Sauntering from the garden

Eden is that old-fashioned House
We dwell in every day
Without suspecting our abode
Until we drive away.

How fair on looking back, the Day
We sauntered from the Door—
Unconscious our returning,
But discover it no more.

In Eden, Adam and Eve could not have understood, could not have “suspected”, their situation of dwelling in the garden, until exposed to the alternative condition outside the garden.

The moment of departure, of sauntering from the door, is marked by the decision which can be understood to have seemed to be a passable idea at the time, with such an unforeseen consequence as prevents a return to the prior condition; for Eve and Adam, the consumption of the Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Dickenson’s “sauntered” suggests a casualness, of informality, which combines with the subsequent verse, “Unconscious our returning,” to create the impression of inculpability, such as that Eve and Adam, without knowledge of good and evil, can have no conception of right and wrong.

My circumstance, and that of most which are, as high school seniors, set to “drive away” from those home in which they have dwelt every day without suspecting their abode, is vastly different; it is quite nearly orthogonal, being short of normal to the condition of Eve and Adam only by virtue of both involving departures from a familiar place.

(Likewise, both Antisthenes and, say, Inukai Tsuyoshi because both learned to read at some point in their lives.¹)

Thematically, Dickenson’s poem draws note to approximately three points by reflecting on the garden narrative thus:

1. Adam and Eve dwelt in Eden without any particular awareness of garden as their home; for them, Eden seemed the entirely of the world, and there could be no distinction between the Eden and the not-Eden because they had no exposure to anything other than Eden. Thus, Even and Adam became aware that they had been living in an edenic state in Eden either, depending on interpretation of the particular Knowledge of Good and Evil imparted by the Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, upon leaving because that is when they learned of the non-Eden condition.

2. Eve and Adam did not have a real choice in deciding to be evicted from Eden, and were thus essentially inculpable. If without Knowledge of Good and Evil, there is no reason that Eve might have resisted the serpent’s temptation, nor reason that Adam might have rejected Eve’s offered fruit. Eve and Adam being presumably without capacity for foresight and understanding consequences, the concepts of consent and culpability to them do not apply in much the same way that one would not apply them to, say, minor in statutory rape cases, or to neonates—because that is what Eve and Adam are, cognitively. Certainly, they transgressed their one divine mandate, but there isn’t really indication that they (or at least Eve) understood orders beyond superficially.

3. Eve and Adam aren’t able to return to Eden.

My situation is rather different.

1. I have been made aware that there is more to the world than my home, and, in fact, that there is even more to the world than the sum total of my experiences; unlike Adam and Eve, I’ve actually been outside my immediate surroundings (in fact, what can be considered my “immediate surroundings” haschanged, historically). Of course, since I haven’t quite never managed to experience anything outside of my experiences, this does nothing to help me know about the aspects of world I don’t know of.

2. It would not be entirely unreasonable to hold me culpable under certain circumstances. Unlike Eve and Adam, I have, presumably, been previously indoctrinated in what is considered (by society) Good and what is Evil. I can be expected to follow these guidelines, and I can be expected to be able to foresee consequences. Whether this is always true in practice is arguable, but the principle holds.

3. I’d hope I could return home at some point. Of course, I haven’t been able define home.

If there is any parallel to draw between my own life and Eve and Adam’s situation in the Genesis garden narrative with respect to Dickenson’s poem, it lies in the in the first point: as Adam and Eve are unable to recognise Eden because they know of no other, I do not recognise what is the home I might be leaving, because I cannot distinguish it from any other.

It is fully possible that I might look back with regret after I “drive away” from this home; however, as I do not, in this moment, recognise a home—I might even be rejecting the notion of arbitrarily defining a home—there is nothing I can fear will change upon my return.

And, truth be told, even if I were to consider any things I would leave behind, I wouldn’t fear that they’d change for my return; most of the things I’d be leaving behind are unlikely to essentially change, and most of the remainder is fungible. I could fear, instead, change in myself—perhaps changes in my relationships with what was left behind.

But it’s hardly worth the effort, and possibly foolish, to fear change. To reject change, to prevent change, to accept change, might have effect—but it ought to be possible to do those without fearing the change, which, in any case, will happen anyway, eventually. When is up for argument.