Rethink.

Suc­cess Is Counted Sweet­est…
Emily Dick­in­son

Suc­cess is counted sweet­est
By those who ne’er suc­ceed.
To com­pre­hend a nec­tar
Requires sor­est need.

Not one of all the pur­ple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the def­i­n­i­tion,
So clear, of victory,

As he, defeated, dying,
On whose for­bid­den ear
The dis­tant strains of tri­umph
Break, ago­nized and clear.

Com­men­tary:

If we ever appre­ci­ate and have suc­cess, the first stanza seems to say, it will be because some­thing nearly impos­si­ble has hap­pened. How does one “com­pre­hend a nec­tar?” Nec­tar was what the Olympians drank. Cer­tainly those gods had mas­tery of the world — mas­tery of Rea­son — even if they acted like spoiled chil­dren. But did they “com­pre­hend” what they had? No — they just drank the nec­tar, that’s all. We mere mor­tals have “sor­est need,” and thus have an abil­ity, per­haps, to appre­ci­ate the power the gods have. But if we ever get such power, we will not appre­ci­ate it, it seems.

The bright color of the nec­tar (I think of the nec­tar as orange for some rea­son, i.e. “nec­tarine”) is per­haps the one image of the first stanza. It is replaced in the sec­ond with that of “pur­ple host.” I would assume “pur­ple host” is there to make us think of an army of angels, march­ing to vic­tory against the legions of Hell, empow­ered all the more by Christ’s sac­ri­fice. Not even those angels, though, under­stand suc­cess. After all, they have it.

The bright/dark con­trast may invoke a day/night metaphor. Nei­ther the light of the sun nor the dis­tance of the stars nor the whole of Time is ade­quate for defin­ing suc­cess. And Greek gods and Chris­t­ian angels can­not tell the def­i­n­i­tion exactly either: they may have a part of it, but that means those who will have & appre­ci­ate suc­cess will give the clear­est definition.

Man, in con­trast to the gods and angels spo­ken of above, is per­pet­u­ally defeated by Death. To be any­thing other than mor­tal would dis­qual­ify one from being human. It is this fun­da­men­tal lack of suc­cess that allows him to hear what he is not a part of: ago­nized but clear sounds of suc­cess. Man can appre­ci­ate suc­cess, but he does not do it through Rea­son or a trust in the end of Time. He does so through know­ing he is going to die, and know­ing that there are bat­tles between gods and angels he is pow­er­less to affect.

If we go back to the first two lines now, we real­ize what the poet is up to: We appre­ci­ate suc­cess because we, as mor­tals, define what suc­cess is. In a larger sense, we are unsuc­cess­ful — we have to die. In the largest sense, we are the only ones who could ever be successful.

• Emily Dick­in­son, “Good to hide, and hear ‘em hunt!” (842)
• A Per­sonal Reac­tion to “These are the days when Birds come back,” poem #130 by Emily Dickinson
• Wis­dom and Rule: On Poem 343 of Emily Dick­in­son, “My Reward for Being”
• “If I can stop one heart from break­ing,” Emily Dickinson
• Emily Dick­in­son, “Each Sec­ond is the last” (879)

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