Official back & Front thread

[GINAFELICIA]

8-)

Oh, what mystery pervades a well!

Please someone translate this into English please   bounce/ bounce/ bounce/ bow/ bow/ bow/

[MaryK]

8-)

Oh, what mystery pervades a well!

I am not a native speaker but...replace "well" by "source".....are you Mr. Front alluding to the TS/T.I.A.I. discussion....maybe...just maybe....
If so: yes indeed  :lol:

[curls]

Hmm, I'm not too good at interpreting poetry, but the last two lines seem 'interesting' to me, particularly, like you just said Maryk, with things going on in other threads at the moment.

[_Anna_]

8-)

Oh, what mystery pervades a well!

Please someone translate this into English please   bounce/ bounce/ bounce/ bow/ bow/ bow/

I think that in English this is somehow like "what a mystery a well is".
"Well" is a kind of fountain.

It's a poem, read above.

[_Anna_]

Here is a little analysis of the poem which I read and liked. Maybe you will understand the poem better if you read this.

"What mystery pervades a well!” This line describes an interaction between speaker and nature, with an idea of eternal separation concluding the poem. The six four-line stanzas lack significant punctuation and employ an ABCB rhyme scheme of exact, vowel and suspended rhymes; each stanza offers an experiential snapshot of the speaker’s journey. In this poem, Dickinson uses multiple elements of nature in metaphorical ways to describe the positions of humans. Specifically, the poem begins with an idea of wonder and confinement, as presented through a device used by humans:

What mystery pervades a well!
That water lives so far—
A neighbor from another world
Residing in a jar
(1-4)

Based on this stanza, an unseen boundary exists between man and the water encased by the earth. In addition, Dickinson compares humans to vegetation when she personifies “grass.” The speaker states that “The grass does not appear afraid…” and ponders the physical position of the “grass:” “…Can stand so close and look so bold / At what is awe to me” (9, 11-12). These lines reveal a common human fear of the unknown, as well as show the aggressive manner of those who believe they master nature. This leads to a further interpretation that perhaps Dickinson is questioning whether or not the “grass” has the ability to understand. Dickinson also shows the close discernable link between humans and nature by contrasting “grass” with “sedge.” Sedge resembles grass but has solid stems. The “sedge” remains distinct in the poem and is placed specifically by “the sea.” The superficial likeness pointedly relays the interconnected nature of man and earth.
Dickinson switches to a human perspective to further explore the idea of fear. In the penultimate stanza, she relays the haunting and mysterious qualities of nature:

But nature is a stranger yet;
The ones that cite her most
Have never passed her haunted house,
Nor simplified her ghost.
(17-20)

In this excerpt, nature is used to symbolize both a “haunted house,” as well as the “ghost” that inhabits it. While nature might be portrayed as an inspirational harbor, it can also embody alarming qualities. The complexities of this quatrain are explored in Yuto Miyata’s article, “The Rejection of the Traditional Idea of Nature in Emily Dickinson’s Poems”: “The word ‘haunted,’ originally meaning to be visited by a strange form of a spirit, may imply that nature is haunted by an unidentified ghost. Perhaps this unidentified ghost is nature’s inner truth: it can never be revealed to man, though it has many outer aspects to be observed and to make man imagine what they stand for. Nature never permits simplification by Dickinson” (81). In addition, the notion of a home, where one resides, should be comforting. However, the home that nature provides is an unsettling rather than reassuring environment; in fact, this dwelling’s occupants are figures of death. Dickinson concludes the poem with an ironic statement that shows the knowledge of nature is actually lessened as one becomes more aware of its greatness: “That those who know her, know her less / The nearer her they get.” Even though the reader is given a succinct message at the end, it doesn’t dilute the speaker’s quest for understanding already presented. According to this poem, the mystery of nature will continue to evolve and increase as an individual becomes more intent on scrutinizing its mysteries. Consequently, the line the speaker seeks to cross in order to receive wisdom and a retreat seems to shift farther away with each step similar to the movement of a horizon.
Dickinson’s treatment of nature is various and contradicting because it sometimes renders
an incredible beauty, and other times exposes a relentless, unforgiving enigma. The poet once said that “The unknown is the largest need of the intellect,” and nature is clearly an entity she considered a mystery (“14” 83).

