LarryB

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’:

1. This consciousness that is aware of neighbors and Sun will be the one aware of death, and that itself alone
2. is traversing the interval between the two, and that is the most profound experiment assigned to man.
3. How adequate unto consciousness its properties shall be, itself unto itself, and no one else shall make that discovery for it.
4. 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Dickinson Bianci, Sue’s daughter and ED’s niece published ‘A Single Hound, Poems of a Lifetime’, a collection of 142 unpublished poems.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.

816.1864.I could not drink it, Sweet

Two variants. I prefer Variant B with “Sweet” replaced by “Sue” and signed “Emily”.

I could not drink it, Sweet,
Till You had tasted first,
Though cooler than the Water was
The Thoughtfulness of Thirst.

My interpretation of ‘I could not drink it, Sweet’: (Fr816):

“I could not accept Christ, Sue, till you had done it first, though sweeter than Christ was your concern for my salvation.”

The coincidence of four words, “tasted” / “water” / “cooler” / “thirst”, in this 21-word quatrain and in one sentence of a letter ED wrote to her friend Abiah Root on March 28, 1846 (JL11) makes me wonder whether Fr816 is about ED’s spiritual salvation versus ED’s rejection of Christ as her soul’s savior, at least to Sue’s way of thinking.:

“Dearest Abiah,
· · · · ·
“I determined to devote my whole life to his service & desired that all might taste of the stream of living water from which I cooled my thirst.”
· · · · ·
Yours. Emily E. Dickinson –

Sue was a devout Christian and, during the 1880s, turned increasingly to the rituals of High Church (Anglo-Catholicism). She even considered becoming a Roman Catholic (Armand 1985).

During the 1880s, Sue spent almost every Sabbath for six years establishing a Sunday school in Logtown, a poor village in present-day Belchertown, not far from Amherst (Dorey 1960). Perhaps Sue was concerned about ED’s refusal to accept Christ as her savior and had offered to accompany ED to church.

This poem may be ED’s polite but firm RSVP.

Barton Levi St. Armand, 1985, Emily Dickinson and her Culture: the Soul’s Society, Cambridge Univ. Press, 368 pp.

Kenney A. Dorey, 1960, , Belchertown Town History, Dan Fitzpatrick (ed), 2005. 9 pp.

Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell, 2024, The Letters of Emily Dickinson, Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

815.1864.To this World she returned

To this World she returned
But with a tinge of that
A Compound manner
As a Sod
Espoused a Violet —
That chiefer to the Skies
Than to Himself allied
Dwelt hesitating, half of Dust
And half of Day the Bride.

My interpretation of Fr815 (Variant A):

To this world she returned, but with a tinge of a dual nature, as if a shovel of sod sported a violet that gave more allegiance to the skies than to the sod in which it hesitantly grew, half Earth’s “Dust” and half Heaven’s “Bride”.

How ED’s poems repeat themselves! Poem after poem describes the formative experience of her life, a spiritual romance that she believed would end with an eternal marriage in Heaven to Wadsworth, as she believed he had promised.

At its surface level, F815 is about Gertrude Vanderbilt’s near-death experience. Line 1, “To this World she returned”, implies that “she” had died and later “returned” from Heaven.

At a deeper level, this poem is about ED herself. She was the one who had died and gone to Heaven. While there, she and Wadsworth had met and married, as he had promised. After the marriage, ED returned to “this World”, now half Earth’s “Dust” and half Heaven’s “Bride”.

ED had never met Gertrude Vanderbilt, but Sue informed her of her friend’s near-death experience in a letter. At that time, September 1864, ED was in Boston for eye treatment. Apparently, ED took the hint and composed the get-well poem as a favor to Sue.

I wonder whether Mrs. Vanderbilt had any inkling of ED’s intent, any vague idea this poem had anything to do with her being shot by an irate rejected suitor of her maid or her recovery from said shot.

‘To this World she returned’ is one weird get-well poem

814.1864.Soto! Explore thyself!

Soto! Explore thyself!
Therein thyself shalt find
The “Undiscovered Continent”—
No Settler, had the Mind.

My interpretation of Fr814:

Austin! Know thyself! The thing you are looking for is in yourself: the meaning of your life. No man, new arrived, knows the undiscovered meccas of his mind.

Emily and Austin were close siblings, apparently even in matters sexual. On the evening of March 23, 1853, Susan Gilbert, Austin’s future wife, returning from a visit with a relative in Manchester, NH, spent the night with Austin at the Revere Hotel in Boston. Susan returned to Amherst on March 24 and soon told ED about her night with Austin. On March 27, ED wrote Austin a letter full of suggestive banter, including the sentence, “Hope you have enjoyed the Sabbath, and sanctuary privileges – it isn’t all young men that have the preached word –”. Susan and Austin married on July 1, 1856.

Apparently, their marriage soon faced irreconcilable goals: Sue sought social standing and eschewed parenthood, Austin disdained soirees and wanted children. Emotional separation followed, but Austin endured.

I suspect ED composed this 1864 poem as a response to Austin’s complaints about his marriage in a letter to ED, hoping for a sympathetic sister’s shoulder. Instead, ED replied with this stoical quatrain of Emersonian advice, “Soto! Explore thyself!” (Fr814).

