Emily Dickinson

1830-1886

LIFE

• Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst,

Massachusetts. She lived her whole life
in her father’s house.

• ‘Literary exchange’ with T. W.

Higginson.

• Seven poems were published during

her lifetime.

• About 1,775 poems were found after

her death.

Dickinson as a Poet: -

religious poet in the Puritan

tradition

• - poet of the Romantic school
• - proto-feminist poet
• - first poet of modernism
• - precursor of postmodernism

Characteristics of her

poetry:

• She uses compressed, skewed (swerved,

slanted) grammar, doesn’t believe much in
plurals.

• She uses dashes.
• She omits auxiliaries, like ‘has been’. She’ll

just say ‘been.’

• She often uses the root of the verb for verb
• Her syntax is exploded (without limits or

restraint)

Dickinson- Nature Poet

• Sometimes she is an inhabitant of

nature, like the woods, the birds, the
squirrels.

• Breathtaking immediacy (she

delivers the natural world fresh and
quivering for our inspection and
delight). We feel like we are there, or
that she’s there. Example of this: “ I
will tell you how the sun rose.”

I’ll tell you how the sun rose--
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.
The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun
Then I said softly to myself,
“That must have been the sun!

• Dress of the hills, singing birds- first you

have perceptions, then the conceptual tag
“That must have been the sun!”
“ A bird came down the walk”-
physical world is infused with the
miraculous and the divine “natural
religion.”

• Nature teaches us a lesson: the sun goes

down- the end of the human day, light,
worry.

Nature’s darker side:

• The natural world is often invested

with dark, demonic energy. It is
difficult to bear it.

• She feels trapped by the natural

world, it is overpowering:
“I dared not meet the daffodils
For fear their yellow gown
Would pierce me with a fashion
So foreign to my own […]

• Spectacular beauty of nature and the

mortal lesson that it has to teach us.

• Sometimes she is at a distance from

reality (sense of living in and through

consciousness--modern).

• Sometimes the natural scenes are not

depicted directly.

• Her poetry is both perceptual and

artistic; hers is a poetry of

indirection.

Dickinson’s Poetry-

Language and

Consciousness

• Consciousness- our perception of

the world, and also what stands
between the world and us.

• Dickinson’s poetry helps us realize

that the project of great literature is
frequently one of un-naming
(cleansing the world from its
customary labels and tags to install
fresh perceptions) .

“It was not Death, for I stood up”

signals: not death, yet what then?

It was not Death, for I stood up,
And all the Dead lie down--
It was not Night, for all the Bells
Put out their Tongues, for Noon.
It was not Frost for on my Flesh
I felt Siroccos--crawl (North African
windstorms)

“It was not Death, for I stood up”

Nor Fire--for just my Marble feet
Could keep a Chancel, cool--(part of
the altar, in front for clergy, or choir)
And yet, it tasted, like them all,
The Figures I have seen
Set orderly, for Burial,
Reminded me , of mine--

• She’s feeling something, and she’s

got to find the right tags that would
work, but the only way she can do it
is to work through others that are
wrong.

• Working her way through negativity

(“it was not…) is a classic
involvement of the reader, of
negotiating where language points.

She describes what despair really

feels like:

As if my life were shaven,
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key,
And ‘twas like Midnight, some--
When everything that ticked--has
stopped--
And Space stares all around--
Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
Repeal the beating ground.

This is an experience of almost death.

And Space stares all around--

We are feeling a kind of dreadful

anxiety.

But, most, like Chaos--Stopless

‘Stopless’ becomes an adjective,

something that can’t be stopped.
Stopless--cool--
Without a Change, or Spar--(mast, a

thick pole)

There is nothing to hold onto, we can’t keep
afloat; we’re going to go under.
Or even a Report of Land--
To justify –- Despair
The poem takes the word “despair” and
translates it into precisely the set of images
that we’ve just looked at.
She is working through the words that
we have to try to come up with
something else.

