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I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth - the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.
And so, as kinsmen met a-night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.
Emily Dickinson’s poem #449 is many things for many readers.
It is a macabre story, wherein a man and woman buried in
adjoining tombs chat with each other in the dark until nature
seals their lips
and covers up the
names
on their headstones.
It is a double eulogy in which the deceased celebrate dying for an
ideal.
It is a conversation between two strangers who, meeting for the
first time under unfortunate circumstances, discover that they are
soulmates who died for the same cause.
It is a playful tribute to John Keats. Although he died from
tuberculosis, Keats much admired
truth
and beauty
in his “Ode
on a Grecian Urn.”
Finally, it’s Dickinson’s most deliciously dark, hilariously serious
poem.
I died for beauty
The rhetorical geography is absurd. A man and woman who claim
to have just died, but who do not appear to be in an afterlife, are
talking to each other. Although they reside in far off tombs, we
can overhear part of their conversation. How do we manage to do
that? Poetic license?
Our speaker’s opening assertion poses another question. One can
certainly die from the pursuit of beauty, as the Greeks did,
fighting to return Helen of Troy to Sparta; or because of beauty,
as did Adonis and Narcissus. We can even argue, as AI does, that
one can die, like Marilyn Monroe, due to the unintended
consequence of being beautiful; or as a painter or poet dies from
bodily neglect, due to a compulsion to produce beautiful works of
art. But dying literally
for
beauty? Is that possible?
Scarcely is our female corpse
adjusted in the tomb
,when a
second corpse who died for truth
appears with a complex
answer to that question. His arrival is so sudden it feels as if he
has been called forth from the land of the living to join her in
death. We brethren are
, he explains, because
beauty
and truth are one
. It’s as if these deceased soulmates suddenly leap
out of their graves into John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
Men and women are often compelled to literally die defending
Truth: Jesus, Socrates, Seneca, Sir Thomas More, to mention just
a few. If beauty and truth are one and the same, one who dies for
beauty dies for truth as well.
But how closely are they joined? Although the poem’s narrative
implies a forever marriage, our poet takes pains to assure us that
they are mortal and their relationship merely Platonic.They
cannot realize the ecstatic, intimate, mystical union that Keats’
beauty and truth enjoy. They are more like fraternal twins than
lovers, related but unwed. As
kinsmen
, they lie in separate
chambers and talk to each other through a wall. They are not an
eternal verity. To be so they would have to commit incest! They
are just two mortals having a friendly conversation that does not
merit our attention.
Beauty and truth are just pretending to be immortal. They do not
exist in heaven or hell—just in
adjoining rooms
. They are as
mortal as we are, and they admit that their self-aggrandizing
conversation only lasted:
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.
As long as this couple can talk and, as Stephen Sondheim would
say, “lie about [them] selves a little”—they remain alive. Their
first death is a sham. Their real death occurs when their lips are
sealed, and they can no longer claim to have died for beauty, let
alone truth.
*****
There isn’t any direct evidence that Dickinson read Keats’ Ode;
but the similarity between their lines has led most commentators
to agree that she is alluding to the last two lines of Keats’ final
address to his Urn:
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
We do not have an original manuscript for the Ode in the poet’s
hand. The 1820 edition of his poetry in which it first appeared
had no quotation marks in the final stanza. Most of the editors
who have followed have added them before “Beauty and after
know” to express their opinion that 100% of the closing lines are
spoken by the Urn.
Many readers, however, believe that the words following the dash
belong to the poet; that the final quotation mark should go after
beauty, profoundly changing the meaning of the poem:
The standard punctuation has the urn stating that its aphorism
contains all that humanity needs to know to enjoy life on our
planet. But if the urn is simply telling us that beauty and truth are
one, then Keats ends his Ode by qualifying the power of the Urn’s
proclamation.
The union of beauty and truth is what we expect from a timeless
work of art. That may be
all
, Keats is saying, that the Urn needs
to
know
—
all that, as a work of art, it need realize on
earth
, meaning its earthenware. Still, we who live as mortals on planet
earth
are not wholly fulfilled by even the greatest art and can’t
help longing to know more.
I don’t think Dickinson would accept the Urn’s blithe assertion
that its beauty/truth equation is all human beings know or need
to know. My sense is that her emphasis on the transition from
being to nothingness that we all face suggests that she too felt
Keats was qualifying the utility of the Urn’s rather imperious
aphorism.
I think Dickinson would agree with Keats that the beauty and
truth that a great work of art offers us makes it
a friend to
man
. But unlike the couple in her poem she believes its power is
limited and enjoys enhancing Keats skepticism with her gallows
humor.
I suspect that both Keats and Dickinson would agree
metaphorically with Kay Ryan, that as we drift down life’s stream,
enjoying the beautiful scenery along the shore:
All images in this column were created
in collaboration with ChatGPT’s
Artist in Residence—AI.
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