Emily Dickinson

Apotheosis

APOTHEOSIS.

Eden as lover

Dickinson addresses Eden directly as 'thee'—not a place but a person, likely a lover. The title 'Apotheosis' (deification, becoming divine) suggests this isn't about the biblical garden.

Come slowly, Eden!
Lips unused to thee,

Sexual hesitation

**Bashful** and **unused** frame this as first sexual experience. The lips haven't tasted these particular jasmines before—this is initiation, not repetition.

Bashful, sip thy jasmines,
As the fainting bee,

Late arrival

**Reaching late his flower**—the bee arrives at dusk when flowers close. The timing matters: this is delayed, perhaps forbidden, possibly a metaphor for Dickinson's own late-life romantic awakening.

Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums,
Counts his nectars—enters,
And is lost in balms!

Erotic dissolution

**Lost in balms**—the bee doesn't just drink and leave. It dissolves, disappears, ceases to exist as separate. The poem ends in annihilation through pleasure.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Bee as Sexual Stand-In

CONTEXT Dickinson used bee-and-flower imagery throughout her work as coded language for sexual desire—safe for Victorian publication, transparent to careful readers. But this poem is unusually explicit in its progression.

The structure mimics sexual encounter: Come slowly (approach), sip (tentative contact), hums (arousal), Counts his nectars (deliberation), enters (penetration), lost in balms (climax/dissolution). Each verb escalates. The bee doesn't pollinate and move on—he enters the flower's chamber and ceases to exist as a separate being.

Notice the gender work: Eden is addressed as thee (intimate, possibly female), but the bee is his. Dickinson may be the bashful speaker, the late-arriving bee, or both. The pronouns slip. The chamber is both flower anatomy and bedroom—Victorian readers would catch the domestic metaphor.

Apotheosis as Orgasm

The title means 'becoming divine' or 'elevation to godhood.' Dickinson claims that sexual consummation—not religious ecstasy—is the path to transcendence. This is quietly heretical for a Calvinist minister's daughter.

The final line does the work: lost in balms. Not 'finds sweetness' or 'tastes honey'—lost. The self disappears. Balm suggests healing, anointing, sacred oil. The poem argues that erotic dissolution is religious experience, that the body's ecstasy is literally apotheosis.

CONTEXT Dickinson wrote this around 1860, during her most productive period and possibly during her attachment to Susan Gilbert (her brother's wife, likely the love of her life). The late bee may reference her own sense of belatedness—experiencing desire in her thirties in a culture that expected women to marry at twenty.