Best way of

understanding

Her poems show us the
condition of knowing--making
human knowledge out of loss,
as if loss was our best way of
understanding.

Poems about blindness:

Before I got my eye put out
I liked as well to see--
As other Creatures, that have Eyes
And know no other way--
Most people go around with their
eyes, hers were put out. She
used to like to see that way, she
can’t anymore.

But were it told to me-- Today--

That I might have the sky
For mine-- I tell you that my Heart
Would split, for size of me--

(She can not encompass that. It would

simply break her).

She can’t encompass that. The human being

can not take measure of the world. It is

impossible..

• The Meadows- mine--

• The Mountains- mine-

• All Forests- Stintless stars- (stint- restricted in the amount)

• As much of Noon as I could take

• Between mine finite eyes-

• The Motions of the Dipping Birds-

• The Morning’s Amber Road-

• For mine- to look at when I liked-

• The News would strike me dead-

• So safer- guess- with just my soul

• Upon the Window pane-

• She rests her soul against the windowpane, looks out on the

world, and writes through the optic of the soul.

The Morning’s Amber Road-
For mine- to look at when I liked-
The News would strike me dead-
So safer- guess- with just my soul
Upon the Window pane-

She rests her soul against the windowpane,

looks out on the world, and writes
through the optic of the soul.

“Success is counted

sweetest”-

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

Success is understood by people
who’ve failed.

“Success is counted

sweetest”-

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
Burst, agonized and clear.

Being hurt and deprived.

It’s hurt that sharpens our sense of
what it is we have not had. We tried to
have it.

If we are deprived, we are hurting, and
we are in pain it sharpens our appetite
and our conception for beauty, for
pleasure, for goodness, for truth.

„To learn the Transport by the

Pain”

To learn the transport (ecstasy, the

pleasure) by the pain,
As blind men learn the sun;
To die of thirst, suspecting
That brooks in meadows run;
To stay homesick, homesick feet
Upon a foreign shore
Haunted by native lands, the while,
And blue, beloved air-

We are exiled, shipwrecked. We’re
haunted by being at home, by fitting into the
world. We are haunted by truth, even though
we live in error. Maybe there is only error?
Maybe there is only exile? Life a shipwrecked
condition, an exile, where we are yearning for
cognitive and spiritual home. The search for
“home” may be an error.
Woe- (sorrow, distress), deprivation,
pain, loss –become angels of vision,
channels of knowledge.

Dickinson is the great geographer of pain,

pain and trauma, the pain that comes from

trauma.

After great pain, a formal feeling
comes”- You do not know what hit her.
She describes what this feels like after
she’s been hit, the numbness.
This is the Hour of Lead-
Remembered if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow-
First- Chill- then Stupor- then letting go-

Our most intense exchanges and
negotiations may be with ourselves.
“One need not be a Chamber – to
be Haunted”

“Alone, I cannot be”- suggests
that our mind is busy, filled with
internal traffic, we are all haunted.

Dickinson – Poet of

Death

Death was occurring daily in the 19th century,

and it was especially familiar for women
who tended to the dying.
Death is for Dickinson an extremely vital

topic. It is not a gloomy vision. It challenges

the way we think about death.
She was fascinated by the subject:

• curious about the social effect caused by death
• portrays our helpless struggle against death
• narrating her own dying and death

Perceptions of Death

• Amazing range of perceptions of death:

• - convinced that the loved ones will soon join her

• - experiencing death as a courtly gentleman caller

• - waiting impatiently for the final revelation

• - suggesting ‘dying’ as the ultimate trope for despair

• “There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House” shows

little signs of death’s visitation

• There’s been a death in the opposite house

• As lately as today.

• I know if by the numb look

• Such houses have alway (always)

• A description of the house itself becomes a sort of luminous

image of dying.

