845.1864.We can but follow to the Sun—

845.1864.We can but follow to the Sun—

We can but follow to the Sun—
As oft as He go down
He leave Ourselves a Sphere behind—
‘Tis mostly—following—

We go no further with the Dust
Than to the Earthen Door—
And then the Panels are reversed—
And we behold—no more.

My prose interpretation of ‘We can but follow to the Sun —’ (F845, 1864):

1. All our lives we only follow the Sun. As often as He sets, we sleep, Earth turns, Sun rises, and we wake.

2. “Dust to dust” circumscribes our lives, and then our curtain falls. Earth swallows us, night reigns, and we behold no more.
………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Excerpt from an ED letter to Higginson (JL503, June 1877):

“When a few years old – I was taken to a Funeral which I now know was of peculiar distress, and the Clergyman asked “Is the Arm of the Lord shortened that it cannot save?

He italicized the ‘cannot.’ I mistook the accent for a doubt of Immortality and not daring to ask, it besets me still.”
………………………………………………………………………………………………..

In 1882, ED revisited F845’s gist with ‘Those – dying then’ (F1581):

Those – dying then,
Knew where they went –
They went to God’s Right Hand –
That Hand is amputated now
And God cannot be found –

The abdication of Belief
Makes the Behavior small –
Better an ignis fatuus
Than no illume at all –
…………………………………………………………………………………………..

ignis fatuus (noun)

Merriam-Webster Definition:

a light that sometimes appears in the night over marshy ground and is often attributable to the combustion of gas from decomposed organic matter
a deceptive goal or hope
“Ignis fatuus” is a Latin term meaning, literally, “foolish fire.”

Other names for this light are “jack-o’-lantern” and “will-o’-the-wisp” — both of which are connected to folklore about mysterious men, Jack and Will, who carry a lantern or a wisp of light at night.

Etymology:

Medieval Latin, literally, foolish fire
First known use was in 1563, in Sense 1 (above).

Synonyms: pipe dream, mirage, chimera, delusion, daydream, illusion

(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ignis%20fatuus)

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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.