777.1863.Life, and Death, and Giants—

777.1864.Life, and Death, and Giants—

No alternate words.

Life, and Death, and Giants—
Such as These—are still—
Minor—Apparatus—
Hopper of the Mill—
Beetle at the Candle—
Or a Fife’s Fame—
Maintain—by Accident
that they proclaim—

Could ED be riffing on Romans 8:38-9?:

“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Gatta 2009).

By 1864 ED was well aware of Darwin’s theory of evolution (‘Origin of Species’, 1859). However, when she says “Minor—Apparatus—” are maintained by accident “that they proclaim”, she may be repeating claims by “they” (creationists?) that Darwin believed species, including humans, evolved simply by accident.

ED’s closing pronoun “they” (Line 8) may grammatically refer to “Hopper, Beetle, and Fife”, but it could easily also refer to scientists. No modern scientist would attribute the proximal causes of natural selection to “accident”; distal causes are another matter.

Perhaps some exuberant scientists of ED’s day proclaimed species exist by pure accident, but natural selection is no accident. It is true that genetic mutations are random, but survival of those mutations isn’t random, nor are today’s species simply “accidents”, as Lines 7-8 suggest.

Rather, eons of winnowing, both biotic and abiotic, extinguished far more species than exist on Earth today. It is no accident that “warm-blooded” mammals and birds replaced “cold-blooded” reptiles that dominated before a massive meteorite struck Earth 63 million years ago, creating a global climate too cold for too long for most large reptile species to persist.

Was that meteorite an accident? Yes, but species survived by no accident, rather by possessing inherited traits enabling their survival. Their ancestors had survived gauntlets that genetically prepared their offspring to inherit the devastated Earth. Of course, ED had no knowledge of scientific advances during the 150+ years since her death, just as we possess no knowledge of advances of the next 150 years. What we do know is that in 2175 AD there will still be new evolution questions to answer.

PS. ED knew her Latin well (F2, “Sic transit gloria mundi”), probably to the depth of fourth-declension-noun plurals such as “apparatus”. Google AI, for whatever it’s worth, tells me the plural of “apparatus” is spelled identically, but the third “a” is pronounced long, as in “curator”. ED did not share that obscure Latin grammar with us 2025 readers, probably assuming our modern educational apparatus would be equal to hers. Anywho, it really helps this nerdy reader enjoy ‘Life, and Death, and Giants —’ more when plural “apparatus” is pronounced with a long third ” a”.

Della Gatta, Carla. 2009. Performing for God and “Maintain”ing In His Absence.
Pennsylvania Liteary Journal 1(1): 52-62

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After commenting on Poems 1-763 (Franklin) on The Prowling Bee’, I am convinced that (virtually) all of Emily Dickinson’s (ED’s) poems have a factual historical level in addition to their various poetic levels of meaning. The reason for her instant and continuing public adulation (1890 - present) was and is, by far, poetic. She is one of the "Greats" that she always dreamed to be, despite her lifelong refusal to publish. That refusal freed her from criticism and allowed her to explore the outer boundaries of poetic power.

More than a century of scholarly research has resulted in somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 books and published academic papers about ED. A large majority of these publications focus only on the “poetic levels” of one or more of ED’s poems. Publications that consider both the “historic level” and “poetic levels” comprise a small minority. Publications that focus only on the factual history of her life probably number less than 100. (All numbers in this paragraph are my estimates.)

Unfortunately for ED’s universe of readers, these two basic levels (historical and poetic) cannot be separated into two ivory towers. Every history-level publication that I know of includes at least some discussion of the poetic level(s).

The reverse is not true. In fact, authors of the “poetry-level” school seem to avoid commenting on the historical level, sometimes admonishing that a poem must stand on its own, without concern for its historical roots. To my knowledge, there are (virtually) no published “history-level” books or articles that totally ignore ED’s poems and their poetic levels.

Of course, ED’s refusal to publish her poems was only possible because of lifelong financial and daily social/housekeeping support by her family, especially her father and sister, respectively. In addition, throughout her life, the Dickinsons hired servants, first Negro and later Irish, some of whom became much more than housekeepers for ED.

My point is that our appreciation of ED's poems can be enhanced by understanding both poetic and historical levels of her sound and sense. We impoverish ourselves if we ignore their historical base.