ED-LarryB

I meant to have but modest needs —
Such as Content — and Heaven —
Within my income — these could lie
And Life and I — keep even —

 

But since the last — included both —
It would suffice my Prayer
But just for One — to stipulate —
And Grace would grant the Pair —

 

And so — upon this wise — I prayed —
Great Spirit — Give to me
A Heaven not so large as Yours,
But large enough — for me —

 

A Smile suffused Jehovah’s face —
The Cherubim — withdrew —
Grave Saints stole out to look at me —
And showed their dimples — too —

 

I left the Place, with all my might —
I threw my Prayer away —
The Quiet Ages picked it up —
And Judgment — twinkled — too —
That one so honest — be extant —
It take the Tale for true —
That “Whatsoever Ye shall ask —
Itself be given You” —

 

But I, grown shrewder — scan the Skies
With a suspicious Air —
As Children — swindled for the first
All Swindlers — be — infer —

 

An interpretation

Stanza 1

The poet imagines a perfect plan for the remainder of her life: contentment “within her income” and “Heaven”, which for her would be continued correspondence with Charles Wadsworth living in Philadelphia, close enough for him to occasionally visit, as he did in 1860 and possibly 1861.

Stanza 2

On second thought, she deletes “Content” from her “Prayer”, because if she had “Heaven” as described, she would be content. And she could have that Heaven if just one person, Wadsworth, would so “stipulate”, “And Grace would grant the Pair –”, both contentment and Heaven.

Stanza 3

She asks little in her “Prayer”, and she asks in an endearing way:

“Great Spirit -Give to me
A Heaven not so large as Yours,
But large enough -for me –”

Stanza 4 [brackets mine]

“A [paternalistic] Smile suffused Jehovah’s face –
The Cherubim [young angels attending God]-withdrew –
Grave Saints [Severe old men] stole out to look at me –
And showed their dimples – too –” [also smiled in amusement]

Stanza 5 [brackets mine]

Disgusted by Heaven’s pseudo-smile paternalism, ED stormed out of “the Place – with all my might –” and “threw my Prayer away -”. For ages Christian readers “picked it up” and read her prayer approvingly. Even St Peter at the pearly gates “twinkled” with approval because there had been one living person so honest [gullible] that she took “the Tale for true -”

Stanza 6

“The Tale”, told twice, in Matthew 21: 21-22 & John 14: 12-14, was:

“Whatsoever Ye shall ask –
Itself be given You” –

As a child ED believed that promise lock, stock, and barrel, but when her prayers went unanswered, she grew skeptical of Resurrection, Heaven, and the Judeo-Christian God, and, like a swindled child, now infers all such promisers are swindlers, including God and Wadsworth.

Matthew 21:21-22:

21: Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.
22: And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.

John 14: 12-14:

12. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.
13. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

Biographic History of Emily Dickinson and Reverend Charles Wadsworth

While visiting a friend in Philadelphia in March1855, ED, age 24, heard Rev. Wadsworth deliver a sermon at his church, Arch Street Presbyterian. Apparently, Wadsworth’s sermon, and his deep voice, lit an emotional and intellectual fire in ED that resulted in a two-way correspondence and an 1860 visit by Wadsworth to her home in Amherst. That sermon, their correspondence, and his visit may help explain ED’s manic burst of productivity during the next five years, 1861-1865: a total of 937 poems, more than half her oeuvre of 1789 poems in 37 years of composition, 1850-1886.

Before ED’s death in 1886, she asked her sister, Vinnie, to burn all her correspondence. Vinnie complied except for one undated letter from Wadsworth to ED and three drafts of letters from ED to “Master”. His letter to her probably predates his first visit to Amherst because he misspells her name in its salutation and his stationary bears a monogram he stopped using in 1862:

“My Dear Miss Dickenson [sic] —

I am distressed beyond measure at your note, received this moment, — I can only imagine the affliction which has befallen, or is now befalling you.

Believe me, be what it may, you have all my sympathy, and my constant, earnest prayers.

I am very, very anxious to learn more definitely of your trial — and though I have no right to intrude upon your sorrow yet I beg you to write me, though it be but a word.

In great haste
Sincerely and most
Affectionately Yours —”

Wadsworth underlined the word, “Yours”, but did not sign the letter.

The tone of his letter is sincere ministerial concern for her, but given ED ‘s attraction to him, how did she interpret that underlined “Yours”? Why Wadsworth suddenly resigned his Philadelphia position in early 1862 and moved to San Francisco and how that personally affected ED’s life begs explanation.

