Culture and inheritance

“Time and Eternity”

Essential oils are wrung,
The Attar from the rose
Be not expressed by Suns alone,
It is a gift of screws.

The general Rose decays,
But this—in Lady’s drawer,
Makes summer—when the Lady lies,
In ceaseless Rosemary.

-Emily Dickinson

I think the Attar oil is the main subject of the poem. And I would like to think it as an analogy to culture. Emily Dickinson, in this poem, described the Attar as a product of sequences of complicated and dynamic processes originated from a rose which represents the root of the culture.

Culture can be defined as complexes of learned behavior and perception and it is inherited through generations. As it is being handed over from one generation to the other, it will no doubt face many changes and will finally have to adapt to them. To Emily, and I agree with her, these adaptations, changes, and innovations perhaps, are the essentials that build and enrich the culture. On the other hand, I also think that culture is a fragile phenomenon as it is rarely written—it is often taught informally. Bear in mind that our written language, buildings, and artifacts are not culture, rather the products of culture. Hence, we see archeologists spend years of their life to extract culture from them. Because of its fragility, without planned and effective actions, we might lose the originality of a culture through fierce waves of changes.

Moving to the second stanza, the “general Rose” representing the physical being of the origin of a culture will “decay”. Our ancestors from whom we inherit the culture too cannot go against nature—to die is natural. However, the Attar is what preserves the fragrance of the rose. The culture, knowledge, and wisdom inherited by them are what will persist after they disappear.

"O mankind! We have created you from a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know one another. Verily, the most honourable of you with Allâh is that (believer) who has At-Taqwa [i.e. he is one of the Muttaqûn (pious)." (Al-Hujuraat: 13)