“There’s been a Death, in the Opposite

House” shows little signs of death’s

visitation

There’s been a death in the opposite
house
As lately as today.
I know if by the numb look
Such houses have alway (always)

A description of the house itself becomes

a sort of luminous image of dying.

This is one more poem about translating and

deciphering and decoding. She writes about

death in terms of an outside optic.

The neighbors rustle in and out,
The doctor drives away.
A window opens like a pod,
Abrupt, mechanically;
Somebody flings a mattress out,-
The children hurry by;
They wonder if It died on that,-
I used to when a boy.

The minister goes stiffly in
As if the house were his,
And he owned the mourners now,
And little boys besides;
And then the milliner, and the man
Of the appalling trade,
To take the measure of the house.
( the undertaker)

There’ll be that dark parade
Of tassels and of coaches soon;
It’s easy as a sign,-
The intuition of the news
In just a country town.
Here is the paraphernalia
(miscellaneous articles ) of dying:
the same kinds of events, people.

“The Last night that She lived” presents

death as and odd perception for the

survivors.

The last Night that She lived
It was a Common Night
Except the Dying- this to Us
Made Nature different

• She is getting ready to die, and we have

a heightened awareness, a heightened
consciousness of things. This alters
things. Nature does not do that, but we
do.

• We noticed smallest things-
• Things overlooked before
• By this great light upon our Minds
• Italicized – as ‘twere. (it were)

“The Last night that She lived”

We know that she is dying. The little
details all of a sudden become clues,
they become precious signs.

At length the notice came.

(After a long time she was called : “
It is your turn, now.”)

“The Last night that She lived”

This is how he woman is dying:
She mentioned, and forgot- (the last
stammering words)
Then lightly as a Reed (trzcina)
Bent to the Water, struggles scarce-
(a beautiful, natural event)

And We- We placed the Hair-
And drew the Head erect-
This is no longer a living person; this is the

body, body parts.

And then an awful leisure was
Belief to regulate-
No more activity, no more duties,

responsibilities. What do you do with the

leisure? Belief has to regulate it. We make

sense of it. We speak of being in

heaven. We speak of soul being eternal.

Sometimes the depiction of death is more of a

struggle.

Battling the enemy- quasi- medical approach:

“Death is like the insect”
Menacing the tree,
Competent to kill it,
But decoyed may be. ( lured from its
intended course)
Baffle,( restrain, regulate) if it cost
you
Everything you are.

„Death is like the insect”

Then, if it have burrowed ( zakopała się)
Out of reach of skill,-
Wring the tree and leave it, (squeeze)
‘Tis the vermin’s will.
Like cancer sets in the body, you may

decoy it, but if it’s burrowed too deep.

There’s just nothing you can do. You

embrace the tree and let the thing take

its course. It is like a botanical, organic

event.

Imagining and reporting her own death.

„Twas ( it was) just this time-last year- I

died”

“I know I heard the Corn,
When I was carried by the Farms-
It had the Tassels on-

She is carried in the casket and heard

the corn.
I thought just how Red- Apples
wedged (zaklinować)

„Twas ( it was) just this time-last

year- I died”

Imagining and reporting of her
own death.
The Stubble’s joints between-
(ściernisko)
And the Carts stooping round the fields
To take the Pumpkins in-
I wondered which would miss me,
least,

„Twas ( it was) just this time-last year-

I died”

And when Thanksgiving, came,
If Father’d multiply the plates- ( there

is a place set for her, perhaps)
To make an even Sum-
And would it blur the Christmas glee
My Stocking hang too high
For any Santa Claus to reach
The Altitude (the height) of me-

„Twas ( it was) just this time-last year-

I died”

She is a little bit of reach now, but are they

going to hang her stocking anyway?
She is thinking of all of them at home for

Thanksgiving, Christmas, harvest.
But this sort, grieved myself,
And so, I thought the other way,
How just this time, some perfect year-
Themself , should come to me-
They will have Christmas at her house this

year. Parting is only temporary. The

family will come together. It’s just a

question of time.

