heard of the Lithuanian poet, Jonas Zdanys, but I dig the title of his collected poems, "The Angled Road." From a review of the book by Ken Hada, "Emily Dickinson’s 'angled road' of experience is the touchstone for Zdanys, her lines declaring a “paradox” that surpasses intellectual abstraction to confirm the authority of art.' According to Hada then, Art is the thing that compels us to choose pain. That's one angle anyway.

An Hour is a Sea

An Hour is a Sea
Between a few, and me —
With them would Harbor be —


      -F898, J825, 1865


This poem is similar in content to the famous poem Wild Nights, Wild Nights. For comparison, let’s look at that one, written four or five years earlier:

Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile – the Winds –
To a Heart in port –
Done with the Compass –
Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden –. Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor – Tonight –
In Thee!

It's a similar idea right? But "Wild Nights" sweeps you away. It’s full of anguish, but it’s also very romantic. 

But this poem on the other hand? There is something in the extreme compression that adds a note of desperation to it. The poem almost seems like it's in a hurry, desperate for that hour to be over. The three lines are like three final gasps of air before the poet sinks down into that Sea.

Those three perfect end rhymes of Sea/me/be seem cloying at first, almost lazy, but when given an emotional emphasis they begin to sound plaintive, almost like a dolphin cry: eee eee eee.

An Hour is a Sea

Dickinson morphs time into space. She was ahead of Einstein! E=MC2 and relativity are both at play here. Time, a mere hour, expands into the great distance and depth of an unfathomable sea.

Between a few, and me —

“A few” is a phrase that makes you wonder; not one, not many, but a few. For what it's worth, this poem was sent by Emily to her beloved friend and sister Susan Gilbert Dickinson. So who are the few? Maybe it was Sue’s family, including her brother Austin, that Emily was missing, but maybe it was just two, Emily and Sue.

With them would Harbor be  —

If the hour is a sea, then being with these few is a harbor from that seeming endlessness of time.

The startling thing here, to me, is the bareness. I think of that phrase from Dickinson’s poem about a snake, “zero at the bone.” This poem is zero at the bone. It’s as if it is all she could muster. 


    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

A lovely piece of music called "An Hour is a Sea" by Dextro

P.S.  David Preest's notes on this poem are informative, "When Sue was staying with her sister, Martha Smith, in New York, Emily concluded a short letter (L312) to her with this poem. She led up to the poem with the words, ‘[I] turn my thoughts [to you] without a Whip – so well they follow you.’ An hour had also felt long in poem J781. The harbour is reminiscent of the last two lines of poem J249 and the last lines of poems J368 and J506."

P.P.S. Here is a heartfelt response to this poem from another blogger who just goes by Possibility.  

She sped as Petals of a Rose

She sped as Petals of a Rose
Offended by the Wind—
A frail Aristocrat of Time
Indemnity to find—
Leaving on nature—a Default
As Cricket or as Bee—
But Andes in the Bosoms where
She had begun to lie—


     -F897, J991, 1865


For this poem we are indebted to this note from David Preest: “Emily sent a copy of this poem to Sue on the death of her niece, also called Susan, at two years of age.”

This context adds gravitas. Let’s take it a few lines at a time.

She sped as Petals of a Rose
Offended by the Wind—

A two year old girl’s life is compared to rose petals, silky-soft, delicate and beautiful. But what is this Wind? And why does it offend? The Wind here probably refers to the illness that took the child’s life. But the way Dickinson framed it, as the flower being offended, makes it seem more like a soul peeped out into the world, looked around and was like, nope, this world with all of its storms of sorrow offends me, I’m out of here.

Notice how this poem grabs you right away with its imagery and music. The lines speed by, but they have such a beautiful sound as they go with those little detonations of D sounds studded through them. “She speD as peTals of a rose/ offenDeD by the winD.” The D sounds continue throughout the poem. I think that the D sound comes up often in poems about Death, echoing the sickening sound of "DeaD." (See Gwendolyn Brooks poem "the mother" for a powerful example of this).

A frail Aristocrat of Time

An aristocrat is a funny way to think of a child, but Emily was always inverting status words in this manner. Queens and Emperors are something wholly different in the spiritual realm of Dickinson’s lexicon. What does it mean to be an Aristocrat of time? An aristocrat is historically defined by hereditary rank, noble titles, and landed wealth. This child was born of wealth, but not the monetary kind. The fact that this child was an aristocrat OF time is the little tell here. Just being alive, it would seem, and taking part in time makes us rich. That’s what we inherit just by being born.