Wadsworth’s charismatic sermons had filled Arch Street Presbyterian pews since his arrival in 1850, but his belief that the Bible condoned slavery did not sit well with his mostly anti-slavery congregation. When the Civil War began in April 1861, Wadsworth stood firmly for preserving the United States as one nation and thus sided with the Union in his sermons, but that didn’t satisfy his anti-slavery congregation. Friction followed, and he resigned his position at Arch Street Presbyterian in early 1862.

Simultaneously, in San Francisco, the struggling congregation of the 10-year-old Calvary Presbyterian Church grew increasingly dissatisfied with their Reverend William Scott, who supported both slavery and secession of slave states in his sermons. Threats followed. Scott resigned in July 1871 and sailed to Birmingham, England where he pastored John Street Presbyterian Church for two years.

Scott had known Wadsworth in seminary, and “After resigning in July 1861, Scott may have asked his friend to consider a call from Calvary Church as his successor; their friendship probably contributed to Wadsworth’s being chosen to replace Scott at a meeting of the congregation on 9 December 1861.” (Lease 1990). Wadsworth accepted, resigned from Arch Street Presbyterian, and moved to San Francisco in May 1862.

Apparently, in September 1861 ED learned of Wadsworth’s impending decision to move and felt terror of abandonment, which may explain her cryptic comment to Higginson in a letter dated April 28, 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”. At that time, ED apparently knew nothing about the real reason why Wadsworth decided to leave the east coast. (Johnson letter J-L261, Miller and Mitchell letter M&M-L338)

In her last “Calvary” poem (F1485, 1879), ED affirmed her enduring concern and now platonic love for Wadsworth in a quatrain, ‘Spurn the temerity’:

Spurn the temerity –
Rashness of Calvary –
Gay were Gethsemane
Knew we of thee –

ED Lexicon defines “Gethsemane” metaphorically as “Scene of agony; circumstance of unimaginable pain; situation of extreme anguish”, which pretty well describes ED’s mental state during 1861-1863 and perhaps longer.

If “Calvary” codes for Wadsworth and “Gethsemane” for ED, F1479 translates line by line:

“Ignore my brash boldness,
My rashness when you accepted pastorship of Calvary Presbyterian in San Francisco.
I would be gay now
If I knew how you are doing.”

It would not surprise me if she mailed this poem, F1485, to Wadsworth in 1879, though we have no hard evidence that happened. At any rate, the next year, during summer 1880, he showed up unannounced at her front door.

Wadsworth died two years later, on April 1, 1882. In August 1882 ED wrote his best friend, James Clark, asking for memories of him (L994). By pure chance, ED’s father had introduced her to James in 1859. He and his brother, Charles, lived during summers at the Clark family home in Northampton, MA, 12 miles southwest of Amherst.

Her letter speaks for itself:

“August 1882

Dear friend,

Please excuse the trespass of gratitude. My Sister [Vinnie] thinks you will accept a few words in recognition of your great kindness.

In a [sic] intimacy of many years with the beloved Clergyman, I have never before spoken with one who knew him, and his Life was so shy and his tastes so unknown, that grief for him seems almost unshared.

He was my Shepherd from “Little Girl”hood and I cannot conjecture a world without him, so noble was he always – so fathomless – so gentle. [Actually, ED was 24 when she attended his sermon, March 1855]

I saw him two years since [summer 1880] for the last time, though how unsuspected!

He rang one summer evening to my glad surprise – “Why did you not tell me you were coming, so I could have it to hope for,” I said – “Because I did not know it myself. I stepped from my Pulpit to the Train,” was his quiet reply. . . . . . He [had] spoken on a previous visit [1860] of calling upon you [James Clark], or perhaps remaining a brief time at your Home in Northampton. . . . . . . .

E Dickinson.”

James Clark died in 1883. Two years later in mid-April 1886, four weeks before her own death, ED wrote Clark’s brother, Charles, describing Wadsworth’s 1880 visit with her in Amherst (Johnson letter L1040, Miller and Mitchell letter, L1298):

“Thank you [for a previous letter], Dear friend, I am better. The velocity of the ill, however, is like that of the snail. . . . . .

I could hardly have thought it possible that the scholarly Stranger [James Clark] to whom my Father introduced me [in 1859] could have mentioned my Friend [Charles Wadsworth] . . . . .

With the exception of my Sister [Vinnie] who never saw Mr Wadsworth, your Name alone [now] remains.

Going Home” [dying], was he not an Aborigine of the sky? The last time he came in Life [summer 1880], I was with my Lilies and Heliotropes, said my sister to me, “[T]he Gentleman with the deep voice wants to see you, Emily,” hearing him ask of the servant. “Where did you come from,” I said, for he spoke like an Apparition.