[MaryK]

As I said above: I think it´s meant as "what mystery lies in/comes from/is in a source"...alluding to TS discussion (TS as a source)
Now that´s an eloquent way of mocking us a little in a friendly way
Thank you very much
 bearhug
 

[curls]

Here's another analysis:

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Poem of the week: What mystery pervades a well! by Emily Dickinson

This time, a typically bold and jaunty exploration of nature's 'floorless' mystery

       
Emily Dickinson
Sending postcards to the future ... Emily Dickinson. Photograph: Hulton Getty

Shamefaced confession: I've been renewing my library copy of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson for more than a year. It's the perfect dipping-book, utterly reliable for a moment's, or an hour's, refreshment. There's no poet who's so consistently disconcerting, fascinating, odd-angled. Like Stephen Hawking, Dickinson takes you to the edge of the cosmos – which may be billions of light years away or at your back door. And it's the cosmos in microcosm, of course – another advantage. Dickinson's brevity convinces you that poems were never meant to be long or ostensibly complicated.

So it's high time I faced my chronic indecision and made a choice of Dickinson Poem of the Week (and, yes, bought my own copy of the Complete Poems). From a possible 1,775, I've picked number 1,400, the one that begins "What mystery pervades a well!"

It's a strange poem, "floorless", in a sense, and perhaps not flawless. The well appears to be a real one, not a metaphysical source of spiritual refreshment, but Dickinson's first stroke in the poem is to defamiliarise it, transform it into a kind of black hole. There's no friendly face at the bottom as there is for Seamus Heaney, another poetic well-fancier. The startling personification of the water as "A neighbor from another world / Residing in a jar," may briefly conjure thoughts of the genii in the bottle – but only briefly. The "lid of glass" takes us down further into the unfathomable depths of the jar, bringing the realisation that only the surface of the water would be visible. There's a lot more beneath. In a jaunty tone, Dickinson offers us the "abyss".

The grass beside the well, buoyantly undisturbed, leads to an analogy with sedge which is growing near the sea on much shakier ground. "Floorless" is such a brilliantly unsettling word, it seems that Dickinson wants to stop us in our tracks with it. So she shortens that line, making it the end-word, and adds the leftover foot-and-a-bit of "and does no" to the next: "And does no timidity betray". Note that the grass and sedge are personified, like the water, and are also masculine. Nature remains traditionally feminine.

The repeated "e" rhymes in the third and fourth stanzas sound awkward. A run of four (he/me/be/sea), the last two unexpectedly consecutive, must be deliberate. Like the sedge as the waves break over it, the fourth stanza struggles for foothold, and seems designed to remain a little unfinished.

There's an earlier poem that begins, "Bring me the sunset in a cup, / Reckon the morning's flagons up / And say how many Dew, / Tell me how far the morning leaps - / Tell me what time the weaver sleeps, / Who spun these nets of blue!" Nature here is as immeasurable as in the "well" poem, but "she" is still resplendently present and active. Dickinson is a poet of vivid sight: her work records innumerable sunsets, flowers and bees in glowing, specific colour. The well, by contrast, is colourless; sinister and still.

The fact that the well is a man-made object doesn't deter Dickinson from identifying it with the natural world. But the images by which Nature is evoked – a haunted house, a ghost – are disturbing. The Nature that impinges on the human world, and interests the speaker, remains a stranger. Is it only a shadow, like the shadows in Plato's cave? Haunted houses are best avoided, of course. But "ghost" has a bigger theological meaning than mere spook. To "simplify" Nature's ghost might be to "know the mind of God."

Ultimately, the experience broached seems incomplete. The poem withdraws into a warning against arrogance: the arrogance of science, perhaps, and the arrogance of poetry. The narrator surely includes herself among those who know Nature, but whose knowledge turns out to be insufficient. The aphoristic last lines are a little lesson on humility.

