864.1864.A Plated Life – diversified

A Plated Life – diversified
With Gold and Silver Pain
To prove the presence of the Ore
In Particles – ’tis when

A Value struggle – it exist –
A Power – will proclaim
Although Annihilation pile
Whole Chaoses on Him –
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ED Lexicon Def. 1 of “plated”:

“Impure; covered with a thin layer of precious metal on the surface which deceptively conceals an interior of baser metal; [fig.] counterfeit; hypocritical; dissembling; duplicitous; two-faced.”
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My biographical interpretation of F785:

Stanza 1.

A Plated Life – diversified
With Gold and Silver Pain
To prove the presence of the Ore
In Particles – ’tis when [enjambed with Stanza 2]

S1.

Wadsworth leads a hypocritical life, a charismatic minister in public and a seducer of troubled young women in private. Yes, his personality includes bits of gold and silver Christianity, which suggests sincerity, but he uses those qualities to gain and betray trust, causing much pain. I know . . .

Stanza 2

A Value struggle – it exist –
A Power – will proclaim
Although Annihilation pile
Whole Chaoses on Him –

S2.

. . . a value struggle exists his soul, a struggle between good and evil, but when he dies annihilation will pile whole chaoses on his soul.
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An immediate clue to the gist of this poem is the capitalized “Him” at the end of this poem. ED honors only God and Reverend Wadsworth with the capitalized pronoun, “Him”, and the context proves ED’s not talking about God.

A further clue is in Line 1 of F785, ‘It dropped so low — in my Regard —’, where ED castigates Reverend Wadsworth for seducing her in summer 1860, then leaving town and not responding to her letters and poems sent to him.
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P.S. In 1879, 15 years after she wrote F864, ‘A Plated Life – diversified’, ED composed a camouflaged quatrain that said she would like to know how he was doing:

Spurn the temerity –
Rashness of Calvary –
Gay were Gethsemane
Knew we of thee –

Apparently, ED sent the poem to Wadsworth who took her poem as an invitation to visit because he arrived unannounced at her front door in 1880. No doubt, after the 20-year hiatus, the maturer twosome spent an afternoon strolling down memory lane.

In an 1886 letter, written to George Clark one month before her death, ED described Wadsworth’s visit in endearing terms:

“. . . . . Going Home,” was he not an Aborigine of the Sky? The last time he came in Life [summer 1880], I was with my Lilies and Heliotropes, said my Sister to me, “the Gentleman with the deep voice wants to see you, Emily,” hearing him ask of the Servant. “Where did you come from,” I said, for he spoke like an Apparition.

“I stepped from my Pulpit from to the Train” was [his] simple reply, and when I asked “how long”, “Twenty Years” said he with inscrutable roguery – but the loved Voice has ceased . . . . .”.
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HOME

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.