Indemnity to find—

“Indemnity” means a payment for loss. The child, in dying, is seeking some kind of compensation, perhaps spiritual peace, or maybe transcendence beyond time.

It’s almost as if Dickinson is hinting that the child is better off. She was offended by the Wind, so she quit time and looked for her treasure outside of it, in a place without all those cruel Winds. And yet those winds offend for a good reason. Look what they are preventing! Life, in all its potential beauty. 

Leaving on nature—a Default
As Cricket or as Bee—

Default is in the same realm of language as Indemnity, the legal language of money.

It implies a failure to fulfill an obligation, or something left undone. But here Dickinson implies that because Nature is so vast, this default can be compared to the loss of a cricket or a bee, something hardly noticed. But…

But Andes in the Bosoms where
She had begun to lie—

But the child is as large as the Andean mountains in the bosoms (hearts) of those where she had “begun to lie.” One can imagine the two year old still lying on the mother’s bosom, nursing. To that mother there is nothing larger than this child. Unlike the fragile rose petals, to the mother this child is as solid and large as an entire mountain range.

I think that “begun” is the most poignant word here for me. The child was just beginning, and like that she is gone.

I have a friend, the critic and poet Lytle Shaw, who says that Emily Dickinson's poems are weird in the right ways. This poem is a good example of what it is I think he means. It's an odd one, with its mix of natural imagery and legal financial terms, with its idea of a flower being offended by wind, or of being an aristocrat OF time, or of seeking compensation elsewhere for defaulting on life, or even the idea of the relative worth of a child to nature vs. man. And of course the language is always weird and sticky. "Andes in the Bosoms" is such an inimitable, and indelible, way to put it.  

But this is part of what makes the poem so affecting. Somewhere (somebody help me out here) Roland Barthes puts forward the idea that condolences have to be expressed in a unique way to be effective. A Hallmark card isn't going to cut it. So being weird, then, may be seen as an essential quality of being real, which is in turn an essential part of being felt. 

-/)dam Wade l)eGraff

Notes


1. I’d be willing to bet this poem was sent with roses.

2. I think this poem is influenced by and echoes Emily’s own feelings about the loss of a major love in her life, one which was so painful in the extreme for her that it seems to drive much of her poetry. It's not hard to read this poem as a love poem to Sue Sr. in disguise.

3. Judith Farr in a deeply-felt appreciation of this poem, remarks on the poignancy of the last line in a society where the rate of infant mortality was terrifyingly high.

Purple is – fashionable twice –

Purple is – fashionable twice –
This season of the year,
And when a soul perceives itself
To be an Emperor.

     -Fr896, J980, 1865

My first question is, what season of the year is fashionably purple? Spring? Autumn?

My guess is that it is spring. This poem is saying that purple is naturally fashionable twice, first in the spring, and then again when the soul perceives that it is an Emperor. 

Autumn could make sense too though. There is a tradition of reading the late year as a kind of earned sovereignty. August has a deeper purple: wine-dark harvest tones. 

But “Fashionable” doesn’t sound like autumn to me. Fall tends to carry a sense of august inevitability, not trendiness. “Fashionable” feels lighter, as if the purple is in vogue, not hard-won.

It also makes sense that this season would be spring because it is traditionally associated with rebirth, which aligns with that sudden sense of inner grandeur Dickinson is describing.

When the early purple flowers are blooming the soul suddenly feels grand as “an Emperor."

And maybe Dickinson is also letting us know that this feeling won't last forever. Normally one thinks of the soul as being beyond the the temporary. But here, it is reversed; feeling and soul are inextricably intertwined.

After all, Dickinson doesn’t say the soul is an emperor, only that it feels like one. It perceives itself so.  This feeling is seasonal and fashionable (temporary and subject to change) and self-perceived (possibly illusory).

Maybe the purple feeling of the soul is only temporary, and self-perceived, but it's still awesome. And just like Spring, it's bound to come around again. For a season at least the soul rules. 

     
    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

My neighbor Quinn O'Sullivan took this video of spring purple in Sunnyside for Prowling Bee. 

