803.1864.Nature and God—I neither knew

803.1864.Nature and God—I neither knew

“Two fair copies, variant, about 1864 and 1865. A pencil copy signed “Emily” was sent to Samuel Bowles about early 1864” (a 698, Franklin 1998).

One alternate word in Line 5, but I prefer ED’s original “My” over its alternate, “an”, because it is more personal than “an” and because it’s in her 1864 first variant, which she sent to Bowles:

Nature and God—I neither knew
Yet Both so well knew me
They startled, like Executors
Of My (an) identity.

Yet Neither told—that I could learn—
My Secret as secure
As Herschel’s private interest
Or Mercury’s affair—

My interpretation of ‘Nature and God’ (Fr803) in two paragraphs, one for each stanza:

Stanza 1: I knew neither Nature nor God, yet both thought they knew me well. When they learned about my real identity, they startled, like surprised executors of my will.

Stanza 2: Yet neither told, as far as I could learn; my secret was as secure as William Herschel’s private life as a musician and composer, or Mercury’s love affair with Venus.

To ED, her relationship with Wadsworth would be much more surprising to “Nature and God” than knowledge that she was a world-class poet.

Aside from his astronomical discoveries, Herschel played violin, oboe, harpsichord, and organ. He composed 24 symphonies, several concertos, and church music. In addition, he served as a church organist in Bath and led a military band (Google AI).

Mercury, the Roman messenger god, had a romantic affair with Venus, the goddess of love, which resulted in the birth of their child, Hermaphroditos (Google AI).

ED’s deepest secret was that for five years (1856-1860), she had cultivated an epistolatory friendship with Philadelphia’s superstar Presbyterian minister, Reverend Charles Wadsworth. Apparently, ED shared knowledge of her relationship with no one except Eliza Coleman, her second cousin and close friend since childhood (see my explications of the two previous poems, Fr801 and Fr802). ED kept her friendship with Wadsworth a secret to protect both his reputation and her own.

The payoff for her long labor was his 1860 visit to her home in Amherst.

Apparently, during September 1861, Wadsworth informed ED that he would relocate to a different pulpit. What he didn’t tell her was his reason for leaving Arch Street Presbyterian. Though he sided with the Union politically, he firmly believed the Bible condoned slavery. Most of his Philadelphia congregation did not agree and asked him to resign.

Apparently, when Wadsworth told ED he would be relocating, ED went into an emotional tailspin of incredible poem production and bipolar depression. As she told Higginson in her second letter to him (JL261, MML338, postmarked 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”

“Sing” she did; Franklin dates 227 poems to 1862 and 295 to 1863.

The only surviving letter from Charles Wadsworth to Emily Dickinson is dated “about late April, 1862” by M&M (2024). That he misspelled her name in the salutation suggests carelessness or ignorance:

“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 sorrows Yet I beg you to write me, though it be but a word;

In great haste

Sincerely and most
Affectionately Yours—”

Unsigned, but “Yours” underlined. The stationary had an embossed “C.W.” crest on it. Wadsworth never used that stationary after leaving Philadelphia.

Wadsworth says he replied immediately after receiving a disturbing “note” from ED, which would have been sometime in April 1862, just before he sailed from New York Harbor on May 1.

PS1. “The most crucial and — though she could not know it — historically eventful year in Emily Dickinson’s life was 1862. She was undergoing an emotional disturbance of such magnitude that she feared for her reason. At the same time she had developed her poetic sensibilities to a degree that impelled her to write Thomas Wentworth Higginson in April to learn what a professional man of letters might have to say about her verses. In no other year did she ever write so much poetry.” (Franklin 1986)

PS2. Google AI’s definition of executor: The person named in a will to manage a deceased person’s estate.

Franklin, RW (ed). 1986.The Master Letters of Emily Dickinson. Amherst College Press

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

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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.