The concept of the “Music of the Spheres” is attributed to Pythagoras, but Dickinson is likely teasing Susan—a mathematician—with a joke about the “Pythagorean maxim” Herman Melville posited in the recently published Moby-Dick: “Avoid eating beans, which cause flatulence.” I am not above delighting in the fact that one of humanity’s greatest poets was not above making a fart joke to her beloved. What is love, after all, if not an affectionate acceptance of the lover’s full spectrum of being, the silly along with the solemn?
