Emily Dickinson, "The earth has many keys" (1775)

Hi all –

I highly recommend this Garbage Day video about the shitposting of the Executive Branch. Those of you who are regular readers will find it valuable as it explains to "normies," people not quite drowning in social media and the Internet, why the propaganda of the White House is genuinely disturbing. I found it to be a great introduction to this cultural moment generally. A lot is on the line but it is hard to make sense of what's going on.

Broderick is explicit that authoritarian movements love a trashy, confused media environment. Social media can be a powerful weapon for them. They post bullying, belittling nonsense, we don't confront it because we have actual jobs, and the result is that they get to abuse power while we're wondering why everything is collapsing. I feel like Nietzsche's ranting about cultural decadence is not irrelevant here: we don't know what should be taken seriously, our ideas about power are fatally underdeveloped. But Nietzsche would not appreciate where the decadence is most pronounced; he would certainly spit on the solution (it is more equality and more democracy, not less).

One thing that's puzzled me in recent years is how fact-free everything has become. Sure, conspiracy theories are ubiquitous and loud. And content which aims for the lowest common denominator has better odds of virality. Still. We have Wikipedia, journalists dedicated to getting the truth at great expense, experts eager to share what they know. I'm not worse off because of the Internet. Understanding specifically how certain modes of communication can be weaponized is essential. As I need to remind myself, nothing has to be this way.

Emily Dickinson, "The earth has many keys" (1775)

How did I stumble upon this poem? Funny you should ask. Recently, I ran into a couple half my age that has it completely together. They're a few years from 30, but they've got a fantastic income stream, could own multiple properties if they wanted, and most importantly work hard and care for others. I was wondering what I was doing when I was their age, so I tracked down an old journal.

I knew the answer was going to be bad and I still wasn't ready for the level of cringe on display. I'm writing too much, not saying much of substance. No connections are being made, no themes developed. I'm whining a ton and wondering what kind of friend I was. Pretty sure not a good one! And I know I wasn't making money or of particular help to anyone.

All the same, not everything was a waste. I found this poem by Dickinson in those pages. It has newfound relevance to me as I'm thinking about a statement from Heidegger's "The Origin of the Work of Art:" "Beauty is one way in which truth essentially occurs as unconcealment." (1) I'd like to read the poem with this in mind and reflect on the matter of truth:

The earth has many keys (1775)
Emily Dickinson

The earth has many keys,
Where melody is not
Is the unknown peninsula.
Beauty is nature's fact.

But witness for her land,
And witness for her sea,
The cricket is her utmost
Of elegy to me.

The opening stanza of this lyric is packed with bravado. "The earth has many keys:" we are not just talking about the whole of the world, but all the ways it is so much more. The ways the earth plays music. "Where melody is not / Is the unknown peninsula" calls to mind an idea like the Pythagorean cosmic dance, where mathematics and music and the stars are a mystical union, because "melody is not" is "unknown." Everything is melody. What isn't is the "unknown peninsula," not unlike Hamlet's "undiscovered country." "Beauty is nature's fact" brings all the boldness to a point of concentration. You're not thinking only of the beauties of this planet. You're thinking about how everything you've experienced fits into some grand order, one with a logic written in the most handsome script in a book somewhere beyond the universe.

I want to stop for a moment. In a previous commentary, I've wrestled with Heidegger using the term "great art," limiting his remarks in "The Origin of the Work of Art" to only that. And I personally am not thrilled with "great art" as a serious starting point, but I will work with it. We have his remark about how this is supposed to work, i.e. "Beauty is one way in which truth essentially occurs as unconcealment." And in this poem, we have things that we would consider emblematic of "great art." Dickinson places herself in sly dialogue with someone like Shakespeare. The themes of beauty and death are large but subtly refined. The earth's music is an idea I could imagine myself fumbling a million different ways in an essay, but here Dickinson is brief and convincing. If this is "great art"–I think most of us would say yes, given Dickinson's reputation–are we encountering a "truth" through "unconcealment?"

I don't know. There's a drama to this poem. It isn't said because someone is neutral about about the wonders they see. It doesn't even look like they're particularly happy. You could imagine "Beauty is nature's fact" being said through tears, as if someone has just broken up with someone really hot. The second stanza concludes with "The cricket is her utmost / Of elegy to me." The power of beauty doesn't mean you won't be alone, at night, listening to the crickets and wondering about death.

The question for both Heidegger and us is what we consider truth. You could say relating to the particular pain posited by my interpretation is an engagement with truth. Not an irrelevant one, either. We can lose the people we love most on days which refuse to complement our grief. We look for echoes of what we feel in the natural world because we want some confirmation that we belong here. In which case, "truth" does seem to have occurred as "unconcealment." We did the work, engaged the space the poem offered, and came out more thoughtful because of it.

I'm reluctant to entirely commit to this direction, though. My problem is twofold. First, "beauty" can be incredibly shallow. When I'm thinking about aesthetics and potential democratic ethics and virtues, I want us to use "beauty" as a placeholder for a larger set of concepts. I'm looking at one evangelical church after another only display pictures of their most conventionally attractive members. It's so packed with "beauty" it is repellent and perverse. So I need more qualification on this front from Heidegger.

Second, "unconcealment," which I do believe to be broadly right, needs to be developed more. What are the specific experiences we have with regards to art? What are the intermediate experiences–the ones that are like seeds which can grow or be crushed–that are of especial value? It is possible to engage art, write and think a lot about it, and do nothing but Nazi propaganda. That's typically what scholars argue is going on with Heidegger's discussion of Van Gogh's Shoes. And as I implied in the last discussion, I don't think a given method fixes this problem. We have to be very clear about what experiences are of value.

Going back to when I was 27 and an absolute mess, it is now really clear what experiences had value. It turns out sitting, reading poetry, and copying it into your journal is not the worst way to approach life. My efforts did not unpack any greater truth at the time; they were scribbles that went beside the poem into the journal. But it mattered. I treated the poem like it was something "great," even if it wasn't, and was willing to revisit it later because I was interested in how I was living then. If I had to go back in time, I'd probably tell my younger self not just to write a bit more, but sell what I'm up to more. If "unconcealment" is the fundamental notion bringing us to truth, you can ask what exactly we need to see more of.

References

1. Heidegger, Martin, "The Origin of the Work of Art" in Basic Writings (ed. Krell). New York: HarperCollins, 1993. 181.