814.1864.Soto! Explore thyself!

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

We have three variants of this poem in ED’s handwriting.

About 1864, ED sent Variant A to Austin as a letter with a comma after “Mind” and her signature immediately following the comma. I think the comma at the end of this variant is simply the traditional way to close a letter, with a comma followed by a signature, e.g., “Cheers, Emily”.

Apparently, ED sent or intended to send Variant B to someone else because it also has a comma immediately after “Mind” and is signed.

Variant C is obviously for retention because it is on a page with another poem, has a period immediately after “Mind”, and is not signed.

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 banter and hints, including the sentence, “Hope you have enjoyed the Sabbath, and sanctuary privileges – it isn’t all young men that have the preached word –“

Unfortunately, Austin’s marriage was not a bed of roses, and I suspect ‘Soto! Explore thyself!’ (F814) was ED’s answer to Austin’s marital complaints. Apparently, Austin endured his marriage until 1881 when he met Mabel Todd, wife of a new astronomer/professor at Amherst C0llege. David Todd was a womanizer who obliged his wife equal privileges.

In 1883, Austin and Mabel began a sexual relationship that lasted until his death in 1895. Both Austin and Mabel crassly kept count of their consummations in their diaries with a code, XXXX. Much to ED and Vinnie‘s chagrin, they frequently trysted at Homestead, which ED’s grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson, built in 1813 and Austin, the male family heir, owned. Susan, living 100 yards away across a meadow, was aware of everything and not happy about it.

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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.