“I stepped from my Pulpit to the Train” was [his] simple reply, and when I asked “how long,” “Twenty Years” [1860-1880] said he with inscrutable roguery – but [his] loved Voice has ceased, and to someone who [heard] him “Going Home,” it was sweet to speak. . . . . . Excuse me for the [my] Voice, this moment immortal. . . . .”

E Dickinson.”

1. Johnson, T.H. 1958. The Letters of Emily Dickinson
2. Lease, Benjamin, 1990, Emily Dickinson’s Readings of Men and Books
3. Miller, Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell, 2024, The Letters of Emily Dickinson

 

During her lifetime ED composed 12 “Calvary” poems:

“Calvary” Poems

Year      Fr#         “Calvary” lines
1861     194        Empress of Calvary
1862     283        The Palm -without the Calvary –
1862     325        Justified-through Calvaries of Love-
1862     347        The Queen of Calvary-
1862     398        Key of Calvary-
1862     431        In Calvary-
1863     550        In passing Calvary-
1863     652        But Calvary
1863     670        One Calvary-exhibited to Stranger
1863     686        For passing Calvary-
1863     749        Cashmere-or Calvary-the same
1879    1485       Rashness of Calvary-

Summary of Calvary poem occurrences:

Years               Time (yrs)      Poems        F#s
1850-1860             11               0              F1-F193
1861-1863              3              11             F194-F7491
1864-1978            15               0              F750-F1485
1879                        1               1              F779
1880-1886              7               0              F1486-F1789

817.1864.This Consciousness that is aware

This Consciousness that is aware
Of Neighbors and the Sun
Will be the one aware of Death
And that itself alone

Is traversing the interval
Experience between
And most profound experiment
Appointed unto Men —

How adequate unto itself
Its properties shall be
Itself unto itself and none
Shall make discovery —

Adventure most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be —
Attended by a single Hound
Its own identity.

……………………………………………………

My interpretation of Fr817, ‘This Consciousness that is aware’:

1. This consciousness that is aware of neighbors and Sun will be the one aware of death, and that itself alone
2. is traversing the interval between the two, and that is the most profound experiment assigned to man.
3. How adequate unto consciousness its properties shall be, itself unto itself, and no one else shall make that discovery for it.
4. Adventure, most unto itself, the soul is condemned to be, attended by a single hound, its own identity.

And that, dear readers, is one profound bow to existentialist existence. Makes me wonder if she had been reading Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855):

“Existentialism is a 20th-century philosophical movement emphasizing individual freedom, responsibility, and subjectivity”. It posits that individuals are not born with a predetermined purpose but must construct their own meaning and values in an otherwise absurd, meaningless world. Key thinkers include Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus, focusing on themes like authenticity, angst, and the burden of choice”. (Google AI)

In 1914, Martha Dickinson Bianci, Sue’s daughter and ED’s niece published ‘A Single Hound, Poems of a Lifetime’, a collection of 142 unpublished poems. Here’s the last paragraph of her introduction:

“One may ask of the Sphinx [ED], if life would not have been dearer to her, lived as other women lived it? To have been, in essence, more as other women were? Or if, in so doing and so being, she would have missed that inordinate compulsion, that inquisitive comprehension that made her Emily Dickinson? It is to ask again the old riddle of genius against everyday happiness. Had life or love been able to dissuade her from that “eternal preoccupation with death” which thralled her–if she could have chosen–you urge, still unconvinced? But I feel that she could and did, and that nothing could have compensated her for the forfeit of that “single hound,” her “own Identity.”

ED lost schoolgirl friends to tuberculosis and typhus. In April 1844, when she was just thirteen, Emily’s second cousin and close friend, Sophia Holland, died of typhus. ED had been visiting Sophia daily and was in an adjoining room when Sophia died. ED insisted on saying goodbye to the corpse and Sophia’s mother unwisely said yes. The experience devastated ED, who went into deep depression for three months, only relieved by her parents sending her to Boston where her aunt took her sight-seeing to get her mind off her friend’s death.

Afterward, ED was fascinated by the moment of death, asking friends who were present at deathbeds whether they saw any evidence of a soul leaving as the person died. In the absence of evidence, she became skeptical of the “afterlife”. This poem, Fr 817, seems to posit a transition from life (“Neighbors”) to afterlife (“Sun”) via death (“traversing the interval”).

However, I suspect in the back of her mind ED halfway believed the transition was not from somewhere to somewhere, but rather from somewhere to nowhere. Why else would “The Soul condemned to be / Attended by . . . / Its own identity”?  Why did ED choose the verb “condemned” for a journey to Heaven?

