840.1864.Love—is that later Thing than Death—

840.1864.Love—is that later Thing than Death—

Love—is that later Thing than Death—
More previous—than Life—
Confirms it at its entrance—And
Usurps it—of itself—

Tastes Death—the first—to (prove) the sting
The Second—to its friend—
Disarms the little interval—
Deposits Him with God—

Then hovers—an inferior Guard—
Lest this Beloved Charge
Need—once in an Eternity—
A (lesser) than the Large—

My interpretation of F840:

1. Love is our guardian angel, who exists before our birth and after our death. Love confirms our life at birth, takes control of our life while we live, and at death accompanies our spirit to Heaven.
  .
2. Love tastes death first to prove the sting, then, during “the little interval” between life and afterlife, removes the sting for us. Finally, Love gives our spirit to God.
  .
3. Love, our guardian angel, then hovers over our spirit in Heaven, in case our spirit needs a “lesser” friend than God.

…………………………………………………………………………………………….

Coda:

For you and I have a guardian angel on high
With nothin’ to do
But to give to you and to give to me
Love forever true”.

“True Love,” written by Cole Porter for the 1956 musical film High Society.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

ED inserted four alternate words in the manuscript of this poem: Line 5 “pass, prove”; Line 11 “Miss”; and Line 12 “lesser”.

I prefer alternate words “prove” and “lesser” over the published “hand” and “smaller” and have used them in this post.

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

Three notes about my interpretation of F840:

Stanza 1 tells us Love is “More previous—than Life” and “Confirms” itself “at Life’s “entrance”, that is, at birth. Nineteen years after ED composed this poem, she wrote her pen-friend, Maria Whitney:
.
“the angel begins in the morning in every human life” (L824, May 1883 ).
.
This excerpt from an 1883 letter suggests ED may have had a lifelong core belief that each person has a guardian angel watching over them before birth, during life, and after death.
.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul said, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).
.
EDLex defines “Death” as (1) “the process of spirit separating from the body” and (2) “the transition from this world to the world beyond”. In my interpretation of this poem, the “sting” of Death no longer happens when the spirit leaves the body, nor does it happen in the “grave” because the guardian angel removes the sting.

………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The belief that each person has a guardian angel spans thousands of years, with roots in ancient Babylonian, Zoroastrian, and Greek traditions before being adopted into Judaism and early Christianity. It became a significant, widely accepted concept in Christianity by the early centuries AD, and was later formally solidified in Catholic theology. (Google AI)

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

ED needed a guardian angel and so she created one.

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.