The further the poem moves into abstraction, the deeper it seems to plunge into a well where words reflect no light. It admits defeat. And yet, by making deliberate imaginative "mistakes" – like seeing the water as a neighbour who lives in a jar – the speaker surely has presented us with a wonderful replica of her well. She is not Stephen Hawking, but a Martian, sending postcards to the future. Her bold comparisons and personifications may explain nothing, but they bring us thrillingly close to her sense of awe. And science has never yet shown us that awe at our surroundings is inappropriate.

What mystery pervades a well!
That water lives so far –
A neighbor from another world
Residing in a jar

Whose limit none has ever seen,
But just his lid of glass –
Like looking every time you please
In an abyss's face!

The grass does not appear afraid,
I often wonder he
Can stand so close and look so bold
At what is awe to me.

Related somehow they may be,
The sedge stands near the sea –
Where he is floorless
And does no timidity betray

But nature is a stranger yet:
The ones that cite her most
Have never passed her haunted house,
Nor simplified her ghost.

To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her, know her less
The nearer her they get.

[suspicious mind]

8-)

Oh, what mystery pervades a well!


[/qit's a deep subject  uote]

[Sarahli]

8-)

Oh, what mystery pervades a well!

After reading the poem, this is what came to mind:

Michael is the mystery, the man that we thought we knew, and so is this Hoax for now -- just like Nature and the Great Mystery that is God. It's a very deep poem. From the Hoax point of view this poem is also saying that the nearer people get and they "think" they know --- yet they don't.

The grass in its simplistic way can stand close and be bold but others are in awe and experience fear. The mystery is limitless just like it's supposed to be so we shouldn't ASSume anything.  8-)

In reference to Nature and the ones who talk about her the most --- they think they know her but she remains a stranger to them. They haven't actually passed by her haunted house in order to truly know her, much like people have not walked past Michael’s haunted house ie his life, his TRUE life, not what we have fantasized or imagined it to be. Nature is both simple but complex; this is the duality and the mystery.

To understand the mystery, one must become the mystery.

One other observation:

The grass in its innocence, simplicity and purity is also like the child that Jesus speaks about in the Bible when he says who will inherit the Kingdom of God.

International Standard Version  (©2008)
Then he said, “I tell you with certainty, unless you change and become like little children, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.”  Matthew 18:3

I think this was also one of Michael’s favorite verses. He mentions it in many of his interviews. 

[diggyon]

Yes Front, you're right......

[wishingstar]

I am going to interpret this in my own way.  Hopefully it will make sense:

What mystery pervades a well!
That water lives so far –
A neighbor from another world
Residing in a jar


We are down a very large rabbit hole....the well is a metaphor for the hoax.
It's a whole other world in one compact space.
Michael's world called hoax.



Whose limit none has ever seen,
But just his lid of glass –
Like looking every time you please
In an abyss's face!


We have never experienced anything like this before.
We have only seen the tip of the iceberg as far as what
Michael is capable of.
The world stared at Michael each and every time.....
we still do.  We still are looking into an endless mind of wonder with him.


The grass does not appear afraid,
I often wonder he
Can stand so close and look so bold
At what is awe to me.


The grass is a metaphor for beLIEvers.  We stand for the hoax
and are not afraid.
Some can stand closer/stronger to their belief in the hoax than others.
They wonder how some can be so strong in their beLIEf,
even though the hoax is scary at times.



Related somehow they may be,
The sedge stands near the sea –
Where he is floorless
And does no timidity betray


Sedge is a type of grass/plant.  They are related.
The grass and sedge are again metaphors.
Grass are the beLIEvers that can't be shaken and
stand close to the rabbit hole called; hoax.
Sedge are the beLIevers that know it's a hoax,
yet still stand back and doubt things.
Michael's imagination knows no bounds, it's floorless...keeps going and going.
He's not out to hurt anyone's feelings with this....he would never betray
the more shy(timid) beLIEver.


But nature is a stranger yet:
The ones that cite her most
Have never passed her haunted house,
Nor simplified her ghost.

Even after 2.5 years, we still don't know Michael
or perhaps the message.
Even though we have cited the evidence, the clues,
the hoax in general more than anyone.
We have not walked in his shoes to truly be able
and understand him.
His message in Ghost was simple:
Respect all.



To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her, know her less
The nearer her they get.