ED composed this poem while she was in Boston receiving eye treatments for failing eyesight (February-November 1864). While there, she lived with her cousins, Frances and Louise Norcross.

Most of the poems composed during this stay are short, probably because ED’s ophthalmologist ordered her to avoid writing and reading so her eyes could heal. Perhaps she dictated poems to her cousins and wanted to limit requests for their time.

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 13^th 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.

812.1864.Love reckons by itself—alone—

Love reckons by itself—alone
“As large as I”—relate the Sun
To One who never felt it blaze—
Itself is all the like it has—

EDLex defines “reckon” as “calculate” or “be defined, described”.

My interpretation of Fr812:

“Love” judges a person by comparing them to “itself—alone”, for example, “As large as I”. Furthermore, to describe “the Sun / To” [some]one “who never felt it blaze”, Love would compare the blazing Sun to blazing Love.

When reading this poem, it’s helpful to put a period after the “I” in Line 2 so that the quatrain consists of two complete sentences.

‘Love reckons by itself—alone—’, Fr812, tries to describe something indescribable, Love, but Love is not comparable to anything. It can’t be measured against anything. It “reckons by itself.” To reckon means to describe (EDLex, Def 2). So Love defines itself. much like “beauty” does: Love is Love (Fr797).

Line 3 introduces two riddles: Why is “One” capitalized and what is the antecedent of “it”? The “Sun” in Line 2 “blaze[s]” and is a logical antecedent of “it”, but “Love” in Line 1 also blazes and is also a logical antecedent . Perhaps ED intended both?

The more difficult riddle is why is “One” capitalized in Line 3. “One” functions here as a personal pronoun, and ED usually honors only God and Charles Wadsworth with capitals. Can we rule out God, leaving Wadsworth the only alternative?

These musings generate two more riddles: In Line 4, what are the antecedents of “Itself” and “it”? To me, the answer for both could be “One” in Line 3, which leaves me with a take-home conclusion: If “One” is the antecedent, Line 3 ED implies “Wadsworth never felt the blaze of Love”.

That conclusion is the opposite of universal, but why else is “One” capitalized?

On the other hand, “Itself” and “it” in Line 4 could just as well refer to “Love” in Line 1. In that case, Line 4 restates and reinforces Line 1.

Thank you Emily for your ambiguity.

811.1864.There is a June when Corn is cut

There is a June when Corn is cut
And Roses in the Seed—
A Summer briefer than the first
But tenderer indeed

As should a Face supposed the Grave’s
Emerge a single Noon
In the Vermilion that it wore
Affect us, and return—

Two Seasons, it is said, exist—
The Summer of the Just,
And this of Ours, diversified
With Prospect, and with Frost—

May not our Second with its First
So infinite compare
That We but recollect the one
The other to prefer?

My interpretation of four-stanza ‘There is a June when Corn is cut’, in four prose sentences:

1. There is a time when corn is cut and roses go to seed, a summer briefer than the first, but lovely all the same.

2. As if a face, long buried in the grave, emerge a single noon in rosy cheeks it former wore, then vanish into air.

3. Two seasons, it is said, exist, the summer of the saved, and this of ours, diversified with promise and with pain.

4. May not our second season so infinite compare, that we but spy the first face, our second to prefer.

Stanza 1

In western Massachusetts, corn (maize) was harvested in late summer/early autumn, not June, which is the clue that this poem is about Indian Summer, a period of warm, sunny, and dry weather that occurs in the autumn, usually after the first frost. Though brief, Indian Summer resurrects fleeting feelings of summertime, which ED described as “tenderer indeed”.

Stanza 2

A memory of a ruddy-cheeked face that ED thought she’d never see again appeared for a single “Noon”, woke memories of a “summer’s day”, perhaps in 1860 (Fr325?) , then vanished into time. For ED, that face was Wadsworth’s.

Stanza 3

ED’s “First” summer was her “Summer of the Just” (Line 10), where “Just” means “perfected ones; those made whole” [EDLex, Definition 2 of “Just”].

ED realized that Indian Summer, her second summer, is diversified with Prospect and with Pain, but she felt that pain on Earth would be worth enduring when she finally arrives at her Heavenly second” summer with Wadsworth:

“. . . we shall rise—
Deposed—at length—the Grave—
To that new Marriage—
Justified—through Calvaries of Love!”
(Fr325)

Stanza 4

May not our second summer so infinite compare, that we but spy the first, our second to prefer.

……………………………………………………………….

Fr811, ‘There is a June when Corn is cut’, got me wondering how many “Indian Summer” poems ED composed. The answer is at least nine:

1. F122 ‘These are the days when Birds come back’
2. F265 ‘It cant be “Summer”!’
3. F363 ‘I know a place where Summer strives’
4. F408 ‘Like some Old fashioned Miracle’
5. F520 ‘God made a little Gentian’
6. F811 ‘There is a June when Corn is cut’
7. F1412 ‘How know it from a Summer’s Day?’
8. F1419 ‘A – Field of Stubble, lying sere’
9. F1457 ‘Summer has two Beginnings‘

My  source for eight of these poem titles was David Preest. Tom C added the ninth with his comment of October 1, 2025, on The Prowling Bee.