“Because I could not stop for Death”-

an unforgettable elegance and pathos of

dying.

Death is a civilized form of departure,

escorted by fine gentleman caller in the

carriage.
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility. ( formal politeness and courtesy

in behavior and speech)

“Because I could not stop for Death”-

• She was too busy. He stops. They

pass the school, children, fields, her
grave, toward eternity.

• She is living in eternity as she is

writing this. There is no horror in this
poem. It is peaceful and serene.

• The others are a little more

tumultuous (excited, confused or
disorderly).

“I heard a Fly buzz- when I died-“ death

presented here as a moment of truth.

The Lord is going to appear. We will

see what we have been praying for,

hoping for, believing in. Instead of

vision you have the noise, the buzz.

This is the failure of revelation.
That is the buzzing of consciousness,

the brain, the report of poet’s mind.

There won’t be any great revelation.

“I could not see to see.’’

”I felt a Funeral in my Brain”-

Dickinson’s most surreal effort in

portraying death.

Using death to describe how she feels.

The brain becomes a stage. Like the funeral,

she’s dying , but it’s all happening inside of

her.
Treading, treading, till Sense was breaking

through.- That’s how we come to knowledge
As all of Heaven were a Bell- It’s pure noise
An being but an ear- She is an open organ of

reception.
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here-

Total abandonment.

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down-
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing- then-

”I felt a Funeral in my Brain”-

• Reason is a fragile base that we think

we’re standing on, and it can break. Madness
lies that way, sickness lies that way.

• Rationality makes us think that we are

secure, and anchored , and stable. Maybe
dying is that kind of exit. Maybe depression,
melancholy, hangover, all of that may be
when we have this momentary sense that we
have just fallen out of the system. We’ve
crashed through.

”I felt a Funeral in my Brain”-

And hit a World, at every plunge –

There are many, many new worlds out

there. She got out of the familiar

world. You’re like a comet hurtling

through. This is Dickinson

cosmography.
Finished knowing- then- (Then I

knew. “This is death” or “finished

knowing”, that knowing stops at this

point. You can’t go any further.)

Dickinson- Poet of Violence

• Dickinson liked to convey the image of

herself as demure, sort of birdlike. She called

herself “sparrow”, “little girl”, “child”,

referred to herself “my little gypsy being”,

“my little sun burnt bosom.” In fact, there’s

enormous strength and power in her poetry.

• She is fearless and uncensored.
• Camille Paglia has shown in her book Sexual

Personae that there is sheer violence and

nastiness in Dickinson’s images..

We have recurring images

of:

• murder
• maiming
• mayhem
Sometimes this imagery is incidental

or thrown in there for shock purposes.
Sometimes her images are central
poetic events, presenting a view of
life, psyche, and art that is
uncompromisingly fierce and savage.

“ The general rose decays”

• Beauty is made in the process which

looks like torture:
Perfumes are not produced by the
Sun

• Perfume is not a natural process; it is

the result of screws, vices, and force.

“He fumbles at your Soul”

Some of her poems are addressed to God or some

unknown mysterious lover; they are hushed, pious

and submissive. In other poems her view of God

the Father are not only unflattering but often

nasty, accusatory:

God’s authority may be questioned:
“He fumbles at your Soul” – he is a

manipulator, he’s got his fingers on you?
[…]
Deals- One- imperial- Thunderbolt-
That scalps your naked Soul-
[…]
That’s what divine contact is: Scalping your naked

soul.

The shocking image of God’s

amputated hand:

Those- dying then,
Knew where they went-
They went to God’s Right Hand-
That hand is amputated now
And God cannot be found-

God as a burglar/banker who steals

people from us:

I never lost as much but twice,
And that was in the sod; (darń,

murawa- two people are buried)
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God!
Angels, twice descending,
Reimbursed my store.
Burglar, banker, father,
I am poor once more!