676.1863.You know that Portrait in the Moon —

ED’s alternative word in parentheses (Line 11)

You know that Portrait in the Moon —
So tell me who ’tis like —
The very Brow — the stooping eyes —
A fog for — Say — Whose Sake?

The very Pattern of the Cheek —
It varies — in the Chin —
But — Ishmael — since we met — ’tis long —
And fashions — intervene —

When Moon’s at full — ‘Tis Thou — I say —
My lips just hold the name —
When crescent — Thou art worn — I note (mind) —
But — there — the Golden Same —

And when — Some Night — Bold — slashing Clouds
Cut Thee away from Me —
That’s easier — than the other film
That glazes Holiday —

Line 7, “Ishmael”

Had ED ever read Moby Dick? We have no evidence that she did, but she may have read Melville’s review of Hawthorne’s ‘Mosses from an Old Manse’, ‘Hawthorne and His Mosses’:

“For in this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth,–even though it be covertly, and by snatches.” (Melville, H., August 17, 1850, ‘The Literary World’, p 125,)

A magazine titled “‘The Literary World’ [was] published … in New York City from 1847 to 1852. There is no direct evidence confirming Emily Dickinson read ‘The Literary World’, [but] [s]he was a wide reader, especially of literary magazines and newspapers, and ‘The Literary World’ was a prominent publication of the time for discussing books.”

If that Melville quote sounds familiar, compare Dickinson’s famous F1263 (1872):

“Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —”

Stanza 4.

Whoa!

To me, Peter Donahue’s artist rendition (Deviant Art) of The Man in the Moon looks no more like Sam Bowles’ photo than it looks like Charles Wadsworth’s:

https://poet-emily-dickinson.weebly.com/rev-charles-wadsworth.html.

The capitalized “Thou” in Lines 9 and 11, and “Thee” in Line 14 are compelling evidence that ED referred to Wadsworth because she only capitalized personal pronouns for God and Wadsworth.

ED obsessed in poem after poem about Wadsworth, one minute angry (F672), next minute fawning (F673), finally forgiving (F658, F652) and eventually asking how he was doing in her last “Calvary” poem (F1485, 1879). I suspect she sent F1485 to Wadsworth, who had been back in Philadelphia since 1869. Calvary was ED’s codeword for Wadsworth and she thought of herself as Gethsemane, the Garden of Sorrow:

“Spurn the temerity —
Rashness of Calvary —
Gay were Gethsemane
Knew we of Thee —”

In 1880, being the gentleman he was and reminiscing about ED, Wadsworth showed up unannounced at ED’s door. They had an amical afternoon together. Wouldn’t we like to have a recording of their conversation?

Wadsworth died two years later, in 1882.

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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.