Letter from Henry to Sophia

July 8, 1860:

Dear Sophia,

Mother reminds me that I must write to you, if only a few lines, though I have sprained my thumb so that it is questionable whether I can write legibly, if at all. I can’t bear on much. What is worse, I believe that I have sprained my brain too—i.e it sympathizes with my thumb. But there is no excuse, I suppose, for writing a letter in such a case, is, like sending a newspaper, only a hint to let you know that “all is well”—but my thumb.

I hope that you begin to derive some benefit from that more mountainous air which you are breathing. Have you had a distinct view of the Franconia Notch ruts (blue peaks in the N horizon)? which I told you that you could get from the road in Campton, & probably from some other points nearer. Such a view of the mts is more memorable than any other.

Have you been to Squam Lake, or overlooked it—I should think that you could easily make an excursion to some mt in that direction from which you could see the lake & the mts generally.

I hear that John Brown, jr. has just come to Boston for a few days. Mr. Sanborn’s case, it is said, will come on after some murder cases have been disposed of—here.

I have just been invited, formally, to be present at the annual picnic of Theodore Parker’s society (that was) at Waverly next Wednesday, & to make some remarks. But that is wholly out of my line—I do not go to picnics even in Concord you know.

I suppose that you have heard that Mr. Hawthorne has come home. I went to meet him the other evening & found that he has not altered except that he was looking pretty brown after his voyage. He is as simple & child-like as ever.

I believe that I have fairly scared the kittens away, at last, by my pretended fierceness—which was humane merely & now I will consider my thumb—& your eyes,

Henry

Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver (1935-2021) is considered a modern Transcendentalist or a neo-Transcendentalist.

Most poets aren’t into being put into boxes. She’s more than a label.

Jones Very

Season 3 Episode 6 of Dickinson they visit a mental institution, and that got me thinking about Jones Very. 

Jones Very (1813-1880) was a poet from Salem who went to Harvard, but was dismissed because he saw himself as the second coming of Christ. His mother, Lydia Very, was known for being an aggressive freethinker who made her atheistic beliefs known to all. She believed that marriage was only a moral arrangement and not a legal one. His father, also named Jones Very, was a captain during the War of 1812 and was held in Nova Scotia for a time by the British as a prisoner of war. When the younger Jones Very was 10, his father, by then a shipmaster, took him on a sailing voyage to Russia. A year later, his father had Very serve as a cabin boy on a trip to New Orleans, Louisiana. His father died on the return trip, apparently due to a lung disease he contracted while in Nova Scotia.

Poems:

Nature

The bubbling brook doth leap when I come by,

Because my feet find measure with its call;

The birds know when the friend they love is nigh,

For I am known to them, both great and small.

The flower that on the lonely hillside grows

Expects me there when spring its bloom has given;

And many a tree and bush my wanderings knows,

And e'en the clouds and silent stars of heaven;

For he who with his Maker walks aright,

Shall be their lord as Adam was before;

Thy Better Self

I AM thy other self, what thou wilt be,

When thou art I, the one seest now;

In finding thy true self thou wilt find me,

The springing blade, where now thou dost but plough.

I am thy neighbor, a new house I've built,

Which thou as yet hast never entered in;

I come to call thee; come in when thou wilt,

The feast is always ready to begin.

Thou should'st love me, as thou dost love thyself,

For I am but another self beside;

To show thee him thou lov'st in better health,

What thou would'st be, when thou to him hast died;

Then visit me, I make thee many a call;

Nor live I near to thee alone, but all.

His ear shall catch each sound with new delight,

Each object wear the dress that then it wore;

And he, as when erect in soul he stood,

Hear from his Father's lips that all is good

Soul-Sickness

How many of the body's health complain,

When they some deeper malady conceal;

Some unrest of the soul, some secret pain,

Which thus its presence doth to them reveal.

Vain would we seek, by the physician's aid,

A name for this soul-sickness e'er to find;

A remedy for health and strength decayed,

Whose cause and cure are wholly of the mind

To higher nature is the soul allied,

And restless seeks its being's Source to know;

Finding not health nor strength in aught beside;

How often vainly sought in things below,

Whether in sunny clime, or sacred stream,

Or plant of wondrous powers of which we dream!

Emily Dickinson

(source)

You have to get a million streaming services. The trick is to get free trials and watch all the good shows quickly. On Apple TV, Dickinson is the weird ahistorical show to gobble up, 3 seasons. 

Emily Dickinson lived 1830-1886. She published a few poems but mostly wrote for her sister-in-law and others. 

The internet has created needy babies (me) who want to be fed. There is no webpage that has the poem featured in each episode. I could make millions if I created that and then monetized my site. Actually there's a wiki, and 

S3E2 has a page. What a find, it does exist. Not about poems, more like candid photos of the actresses getting dressed.

Alena Smith created this show. "Smith was drawn to the idea of “achieving the impossible within extreme confinement,” as Dickinson did, reinventing American verse from her bedroom. “Frustration has been a powerful engine of my career thus far and of this project. And it's definitely part of the character of Emily Dickinson,” she adds."

There are modern sentiments injected into the show, hip hop music, and whatnot. It's ahistorical. They look at the camera and talk. It's an ahistorical drama. Still, it's fun.

The Thoreau episode makes him about to be a dilettante fop, that's certainly one view of him, not mine. I like the naturalist, the poet, the essay writer, the revolutionary. I don't agree that we should only fix ourselves, we could also fix society too. I don't dislike New York. The pull of Puritanism isn't as strong for me, but if I'm honest, there is a weird undertow pull. Seeing clay feet is a sign of maturity to me, not just idealizing and denigrating, the good and the bad. We are all mixtures.

