Success is Counted Sweetest
Good Morning Readers,
Last week in writing about Wislawa Szymborska’s poem “A Note,” I said to truly understand and appreciate something we need to experience, understand, and appreciate its opposite. For example, we can’t appreciate non-pain without experiencing and understanding pain and non-mistakes without experiencing and understanding mistakes.
The great poet Emily Dickinson addresses this theme in her marvelous poem, given the title “Success is counted sweetest.” Emily Dickinson did not title her poems primarily because she wrote for herself and her companions, not for public publication. The first line of her poems became their titles.
Success is counted sweetest (112)
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 today
Can tell the definition
So clear of victory
As he defeated – dying –
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
By Emily DickinsonEmily Dickinson suggests that those who experience defeat appreciate success more than the victors. She also suggests that true appreciation for something comes from the experience of not having it, allowing the “loser” to be the one who truly comprehends the definition of “victory.”
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit. In life, we don’t know if the “victor” suffered much defeat before winning. We don’t know how much struggle someone experiences before they reach the pinnacle. If the victor did struggle, then that would make succeeding so much more rewarding. Failing a bunch makes succeeding sweeter.
The way I read “Success is counted sweetest,” is that Emily Dickinson actually argues is that success is most valued by those who never achieve it, and that deprivation enhances appreciation. I’m not sure. If one never experiences something, I think it is impossible to truly know that thing. It is a common human thing to think that life will be better if I get this, or move there, or achieve this, which isn’t always the case. Sometimes when people “succeed,” the “grass isn’t greener.”
I think struggling to reach the pinnacle, and then reaching it, and then falling from it increases all around appreciation for each stage. One can imagine the experience (the imagination is a powerful force), but one will never truly know the experience.
In any case, “Success is counted sweetest” is a great poem, easy to memorize, which I have. The four-line stanzas are memorable and vivid. The rhyming in the second and fourth lines of each stanza is musically pleasing!
Here are my questions for you this week: What have you failed at, then succeeded, and then failed at? What has that experience taught you? What did you learn from the stages of defeat and victory and defeat again and victory again if you had a round two, so to speak?
I look forward to hearing what you have to say.
Have a great week!
David
