790.1863.Growth of Man—like Growth of Nature—

790.1863.Growth of Man—like Growth of Nature—

Three alternate words in parentheses, but I prefer ED’s original choices.

Growth of Man—like Growth of Nature—
Gravitates within—
Atmosphere, and Sun endorse (confirm) it—
But it stir—alone—

Each—its difficult (absolute) Ideal
Must achieve—Itself
Through the solitary prowess
Of a Silent Life—

Effort—is the sole condition—
Patience of Itself—
Patience of opposing forces—
And intact (direct, distinct ) Belief—

Looking on—is the Department
Of its Audience—
But Transaction—is assisted
By no Countenance—

Stanza 1 is the product of a self-oriented poet living in an anthropocentric world.

Line 3: For plants, the Sun is the Sun. For humans, life gets more complicated.

Line 4: To say, “But it stir—alone—“, is false for everyone. Depending on how the cards of life are dealt, some people get better DNA and some people get better parents. No one “stir[s]” alone.

The referent of “it” (Lines 3 & 4) is “Growth of Man/Nature”. Here “Nature” includes all living creatures other than “Man”, a perfect illustration of anthropocentric thinking: Man is separate from Nature. Most living humans hold this belief, which is why global warming is such a wicked problem.

Stanza 2

The “its” in Line 5 may refer to “Man”, each individual human, or “Nature”, each individual living organism, plant or animal, or both. We never know with ED’s pronouns, but the capitalized “Itself” (Line 7) suggests she’s referring to humans. If so, Line 8 claims that each person can reach their “difficult Ideal” only “Through the solitary prowess / Of a Silent Life”. By “prowess”, ED’s probably thinking of mental / emotional power. Sounds like a precursor of Henley’s 1875 “I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul”. That mindset may have been a Victorian thing, but it certainly helped that ED’s parents provided her an excellent education and free room and board for life.

Stanza 3

This little sermonette augments the debatable beliefs of Stanza 2 but does assert truisms: On a personal level, “Effort / Patience / intact Belief” are useful in attaining “difficult Ideal[s]”.

Stanza 4

Looking on—is the Department
Of its Audience—
But Transaction—is assisted
By no Countenance—

For ED, the “Department of its Audience” was herself and occasionally a few select others. Sue, her sister-in-law, and T.W. Higginson contributed comments on poems ED shared, but ED rarely took their advice, as she admits in Lines 15-16:

“But Transaction—is assisted
By no Countenance —”

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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.