The background song "Turned to Dust" is by Bonnie Prince Billy and Ronnie Bowman

Notes

1. David Preest agrees Dickinson must be talking about Spring: 

"'This season of the year’ is presumably spring. When she described the coming of spring in poem 140 Emily wrote that a ‘Tyrian light’ the village fills, ancient Tyre being famous for its purple dye. She also said in the same poem that spring was the season of ‘a purple finger [of the violet] on the slope.’"

2. I found a delightful paper on the subject, a deep dive the different moods and meanings of purple in Dickinson’s poems. 

3. From the above article I learned that Dickinson refers to purple in her poems more than any other color. It’s mentioned in 54 of her poems. That would make a good little book of poems if anyone's got the time and inclination. It would look fantastic too, with photos fitting every poem in all shades of purple.

The Earth has many keys –

The Earth has many keys –
Where Melody is not
Is the Unknown Peninsula –
Beauty – is Nature’s Fact –

But Witness for Her Land –
And Witness for Her Sea –
The Cricket is Her utmost
Of Elegy, to Me –


   -Fr895B, J1775, 1866

This blog is committed to following the Franklin order. But sometimes that presents problems. One of those problems is this poem. My source for the Franklin order is Wikipedia which gives both this poem and the one previous to it the number 895. Whereas the earlier numerical arrangement, by Thomas Johnson, gives the two poems separate numbers. 

Sometimes this poem is printed at the end of a longer poem. (More on this later.) Sometimes this poem is printed as two stanzas and sometimes as one. Without better source material I can't tell you which is correct. But whether it has two stanzas or one is essential to the reading of the poem. (The poem, perhaps, has many keys.) 

When the poem is in two stanzas, as it is above, then the phrase “But Witness..." appears to have the subject of Cricket sound. The cricket sound is the witness. But when the poem is in one stanza, then the word "Witness" appears to have the subject of the line immediately preceding it, "Beauty- is Nature's fact-" This second single stanza reading gives us a stunning idea: beauty as a WITNESS to the earth. It is an emblematic key.

Beauty is herein coupled with another way to unlock the earth, Melody. Beauty and Melody are both witnesses to something endemic to the earth; a spiritual order.

BUT that’s not the only key. The earth has many. Another one can be found where melody ISN’T. This is exemplified by the sound of the crickets.

This place that is unmelodic, which is to say, I think, without a pleasing order (and which is deemed later as an Elegy, making it about the chaos of death) can be heard in the late summer sound of the crickets. The cricket, in turn, is emblematic of all that is “out of tune.”

“What would you do if I sang out of tune, would you get up and walk out on me?” -John Lennon

I love the weird idea of the cricket song as a peninsula. A peninsula is part of Dickinson’s poetic lexicon and shows up in dozens of poems. It functions as a concept to her. It’s touching here how the peninsula is both reaching out of and into the land at once. A peninsula is not quite an island, but it’s apart from the crowd and juts out from the mainland. (Note that the poem before this one speaks of crickets as minor Nations and unobtrusive Masses. Here’s a good place to explain that this poem, and the one preceding it, Fr895A, appear together as part of a longer poem published later. The convoluted history of this poem, and a look extra stanzas, can be found here.)

Suffice to say, if you read this poem as a continuation of F895A, then it becomes even more apparent that the cricket is its subject. But wait, I’m getting ahead of the poem at hand. Can we just go back to the first line? It’s enough by itself:

The Earth has many keys –

It’s such a rich line. The earth, our fecund matrix, has many keys. There are many ways IN. We want to enter the earth! Sex! Death! There are many ways to plant seeds. Each seed is a key. What else is a key? Poetry?

Yes. Poetry and music are invoked by the word “Key,” especially when it is followed up with “Melody” in the subsequent line. The keys are in different melodies, and melodies themselves are keys. Dickinson has it both ways.

Where Melody is not

This is one of those poems where the sense of the syntax builds line by line. The first line “The earth has many keys” can be read as one sentence. But now we have two lines and together they say, “The earth has many keys/ Where Melody is not.” Okay, so we are being led down an alternative path now, an unmelodic one. We have a key where melody is not. But then you add the third line and another new sense emerges:

The Earth has many keys –
Where Melody is not
Is the Unknown Peninsula –

You see how the narrative of the poem unfolds as the syntax does? So now we have something like, "The earth has many keys. Where melody is not is the unknown peninsula." Hmm. And now that peninsula, in my mind, is one of the keys. A peninsula is shaped like a key, like Key West. It’s also a part of the earth, and one that is set apart from it in the sea. 

