817.1864.This Consciousness that is aware

817.1864.This Consciousness that is aware

This Consciousness that is aware
Of Neighbors and the Sun
Will be the one aware of Death
And that itself alone

Is traversing the interval
Experience between
And most profound experiment
Appointed unto Men —

How adequate unto itself
Its properties shall be
Itself unto itself and none
Shall make discovery —

Adventure most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be —
Attended by a single Hound
Its own identity.

……………………………………………………

My interpretation of Fr817, ‘This Consciousness that is aware’:

This consciousness that is aware of neighbors and Sun will be the one aware of death, and that itself alone
is traversing the interval between the two, and that is the most profound experiment assigned to man.
How adequate unto consciousness its properties shall be, itself unto itself, and no one else shall make that discovery for it.
Adventure, most unto itself, the soul is condemned to be, attended by a single hound, its own identity.

And that, dear readers, is one profound bow to existentialist existence. Makes me wonder if she had been reading Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855):

“Existentialism is a 20th-century philosophical movement emphasizing individual freedom, responsibility, and subjectivity”. It posits that individuals are not born with a predetermined purpose but must construct their own meaning and values in an otherwise absurd, meaningless world. Key thinkers include Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus, focusing on themes like authenticity, angst, and the burden of choice”. (Google AI)

In 1914, Martha Dickinson Bianci, Sue’s daughter and ED’s niece published ‘A Single Hound, Poems of a Lifetime’, a collection of 142 unpublished poems. Here’s the last paragraph of her introduction:

“One may ask of the Sphinx [ED], if life would not have been dearer to her, lived as other women lived it? To have been, in essence, more as other women were? Or if, in so doing and so being, she would have missed that inordinate compulsion, that inquisitive comprehension that made her Emily Dickinson? It is to ask again the old riddle of genius against everyday happiness. Had life or love been able to dissuade her from that “eternal preoccupation with death” which thralled her–if she could have chosen–you urge, still unconvinced? But I feel that she could and did, and that nothing could have compensated her for the forfeit of that “single hound,” her “own Identity.”

ED lost schoolgirl friends to tuberculosis and typhus. In April 1844, when she was just thirteen, Emily’s second cousin and close friend, Sophia Holland, died of typhus. ED had been visiting Sophia daily and was in an adjoining room when Sophia died. ED insisted on saying goodbye to the corpse and Sophia’s mother unwisely said yes. The experience devastated ED, who went into deep depression for three months, only relieved by her parents sending her to Boston where her aunt took her sight-seeing to get her mind off her friend’s death.

Afterward, ED was fascinated by the moment of death, asking friends who were present at deathbeds whether they saw any evidence of a soul leaving as the person died. In the absence of evidence, she became skeptical of the “afterlife”. This poem, Fr 817, seems to posit a transition from life (“Neighbors”) to afterlife (“Sun”) via death (“traversing the interval”).

However, I suspect in the back of her mind ED halfway believed the transition was not from somewhere to somewhere, but rather from somewhere to nowhere. Why else would “The Soul condemned to be / Attended by . . . / Its own identity”? Why did ED choose the verb “condemned” for a journey to Heaven?

“Adventure most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be —
Attended by a single Hound
Its own identity.”

Or did she expect life after death would be boring, which she stated as a fact in F710, ‘Doom is the House without the Door’? My guess is that ED used the verb “condemned” in ‘The Consciousness that is aware’ because she believed

“Doom is the House without the Door—
‘Tis entered from the Sun—
And then the Ladder’s thrown away,
Because Escape—is done—

‘Tis varied by the Dream
Of what they do outside—
Where Squirrels play—and Berries dye—
And Hemlocks—bow—to God—”

We know from the previous 816 poems that ED’s opinion of “God” varied widely from time to time.

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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.