I've read through Dickinson's poems more than one, tried to read one book on the Gothic nature of her poetry, own a biography I neglect, and really really enjoy this show. She swam in the same New England waters as Thoreau. She was born a little later.

I don't know if they ever met or read each other. I doubt Thoreau read Emily's poems. I'll update as I learn.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson was a mentor to Dickinson.

“ Dickinson’s poems and letters mention roses, lilacs, peonies, sweet williams, daisies, foxgloves, poppies, nasturtiums and zinnias.” (Source)




Previous posts:

Dickinson




Links:

Wild Nights With Emily review in Vox.




Poems:

The way Hope builds his House
It is not with a sill –
Nor Rafter – has that Edifice
But only Pinnacle –

Abode in as supreme
This superficies
As if it were of Ledges smit
Or mortised with the Laws –





All the letters I can write
Are not fair as this—
Syllables of Velvet—
Sentences of Plush,
Depths of Ruby, undrained,
Hid, Lip, for Thee—
Play it were a Humming Bird—
And just sipped—me—






I started Early – Took my Dog –

And visited the Sea –

The Mermaids in the Basement

Came out to look at me –



And Frigates – in the Upper Floor

Extended Hempen Hands –

Presuming Me to be a Mouse –

Aground – opon the Sands –



But no Man moved Me – till the Tide

Went past my simple Shoe –

And past my Apron – and my Belt

And past my Boddice – too –



And made as He would eat me up –

As wholly as a Dew

Opon a Dandelion's Sleeve –

And then – I started – too –



And He – He followed – close behind –

I felt His Silver Heel

Opon my Ancle – Then My Shoes

Would overflow with Pearl –



Until We met the Solid Town –

No One He seemed to know –

And bowing – with a Mighty look –



At me – The Sea withdrew –

Abolitionism

It's always struck with me that Susan Cheever had a strong reaction to John Brown in her account of the Transcendentalists.

I'm reading today that Wendell Philips came to Concord again to talk, against the protests of some.

In a way, I think about Henry living with all the Thoreau women. Sophia Thoreau was a big abolitionist. Helen Thoreau had a collection of abolitionist clippings from newspapers, the equivalent of today would be a bunch of bookmarks. Favorite links.

Emerson and Thoreau were on the right side of history, but there names come way down in the long article on abolitionism in Wikipedia. 

Good Lord Bird is a good TV show about John Brown. Season 3 in Dickinson is the Civil War. 

Bonus link:

Hiking can be dangerous. Woman found stuck in mud for 3 days.

Leaves of Grass

Leaves of Grass was Published July 4th, 1855 by Walt Whitman, 168 years ago. 

Season 3 episode 4 of Dickinson's portrait is exaggerated, ahistorical, but anyway, they're just having fun in that show. What did Dickinson and Thoreau think of Whitman? I'll try and update here if I read anything. She show is kind of what if all the stars of the Transcendental movement were self involved influencers with today's consciousness. Still, it's fun.

“I am satisfied ... I see, dance, laugh, sing.”

“I am large, I contain multitudes”

“Do anything, but let it produce joy.”

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”

“Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me?

And why should I not speak to you?”

“I will sleep no more but arise, You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.”

4th of July is also the day Thoreau moves into his hut in Walden. 

Monday

My daughter likes to take rain walks. She's not a kind of person to stay inside even though she's still a little afraid of thunder and lightning at age 7. She really loves her mother, and her mother goes for walks to get out, change her inside consciousness. My daughter doesn't let me read to her like my sons did. She doesn't like to watch movies. Her mother is absolutely devoted to her, to the best of her abilities. 

I really like a thunderstorm. They're amazing displays of nature. To see one come rolling in. That's a midwestern appreciation, you can't see a thunderstorm come rolling in in NYC unless you have a penthouse. There is a view of the sky in my second floor walkup but it's not like seeing a storm coming in, in the midwest. 

She slapped a leaf and said, "I'm high fiving nature." I thought about how Cori's mother has given Ruby an appreciation of nature that I foster as well. As we turned back onto our block, it really started pouring. 

Continuing to read Walls' biography, Thoreau decided to leave Staten Island. He didn't like the museums of New York, he didn't think people were really living. 

He went and visited Brook Farm, but left in a snowstorm. Nobody wanted to take him. 

Henry David Thoreau questioned the community members' idealism and wrote in his journal, "As for these communities, I think I had rather keep bachelor's hall in hell than go to board in heaven"

I'm asking people about Thoreau memories, what they know. I asked my father who is well read. He said he couldn't remember much. He thinks he read Walden at some point. My father worked in computers after being a logic professor briefly. He read a lot, really enjoyed the life of the mind. My friend could remember reading him in college. He was a doctor and we've gone on many backpacking and canoe trips. It's funny, there are a million books about Thoreau and not that much about him in the common parlance. He's a niche interest. Richard Rodriguez talked about how becoming educated distanced him from his family. I suppose learning about something pushes you away from the common people, my friend and father enjoy highlights I tell them, like Thoreau had narcolepsy, probably a secondary symptom from tuberculosis. The tuberculosis and bronchitis would take his life at 44. My father is 76 and I am 56. We've really outlived Thoreau. I was reading a question about what would have happened to John Lennon if he'd lived to today instead of being killed in 1980. One time when I was at Blue Note seeing Charlie Haden, I sat near Yoko and John junior.  

I asked my soccer online friends, and one said Civil Disobedience was important.