Now, the crickets, the sound of the crickets, is synaesthized here as being a peninsula, as if it were a peninsula of sound, set off from the rest of melody. Dickinson is mixing her metaphors here to wondrous effect. A key, a peninsula, a sea of cricket chirps, it all becomes one.

Okay, now we have a big statement:

Beauty – is Nature’s Fact –

This line comprises a whole philosophy. Is beauty in the eye of the beholder, yes or no? If beauty is a FACT, then it is not subjective, or maybe Emily is pointing to the idea that subjectivity and desire are facts.  Keats' insistence that Truth and Beauty are one in the same may be a premise here. Beauty and Truth are usually seen as separate, and sometimes incompatible, but here Dickinson is, like Keats, pointing to beauty as a fact. Dickinson’s mind was Nietzschean in its depth. (Just as Nietzsche's writing was Dickinsonian, especially in "Thus Spake Zarathustra.")

Anyway, you get the idea. But once you have absorbed this line about the fact of beauty, you still have to somehow loop it back onto the overall meaning of the poem. What does the fact of beauty have to do with the lack of melody? Are crickets seen as anti-melodic? Is their sound still beautiful, or do they fly in the face of beauty? It’s hard to tease out just exactly what Dickinson is saying here, though I think we’re getting closer all the time.

Audience: *CRICKETS*

But seriously, the sound of crickets is what this poem is rooted in. The cricket's chorus becomes a super dense metaphor, but one that is rooted in the actual sound.  

But Witness for Her Land –
And Witness for Her Sea –

The cricket sound, that minor Mass in the grass, is equated to a peninsula that goes out into the ocean to witness for the Land, and simultaneously goes into the land to witness for the ocean. It’s as if the ocean and land are holding hands. It’s a meet cute! The crickets are the sound-track to a gothic out-of-tune rom-com. 

The rhythmic hum of the late summer crickets lets us know that winter is on its way, a minor key without a melody.


    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

I found this photo on a FB post about this poem 

by Marianna Erdei on a Shamanic Portal. 

I thought it was apt.

Further in Summer than the Birds –

Further in Summer than the Birds –
Pathetic from the Grass –
A minor Nation celebrates
It’s unobtrusive Mass.

No Ordinance be seen –
So gradual the Grace
A gentle Custom it becomes –
Enlarging Loneliness –

Antiquest felt at Noon –
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify –

Remit as yet no Grace –
No furrow on the Glow,
But a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now –


    -Fr895A, J1068, 1865


The subject of this poem is never named, but it’s easy enough to solve if you take your time.

Here are the clues. It’s something that comes later in the summer than the birds. And it comes from lower than the birds too, from the grass in fact. This is a nation, which means it's a group. And they are singing a mass. So... if it’s in the grass, it's probably insects of some kind? And if it is a group singing, it must be, by process of elimination, crickets? Okay, so we are talking about crickets here, right? Suddenly you hear them, and hearing them, in your imagination, is essential to feeling this poem. Feel the sound as you remember it, peaceful, and perhaps a bit melancholic.

Here’s the thing about riddles though: what they are pointing to is only a means to an end. It’s in the pointing where the poetry is taking place.

Let’s look at some of the pointing that Dickinson does in the first stanza:

“Further in the Summer”

"Summer," (and later in the poem “noon”) means, in the parlance of poetry, the middle of life. This is wrought with meaning for Dickinson. Summer is not always a happy occasion in her mythos. Often she speaks of it as an excruciating time of glaring light and overbearing heat. At any rate, "Further in the Summer" means we are edging nearer to death. So, to begin with, we are talking about the gravitas of death. 

“Pathetic”

Pathetic can mean small, lesser, as in “a pathetic attempt” or, in its original meaning, full of pathos. Emily means both here I am sure. But it's tricky because small in Dickinson’s world is often greater. Less is more. So pathetic has that connotation too. ("Pathetic from the Grass" is also evocative of graves).

“A minor Nation celebrates"

Here the whole nation of America is called into question. America is the Major nation, and its celebration is in the summer, the fourth of July. Now though we are into August. In this one move Dickinson celebrates something very different from the Power and Pomp of the Majority. Perhaps the minority is pathetic in comparison, but we, with Dickinson, are going low and inside; we are celebrating something small and secret, something akin to dying.