“Adventure most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be —
Attended by a single Hound
Its own identity.”

Or did she expect life after death would be boring, which she stated as a fact in F710, ‘Doom is the House without the Door’? My guess is that ED used the verb “condemned” in ‘The Consciousness that is aware’ because she believed

“Doom is the House without the Door—
‘Tis entered from the Sun—
And then the Ladder’s thrown away,
Because Escape—is done—

‘Tis varied by the Dream
Of what they do outside—
Where Squirrels play—and Berries dye—
And Hemlocks—bow—to God—”

We know from the previous 816 poems that ED’s opinion of “God” varied widely from time to time.

816.1864.I could not drink it, Sweet

I could not drink it, Sweet,
Till You had tasted first,
Though cooler than the Water was
The Thoughtfulness of Thirst.

 

The coincidence of four words in this short poem, tasted/cooler/water/thirst, shared with a sentence in a letter ED, age 15, wrote to her friend, Abiah Root, makes me wonder whether ‘I could not drink it, Sweet’ concerns spiritual salvation:

“I determined to devote my whole life to his service & desired that all might taste of the stream of living water from which I cooled my thirst.” (JL11, March 28, 1846)

 

Sue was a devout Christian who, during the 1880s, turned increasingly to the rituals of High Church and considered becoming a Roman Catholic.^[53] In the 1880s, she spent almost every Sabbath for six years establishing a Sunday school in Logtown, a poor village in present-day Belchertown not far from Amherst ^[54] (Google AI). Perhaps Sue was concerned about ED’s refusal to accept Jesus as her savior and had offered to accompany ED to church.

 

Excerpt from JL11:

“I had a melancholy pleasure in comparing your present feelings with what mine once were, but are no more. I think of the perfect happiness I experienced while I felt I was an heir of heaven as of a delightful dream, out of which the Evil one bid me wake & again return to the world & its pleasures. Would that I had not listened to his winning words! The few short moments in which I loved my Saviour I would not now exchange for a thousand worlds like this. It was then my greatest pleasure to commune alone with the great God & to feel that he would listen to my prayers. I determined to devote my whole life to his service & desired that all might taste of the stream of living water from which I cooled my thirst. But the world allured me & in an unguarded moment I listened to her syren voice. From that moment I seemed to lose my interest in heavenly things by degrees. Prayer in which I had taken such delight became a task & the small circle who met for prayer missed me from their number. Friends reasoned with me & told me of the danger I was in of grieving away the Holy Spirit of God. I felt my danger & was alarmed in view of it, but I had rambled too far to return …”

 

Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell, 2024, The Letters of Emily Dickinson, Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

815.1864.To this World she returned

To this World she returned
But with a tinge of that
A Compound manner
As a Sod
Espoused a Violet —
That chiefer to the Skies
Than to Himself allied
Dwelt hesitating, half of Dust
And half of Day the Bride.

My interpretation of Fr815 (Variant A):

To this world she returned, but with a tinge of a dual nature, as if a shovel of sod sported a violet that gave more allegiance to the skies than to the sod in which it hesitantly grew, half Earth’s “Dust” and half Heaven’s “Bride”.

How ED’s poems repeat themselves! Poem after poem describes the formative experience of her life, a spiritual romance that she believed would end with an eternal marriage in Heaven to Wadsworth, as she believed he had promised.

At its surface level, F815 is about Gertrude Vanderbilt’s near-death experience. Line 1, “To this World she returned”, implies that “she” had died and later “returned” from Heaven.

At a deeper level, this poem is about ED herself. She was the one who had died and gone to Heaven. While there, she and Wadsworth had met and married, as he had promised. After the marriage, ED returned to “this World”, now half Earth’s “Dust” and half Heaven’s “Bride”.

 

ED had never met Gertrude Vanderbilt, but Sue informed her of her friend’s near-death experience in a letter. At that time, September 1864, ED was in Boston for eye treatment. Apparently, ED took the hint and composed the get-well poem as a favor to Sue.

I wonder whether Mrs. Vanderbilt had any inkling of ED’s intent, any vague idea this poem had anything to do with her being shot by an irate rejected suitor of her maid or her recovery from said shot.

‘To this World she returned’ is one weird get-well poem

814.1864.Soto! Explore thyself!

 

Soto! Explore thyself!
Therein thyself shalt find
The “Undiscovered Continent”—
No Settler, had the Mind.

 

My interpretation of Fr814:

 

Austin! Know thyself! The thing you are looking for is in yourself: the meaning of your life. No man, new arrived, knows the undiscovered meccas of his mind.