 


Don't feel badly for unbeLIEvers. 
BeLIEvers may come to find and regret
all the time spent on the hoax.  Because
we really don't know Michael at all.



.........Or, maybe that was all a waste of time and
Front is simply meaning to say:
If we're not careful, we might fall into the
rabbit hole and drown....it's deep.

Hello Front....thank you for exercising my brain.  Hope all is well.....pun intended 

Blessings Always

[tbt]

     
...those who know him, know him less the nearer him they get.   

[BeTheChange]

I am going to interpret this in my own way.  Hopefully it will make sense:

What mystery pervades a well!
That water lives so far –
A neighbor from another world
Residing in a jar


We are down a very large rabbit hole....the well is a metaphor for the hoax.
It's a whole other world in one compact space.
Michael's world called hoax.



Whose limit none has ever seen,
But just his lid of glass –
Like looking every time you please
In an abyss's face!


We have never experienced anything like this before.
We have only seen the tip of the iceberg as far as what
Michael is capable of.
The world stared at Michael each and every time.....
we still do.  We still are looking into an endless mind of wonder with him.


The grass does not appear afraid,
I often wonder he
Can stand so close and look so bold
At what is awe to me.


The grass is a metaphor for beLIEvers.  We stand for the hoax
and are not afraid.
Some can stand closer/stronger to their belief in the hoax than others.
They wonder how some can be so strong in their beLIEf,
even though the hoax is scary at times.



Related somehow they may be,
The sedge stands near the sea –
Where he is floorless
And does no timidity betray


Sedge is a type of grass/plant.  They are related.
The grass and sedge are again metaphors.
Grass are the beLIEvers that can't be shaken and
stand close to the rabbit hole called; hoax.
Sedge are the beLIevers that know it's a hoax,
yet still stand back and doubt things.
Michael's imagination knows no bounds, it's floorless...keeps going and going.
He's not out to hurt anyone's feelings with this....he would never betray
the more shy(timid) beLIEver.


But nature is a stranger yet:
The ones that cite her most
Have never passed her haunted house,
Nor simplified her ghost.

Even after 2.5 years, we still don't know Michael
or perhaps the message.
Even though we have cited the evidence, the clues,
the hoax in general more than anyone.
We have not walked in his shoes to truly be able
and understand him.
His message in Ghost was simple:
Respect all.



To pity those that know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her, know her less
The nearer her they get.

 


Don't feel badly for unbeLIEvers. 
BeLIEvers may come to find and regret
all the time spent on the hoax.  Because
we really don't know Michael at all.



.........Or, maybe that was all a waste of time and
Front is simply meaning to say:
If we're not careful, we might fall into the
rabbit hole and drown....it's deep.

Hello Front....thank you for exercising my brain.  Hope all is well.....pun intended 

Blessings Always

Love your interpretation WishingStar!  Excellent!

The saying "The more I learn, the less I know" has crossed my mind MANY, many times during this adventure.  This poem brings that thought to the foreFRONT ( 8-) ) once again.  Especially interesting is that Front didn't elaborate on 'who' the 'message' is intended for....which, to me, means it's for ALL of us. 

@Front...are we still enjoying the bliss of ignorance?  In wanting to know the 'truth'...does your 'magic 8-ball' warn to 'be careful what you wish for?'

Lots to ponder....

With L.O.V.E. always.

[wishingstar]

@tbt....welcome!  Hope you enjoy it here
It's funny you wrote:
"...those who know him, know him less the nearer him they get. "
I had written something very similar to that, but deleted it for some reason!  Great minds think alike.....


@BTC.....thank you for the kind words as always
That saying: "The more I learn, the less I know" was one of my mom's favorites, lol.  I heard it almost everyday of my life!
It's so true! 
Love what you wrote to Front as well......indeed, the truth can hurt.
We have many, many sayings that cross this forum.  It would be interesting to start a list for them:
-Ignorance is bliss
-Be careful what you wish for
-The truth hurts
etc. etc etc......

Have a beautiful day!
LOVE

[suspicious mind]

     
...those who know him, know him less the nearer him they get.   

and in turn want to know him more.

humm i remember an old hymm intitled " i wanna know more"