His Twin identity
And will endure as long as He
A Co-Eternity —
And perish on the Day
Himself is borne away
From Mansion of the Universe
A lifeless Deity.
-Fr795, J836, sheet 23, 1854
Truth equals God, and always will. What does that mean? Truth equals God is a kind of tautology that doesn’t tell us much about either one. The truth is God. God is the truth. It doesn’t sound to me like something Dickinson would write.
“Truth” is usually more complicated in Dickinson poems. “Tell the truth but tell it slant,” she writes in a later poem. Is there anything slant in this poem? Perhaps. On one hand you could read the poem as saying that Truth won’t perish until God does. One presumes that this means it will last forever, “Co-eternities.” On the other hand the poem ends with the dark image of a Lifeless Deity. That’s the feeling you are left with, the possibility of a Godless universe.
This poem was attached to a letter to Dr. Josiah Holland, a pious man, and the father of one of Emily’s best friends, Elizabeth Holland. In an earlier letter to the Hollands, we have a hint of Emily’s doubts.
In the letter Emily speaks of having a dream she was with the Hollands and they were picking roses in a lovely garden. But, “though we gathered with all our might, the basket was never full.” There is a sense in this dream of working hard to gather beauty, but never, somehow, being completely fulfilled by this effort.
Then the letter states the following:
“The minister to-day, not our own minister, preached about death and judgment, and what would become of those, meaning Austin and me, who behaved improperly - and somehow the sermon scared me, and father and Vinnie looked very solemn as if the whole was true, and I would not for worlds have them know that I troubled me, but I longed to come to you, and tell you all about it, and learn how to be better. He preached such an awful sermon though, that I didn't much think I should ever see you again until Judgment Day, and then you would not speak to me, according to his story. The subject of perdition seemed to please him, somehow. It seems very solemn to me.”
But perhaps this poem was meant in a less complicated, more straightforward, way, befitting its recipient. We find out from Dr. Holland’s granddaughter, Theodora Van Wagenen Ward, that there was a generational shift in faith experience with her grandfather. She states that Dr. Holland “loved God with the same fervor that his ancestors feared Him.” So perhaps he exemplified that kind of love for Emily.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
P.S. I love the way the final word of this poem, Deity, takes up both the "ee" sound of the rhymes in the first stanza and the "ay" sound of the rhymes of the second stanza.
Truth isGOD until humans destroy GOD. ( ED doesn’t ALWAYS have to offer truth slanted )
ReplyDeleteTo my mind, this inconspicuous little poem equals the famous announcement of the death of God made by Nietzsche in 1882.
ReplyDeleteFrom Wikipedia:
The meaning of this statement is that since, as Nietzsche says, "the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable", everything that was "built upon this faith, propped up by it, grown into it", including "the whole [...] European morality", is bound to "collapse". The time of the Enlightenment had transformed collective human knowledge to the point where many would question their beliefs. The framing of the construct suggests that God could exist, from an atheistic perspective, in the minds of men rather than in reality, and so widespread disbelief would equate to God's death.
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ReplyDeleteThe trouble with “truth” is that it means something different to everyone who uses it. What did ED mean by “Truth” in Line 1?
ReplyDeleteEDLex defines “Truth” as:
1. Reality; facts; actual state of things.
2. Being; exact accordance with that which is, or has been, or shall be.
3. Wisdom; verity; orthodoxy; real doctrine; sound philosophy; veracious principles; true religious belief.
4. Veracity; purity from falsehood.
5. Fact; principle; essence, as distinguished from an imitation.
6. Sincerity; practice of speaking truth; habitual disposition to speak correct principles.
7. Constancy.
8. Correct opinion.
OED Definitions of “Truth” stretch 38 pages and 8800 words. “Truth” is an early Old English word and most of OED’s definitions are now obsolete. Here are two definitions that are not obsolete:
Truth Def II.5.c. Understanding of nature or reality; the totality of what is known to be true; knowledge.
2005 “Foucault did not reconstruct the development of truth but what was considered true at a given point of time in the human sciences”, T. Teo, Critique Psycholog.
Def II.6.a. Religious sense: spiritual reality as the subject of revelation or object of faith
1567 “Forasmuche as god is the truthe, & [the] truth is god, he [that] departeth from one, departeth from thother.” T. Palfreyman, Morall Philos.
As Teo said in 2005, objective “truth” changes with new discoveries in science. We like to think “truth” in the religious sense doesn’t change, but it does. For one example, the Old Testament focuses on God as vengeful, the New Testament on God as loving and forgiving. Clearly, there is no such thing as an immutable “Truth”, either in the objective or religious sense.
Purely coincidentally, Palfreyman’s 1567 “truth is god” is virtually identical to Adam’s first explication line, which is perhaps an intentional straw man: “Truth equals God, and always will.”
Our problem is deciding whether ED meant “Truth” in a mutable or immutable sense. My take on this poem is she intended the latter sense, immutable, which wishful thinking.
Stanza 1
ReplyDeleteLines 1-2 don’t say “Truth is God” or “God is Truth”. Rather, they tell us “Truth” is as old as God” and God’s “twin identity”. I think “His” in Line 2 does refer to God in Heaven, but “Truth” in Lines 1 & 2 refers to religious “truths” in sermons of Reverend Charles Wadsworth.
Lines 3-4
I think “He” in Line 3 refers to God in Heaven, and, for ED, Wadsworth’s “Truth” will “endure as long as God in Heaven / A Co-Eternity”. And, just in case folks don’t understand his sermons, ED claimed in F791 that she, or presumably her poems, would be “the undivine abode / Of His [Wadsworth’s] Elect Content —”:
“So I — the undivine abode
Of His Elect Content —
Conform my Soul — as 'twere a Church,
Unto Her Sacrament —"
Stanza 2
Lines 5-6: “Truth” is Wadsworth’s “truths” in his sermons, and they will “perish on the Day / Himself is borne away” (unless people read her “Elect Content”, her poems). I think “Himself” (Line 6) refers to Wadsworth’s corpse.
Lines 7-8 conclude with ED’s statement of implied atheism: Wadsworth’s body will “be borne away”, nothing but “a lifeless” hunk of flesh that was a “Deity” while He lived in our “Mansion”, the known physical “Universe”. The final line, “A lifeless Deity” sounds unhopeful. To me it suggests ED thinks there’s no immortality to be found in “the Universe”: God is dead.
In this poem ED seems to suggest we can forget about “Eternity” after death. Eighteen years later, Nietzsche said the same thing (1882, ‘The Gay Science’).