Therein thyself shalt find
The "Undiscovered Continent"—
No Settler, had the Mind.
-Fr814, J832, sheet 13, early 1865
This poem was a note sent from Emily to her brother Austin.
It begins with a kind of primal sound, like a piercing bird-call. Soto! That's an attention grabber, emphasized even more by that exclamation point that follows. It’s almost pure exclamation.
I'd imagine Dickinson chose the name Soto partly for that reason. Magellan doesn't have the same sharpness. But there may have been other reasons she chose the name too (see end notes).
Why is this poem in such an excited state from the get-go? What’s with those double exclamation marks?
Why so urgent the command to Austin (and subsequently to us) to make like a great explorer and “Explore thyself!”
Was Emily feeling a sister’s frustration caused by an idiotic brother's behavior? Or, maybe it is just an enthusiastic expression of encouragement.
I hear echoes of “Doctor, heal thyself” in that first line, as well as the Delphic Oracle of Apollo’s command to, “Know Thyself!”
The wisdom that Emily’s imparting to her brother is that the thing he is looking for is already within him.
I'm reminded of the words attributed to St. Francis, "The one you are looking for is the one who is looking."
The poem poses a challenge to us. Can we discover our own “continent” within? Could Emily? I think at this point in her life she was beginning to be more and more self-possessed. Maybe Emily wrote this poem for herself first and that’s why the it is so exclamatory.
The last line of this poem is powerful. No settler, had the mind. No settler has the mind you do. No settler has the mind to settle there. The idea of “settling” your own mind is hard to fathom. Who, or what, is it that is settling the mind?
The idea there that the one thing most worth settling is your own mind because it is the one place that only you can truly explore.
I've never seen this poem printed with a comma in the last line. I’ve included it here, though, because it seems to be pretty clearly marked in the original handwritten letter.
The poem is deep enough without that comma there, but with the comma a whole new amazing idea comes into play.
"No settler, had the mind."
If you truly had your own mind, you wouldn’t be a settler at all, in all senses of the words “settle.” The true mind does not settle. The mind is always in motion! It's more verb than noun, more flow than Florida.
Dickinson’s mind cannot be settled, and did not settle, but always seemed to be motion, and, wonder of wonders, still is, through the alchemical magic of her poetry in the ear.
If you truly had your own mind, you wouldn’t be a settler at all, in all senses of the words “settle.” The true mind does not settle. The mind is always in motion! It's more verb than noun, more flow than Florida.
Dickinson’s mind cannot be settled, and did not settle, but always seemed to be motion, and, wonder of wonders, still is, through the alchemical magic of her poetry in the ear.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
Hernando De Soto
* De Soto was a pretty despicable dude it turns out. Check out these 10 facts about him for a (bad) taste of his exploits, such as slave trading and native-American massacres. Maybe Dickinson knew this and it factors into her reason for invoking De Soto? Another possible reason perhaps is that De Soto's parents wanted him to be a lawyer, just like Austin's.
ReplyDeleteMy reading is as follows:
Soto! Don't search outside (immoral exploration) in vain!
Look within (your heart)
That's the unknown world
No one thinks of exploring
The first and second lines of this poem are very familiar.
At the very beginning of Emerson's essay ‘Self-Reliance,’ it’s written
‘Ne te quaesiveris extra’
meaning ‘Do not seek for things outside of yourself ; Look within’
This is known as a line from the Roman satirist Persius. In fact, this expression is one of the core ideas of Buddhism and is no different from the last words the Buddha said before entering nirvana: ‘Be a lamp unto yourself and the Dharma.’
What's even more interesting about this poem is in the third line; “Undiscovered Continent”
Most likely, it is taken from the famous line from Shakespeare's Hamlet, 'To live, or to die? That is the question.' (Act 3, Scene 1)
“But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?”
The undiscovered country means afterlife from which no one has ever returned. What a fearful thing!
So, isn't Emily in this poem telling us to look into the world of death or the world beyond death, rather than to leisurely go out?
S.H. Moon
Yes, I can hear an echo from Hamlet there. It brings another facet to the poem to think of the undiscovered continent within as death.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the connection to Emerson and Buddha, both very relevant I think.