 

Emily and Austin were close siblings, apparently even in matters sexual. On the evening of March 23, 1853, Susan Gilbert, Austin’s future wife, returning from a visit with a relative in Manchester, NH, spent the night with Austin at the Revere Hotel in Boston. Susan returned to Amherst on March 24 and soon told ED about her night with Austin. On March 27, ED wrote Austin a letter full of suggestive banter, including the sentence, “Hope you have enjoyed the Sabbath, and sanctuary privileges – it isn’t all young men that have the preached word –”. Susan and Austin married on July 1, 1856.

Apparently, their marriage soon faced irreconcilable goals: Sue sought social standing and eschewed parenthood, Austin disdained soirees and wanted children. Emotional separation followed, but Austin endured.

I suspect ED composed this 1864 poem as a response to Austin’s complaints about his marriage in a letter to ED, hoping for a sympathetic sister’s shoulder. Instead, ED replied with this stoical quatrain of Emersonian advice, “Soto! Explore thyself!” (Fr814).

ED composed this poem while she was in Boston receiving eye treatments for failing eyesight (February-November 1864). While there, she lived with her cousins, Frances and Louise Norcross.

Most of the poems composed during this stay are short, probably because ED’s ophthalmologist ordered her to avoid writing and reading so her eyes could heal. Perhaps she dictated poems to her cousins and wanted to limit requests for their time.

How well I knew Her not
Whom not to know has been
A Bounty in prospective, now
Next Door to mine the Pain.

My biographical interpretation of Fr813:

I did not know your sister Elizabeth, but not knowing her meant I had that “Bounty” to anticipate. But now, I feel your pain because I too know how it feels to lose a sister. I was rash and jealous ten years ago, and, though I have tried, the unreserved love of that sister feels lost forever.

My biographical interpretation of Fr813:

I did not know your sister Elizabeth, but not knowing her meant I had that “Bounty” to anticipate. But now, I feel your pain because I too know how it feels to lose a sister. I was rash and jealous ten years ago, and, though I have tried, the unreserved love of that sister feels lost forever.

ED’s modus opperandi is to verbally filter events and experiences through her own historical lens, rather than give unfiltered love, at least not verbally as ED does.

Miller (2024) tells us ED sent this poem to Maria Whitney, about February 11, 1864. Austin visited Whitney in Northampton on February 11 before she sailed for California on the 13^th to look after the six children of her sister, Elizabeth Whitney Putnam, who died June 1863 in San Francisco.

I think the personal level of Fr813 runs deep, especially enjambed Lines 3 & 4: “now / Next Door to mine the Pain”. In her own way, ED empathizes with Maria’s loss of a sister because she has also lost a sister. In fact, ED’s “dead sister” lives “Next Door”, which daily “mine[s] the Pain”.

In March 1853 Susan and Austin became engaged after a tryst at the Revere Hotel in Boston. For obvious reasons, Sue had to cool her relationship with Emily, and on April 1, 1854, ED responded sharply to Sue (L172): “You can go or stay”.

In late 1858, perhaps as a birthday greeting on Sue’s birthday, 19 December, ED tried to mend bridges with ‘One Sister have I’ (Fr5, 1858), but the rift never healed.

“One Sister have I in our house,
And one, a hedge away.
There’s only one recorded,
But both belong to me.

One came the road that I came —
And wore my last year’s gown —
The other, as a bird her nest,
Builded our hearts among.

She did not sing as we did —
It was a different tune —
Herself to her a music
As Bumble bee of June.

Today is far from Childhood —
But up and down the hills
I held her hand the tighter —
Which shortened all the miles —

And still her hum
The years among,
Deceives the Butterfly;
Still in her Eye
The Violets lie
Mouldered this many May.

I spilt the dew —
But took the morn —
I chose this single star
From out the wide night’s numbers —
Sue – forevermore!

Those last two stanzas are among the most poignant ED ever wrote. She “spilt the dew” and has been ruing it for 10 years (1854-1864).

Miller, C and Mitchell, D. 2024. The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

 

For those who rue the biographical basis for this poem, every poem must start with some seed in a poet’s brain. Biography is only one of many species of seed, but every seed had a specific parent somewhere in a poet’s past, something the poet read, saw, heard, felt, experienced, or imagined. Not only is the poet responsible for universalizing a poem, the reader too must be creative.

As my manifesto on right sight of each poem in this blog, ‘ED-LarryB’, states, I choose to focus on biographical interpretations because my days of worrying about Promotion and Tenure are long gone, and because so few people are willing to choose that focus.

And I’m a history nut.