To drink—enables Mine
Through Desert or the Wilderness
As bore it Sealed Wine—
To go elastic—Or as One
The Camel's trait—attained—
How powerful the Stimulus
Of an Hermetic Mind—
Fr770, J711, fascicle 34, 1863
Like any of Dickinson’s many paeans to other authors, this one can be turned back in on itself. “How powerful the Stimulus/ Of an Hermetic Mind—” It's an uncanny effect. It’s as if Dickinson is describing herself to us in the third person. Hers was certainly a "stimulating" and “hermetic” mind. The word hermetic has a kind of double meaning. It means both “sealed tight” and “reclusive.” You get the sense in this poem that the poem itself, the “sealed wine,” represents the hermetic mind of the author.
The opening line of this poem reminds me of lines from Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale."
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
Maybe Keats’ own “Refreshing Mind” was one of those that Dickinson was thinking of when she wrote this poem, along with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot and Shakespeare, to name a few of her favorites.
“Sealed Wine” I take to be a book, or perhaps, even, a poem. The form of a poem seals in its contents, just as a hard cover seals in the pages of a book.
“Through Desert or the Wilderness” is a compact phrase that is worth stopping and thinking about. Books by great authors help get us through the dry times of the proverbial desert. How? Because their Beauty quenches us. Great books also help us when we are confused and lost in The Wilderness. How? Because their Truth helps guide us. Here again I think of Keats,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
The second stanza of this strange poem gives us more to chew on:
To go elastic—Or as One
The Camel's trait—attained—
How powerful the Stimulus
Of an Hermetic Mind—
The choice presented to us in miniature in that 5th line of the poem, between “To go elastic —Or as One,” is an instructive one. Great literature, like wine, gives us elasticity. It stretches you. In other words, it allows you to travel away from yourself, but also, simultaneously, makes you “One,” brings you into a sense of unison with the author, and, ultimately with the universe.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
Maybe Keats’ own “Refreshing Mind” was one of those that Dickinson was thinking of when she wrote this poem, along with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot and Shakespeare, to name a few of her favorites.
“Sealed Wine” I take to be a book, or perhaps, even, a poem. The form of a poem seals in its contents, just as a hard cover seals in the pages of a book.
“Through Desert or the Wilderness” is a compact phrase that is worth stopping and thinking about. Books by great authors help get us through the dry times of the proverbial desert. How? Because their Beauty quenches us. Great books also help us when we are confused and lost in The Wilderness. How? Because their Truth helps guide us. Here again I think of Keats,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
The second stanza of this strange poem gives us more to chew on:
To go elastic—Or as One
The Camel's trait—attained—
How powerful the Stimulus
Of an Hermetic Mind—
The choice presented to us in miniature in that 5th line of the poem, between “To go elastic —Or as One,” is an instructive one. Great literature, like wine, gives us elasticity. It stretches you. In other words, it allows you to travel away from yourself, but also, simultaneously, makes you “One,” brings you into a sense of unison with the author, and, ultimately with the universe.
When you read a great poem, you often have to really stretch. But, paradoxically, you also come closer to harmonic convergence with life. Literature, like wine, has a contranymic effect. You cleave apart at the same time that you cleave to.
In this poem Dickinson mixes her metaphors to strange effect. A great book is like sealed wine, which then is carried through a desert by a camel. Here we can hardly help but imagine a camel which is able to carry wine in its hump instead of water. That seems like a stretch, a very elastic way to describe a great book, but it gets us closer to a kind of truth than before we took the journey. This poem, hermetically sealed, describes itself.
In this poem Dickinson mixes her metaphors to strange effect. A great book is like sealed wine, which then is carried through a desert by a camel. Here we can hardly help but imagine a camel which is able to carry wine in its hump instead of water. That seems like a stretch, a very elastic way to describe a great book, but it gets us closer to a kind of truth than before we took the journey. This poem, hermetically sealed, describes itself.
Like any of Dickinson’s many paeans to other authors, this one can be turned back in on itself. “How powerful the Stimulus/ Of an Hermetic Mind—” It's an uncanny effect. It’s as if Dickinson is describing herself to us in the third person. Hers was certainly a "stimulating" and “hermetic” mind. The word hermetic has a kind of double meaning. It means both “sealed tight” and “reclusive.” You get the sense in this poem that the poem itself, the “sealed wine,” represents the hermetic mind of the author.
Inside a hermetic mind is a poem about a book being like sealed wine in the hump of a camel, and inside of that book there is a poem, by a hermetic mind, about a book being like sealed wine in the hump of a camel, and so on, all the way down, and all the way up too, if we dare follow suit.
I'm starting to feel a little tipsy, myself.
- /)dam Wade l)eGraff
Notes:
1. I learned something while looking up the history of the word "Hermetic." Hermetic: of or relating to the mystical and alchemical writings or teachings arising in the first three centuries a.d. and attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. It means relating to or characterized by subjects that are mysterious and difficult to understand. A second meaning of the word though, airtight, comes from the belief that Hermes Trismegistus invented a magic seal to keep vessels airtight. So, if I'm getting this right, this Hermes guy invented a seal to keep vessels airtight, which just so happens to relate to the the first definition of Hermetic, mysterious knowledge, which characterizes his teaching? Hmm. By the way, the word Hermetic is not related to the word hermit, as I would have guessed.
2. This poem pairs well with the first poem from this fascicle, Fr756, which is about the vital connection between the poet and a beloved author who has died.
3. Drunkenness as a metaphor pops up to great effect often in Dickinson, the most famous example being F207, "I taste a liquor never brewed."
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