How well I knew Her not
Whom not to know has been
A Bounty in prospective, now
Next Door to mine the Pain.
My biographical interpretation of Fr813:
I did not know your sister Elizabeth, but not knowing her meant I had that “Bounty” to anticipate. But now, I feel your pain because I too know how it feels to lose a sister. I was rash and jealous ten years ago, and, though I have tried, the unreserved love of that sister feels lost forever.
My biographical interpretation of Fr813:
I did not know your sister Elizabeth, but not knowing her meant I had that “Bounty” to anticipate. But now, I feel your pain because I too know how it feels to lose a sister. I was rash and jealous ten years ago, and, though I have tried, the unreserved love of that sister feels lost forever.
ED’s modus opperandi is to verbally filter events and experiences through her own historical lens, rather than give unfiltered love, at least not verbally as ED does.
Miller (2024) tells us ED sent this poem to Maria Whitney, about February 11, 1864. Austin visited Whitney in Northampton on February 11 before she sailed for California on the 13th to look after the six children of her sister, Elizabeth Whitney Putnam, who died June 1863 in San Francisco.
I think the personal level of Fr813 runs deep, especially enjambed Lines 3 & 4: “now / Next Door to mine the Pain”. In her own way, ED empathizes with Maria’s loss of a sister because she has also lost a sister. In fact, ED’s “dead sister” lives “Next Door”, which daily “mine[s] the Pain”.
In March 1853 Susan and Austin became engaged after a tryst at the Revere Hotel in Boston. For obvious reasons, Sue had to cool her relationship with Emily, and on April 1, 1854, ED responded sharply to Sue (L172): “You can go or stay”.
In late 1858, perhaps as a birthday greeting on Sue’s birthday, 19 December, ED tried to mend bridges with ‘One Sister have I’ (Fr5, 1858), but the rift never healed.
“One Sister have I in our house,
And one, a hedge away.
There’s only one recorded,
But both belong to me.
One came the road that I came —
And wore my last year’s gown —
The other, as a bird her nest,
Builded our hearts among.
She did not sing as we did —
It was a different tune —
Herself to her a music
As Bumble bee of June.
Today is far from Childhood —
But up and down the hills
I held her hand the tighter —
Which shortened all the miles —
And still her hum
The years among,
Deceives the Butterfly;
Still in her Eye
The Violets lie
Mouldered this many May.
I spilt the dew —
But took the morn —
I chose this single star
From out the wide night’s numbers —
Sue – forevermore!
Those last two stanzas are among the most poignant ED ever wrote. She “spilt the dew” and has been ruing it for 10 years (1854-1864).
Miller, C and Mitchell, D. 2024. The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.
For those who rue the biographical basis for this poem, every poem must start with some seed in a poet’s brain. Biography is only one of many species of seed, but every seed had a specific parent somewhere in a poet’s past, something the poet read, saw, heard, felt, experienced, or imagined. Not only is the poet responsible for universalizing a poem, the reader too must be creative.
As my manifesto on right sight of each poem in this blog, ‘ED-LarryB’, states, I choose to focus on biographical interpretations because my days of worrying about Promotion and Tenure are long gone, and because so few people are willing to choose that focus.
And I’m a history nut.