“unobtrusive Mass”

There is something holy here, a reverence, in the sound of these crickets. In the same way this minor Nation is held up in contrast to the Major one, the unobtrusive Mass is held up in comparison to another kind of Mass, one that is, perhaps, being pointed to as Obtrusive. A Catholic Mass, like Independence Day, is, often, showy and extravagant.

The mass we hear later is of a darker timbre. The bird sounds of spring are high and sweet, whereas the crickets' is more somber and low. In these descriptors the world of great matter, Church and State, is held against the pathetic, the humble, and the late.

This poem is a riddle of layers. The first level is literal "crickets," but the next level of the riddle is in the realm of metaphor. It’s about celebrating the pathetically minor.

The wonder is that Emily Dickinson can hear all of this in the sound of crickets, and makes us hear it too, as if it were a given truth.

Okay, let’s look at the signifiers (or pointers) in the next stanza.

Let No Ordinance be seen –

Now we have added another layer of social criticism, a reference to ordinances, or man-made-laws, and another difference too: there is no room for them in nature.

So gradual the Grace

Every one of these lines is about the alternative. The alternative to "gradual Grace," then, is sudden Grace. This calls into question any kind of grace that is NOT gradual. Which has more depth, the unearned Grace of youth, or the earned Grace of aging? This is where I think Dickinson is going with the word gradual here.

A gentle Custom it becomes –

Grace coming gently, as the sound of crickets, like a custom, is so rich with meaning. It reminds me of the famous lines, “Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped for me.” It’s customary to die and we become accustomed to it, but it happens so gradually, and with such grace, when in accordance with nature, that it is welcome. Death kindly stops for us.

Enlarging Loneliness –

On the literal level alone this is gorgeous; the feeling in the sound of crickets is of your own loneliness being enlarged in the echoing sound of nature. Chef’s kiss!

On the metaphoric level we are here with the little people, not with the pompous and self-aggrandizing winners. The lonely are enlarged in their loneliness by joining the chorus. We are all part of this “celebration” by dint of our own true loneliness.

I think of Christ’ words in Matthew 25, “As ye have done to the least of these, ye have done to me.”

Okay, on to the third stanza, which deepens the ideas further.

Antiquest felt at Noon –

At first I thought this word was anti-quest. I love the idea of an anti-quest, but, alas, the word is antique-est. As in oldest. We have a paradox, and a new a riddle. How can the oldest (antiquest) be felt in the height of youth (Noon)?

There is a sense given here of the ancient being felt in the heart of youth. You can be young and hear crickets and feel calmly mournful. You can feel the ancient eternal in the very sound of the summer dying.

When August burning low

There is that word “low,” which mirrors “pathetic from the Grass.” Here we have something different than a raging summer fire, we have a low heat, one that is still burning.

Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify –

A “spectral Canticle” is a lovely Dickinsonian way of saying a ghostly song. The sound of this song “typifies” repose, meaning both sleep and death. Repose has the connotation of peace too. This ghostly cricket song is likened to the sound of resting in peace.

The final stanza builds on the last.

Remit as yet no Grace –
No furrow on the Glow,

In the poem we are still in the noon of our lives, even if we have moved on to the August side of that noon. There is no “furrow,” or wrinkle, on the “Glow” of our cheeks. We don’t quite have the “Grace” we are striving for yet. We are still gradually getting there.

But a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now –

But even though we are still young, we’re over the hill. Something has changed. We can feel the difference inside. “Druidic Difference” is so interesting. Google tells me, "Druidic" connotes a deep, mystical connection to nature, ancient Celtic wisdom, and esoteric knowledge, often relating to priests, sages, or magical practitioners. It evokes imagery of sacred oak groves, ritualistic practices, and an untamed, earthy spirituality.”

This lesser Mass is not Catholic then. It is Druidic. We are, through the eternal return of the crickets, aligned with the cycles of nature.

This Druidic difference is at the crux of this poem, in which the crickets, the answer to the riddle, are the signifiers of the opposite of the majority. They are champions of the pathetic, the minor, the unobtrusive and the aging. It’s closer to earth, low not high, and it's the song of the crickets, via the imagination of Emily Dickinson, that carries all of this in its sound.

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

3 hours of cricket sounds for your internalization

Notes

1. Compare this poem to Fr320,

 
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are—


2. Deeper dive. Try this link, which is the poet and critic Yvor Winters and other critics arguing about this poem in the 1950s.