792.1863.So the Eyes accost—and sunder

792.1863.So the Eyes accost—and sunder

Two alternate words in parentheses, both of which I prefer

So the Eyes accost—and sunder
In an Audience—
Stamped—occasionally (in instances)—forever—
So may (can) Countenance

Entertain—without addressing
Countenance of One
In a Neighboring Horizon—
Gone—as soon as known—

With apologies to Oscar Hammerstein (South Pacific, 1949):

“Some enchanted evening
You may see a stranger,
You may see a stranger
Across a crowded room
And somehow you know,
You know even then
That somewhere you’ll see her
Again and again.”

Maybe Hammerstein read ED’s poem, ya think?

Hammerstein is inimitable, but Adam DeGraff parses the poem well at The Prowling Bee:

“This encounter is, perhaps, just an anonymous passing-by on the street. Have you had that encounter with someone, a momentary connection, that feels somehow eternal?”

ED outdoes her typical obscurity in ‘Entertain—without addressing’. It helped to use the Emily Dickinson Lexington (EDL) for clues to her meaning, but when that failed, Oxford English Dictionary (OED) saved the day:

Stanza 1
Accost: meet
Sunder: separate
Audience: group of observers
Stamped: (OED) marked
Countenance: Other; Face

Stanza 2

Entertain: Receive, welcome
Address: Speak to
Neighboring: Adjacent
Horizon: line that terminates the view when extended on the surface of the earth

ED enjambs Line 4 Stanza 1 and Line 5 Stanza 2. The poem’s first editors, Bianci and Hampson (1929, ‘Further Poems’), published the two-quatrain poem as a single eight-line stanza, which makes sense to me.

An enjambed interpretation of ‘So the Eyes accost—and sunder’:

So the Eyes meet — and separate
In a Group of onlookers —
Eyes marked empathic — in instances — forever —.
“So” — “One” Face may

Welcome — without speaking to —
Another Face — Someone empathic —
In a “Neighboring” Universe —
Gone — as soon as known —

For ED, I think that empathic someone was Reverend Charles Wadsworth, who has “Gone” so “soon” to San Francisco, a “Neighboring” but unseen Universe from hers.

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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.