It has been well documented that Emily Dickinson wrote poetry for herself and her friends, not for publication. Her expression, found in her poetry, is an expression of self, often conflated as thoughts entered her mind from multiple directions creating mature works that bent and formed new visions different and fuller than that original image at the beginning of each poem. Emily Dickinson’s reclusive nature is revealed in much of her poetry. It is in those written lines where she explores her world. Her work, relegated to letters to her friends, was from her soul and not meant for publication. Her verses are “something produced absolutely without the thought of publication, and solely by way of expression of the writer's own mind” (Dickinson 1), as told by her two friends Mabel Loomis Todd and T.W. Higginson, who collected and published her works after her death.
“Her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, [once] remarked, "Her letters are the record of her external life, her poems the journal of her mind and soul” (Dickinson 3). Emily Dickinson wrote copiously to her friends and relatives, but never so well as she did in her poetry when her subject regarded the feel, smell, and taste of nature about her. It is in Emily Dickinson that we see the poetic at work and play with more force than is the norm. Her works reflect the impact of the world outside her “self” and the impact of her “self” upon the world. It is her vision that allows the reader to see her thoughts, her actions, and her spirit within her poems.
There is nowhere better to start with the words and thoughts of a poet than just before the dawn when all seems darkest before the light:
DAWNWhen night is almost done,And sunrise grows so nearThat we can touch the spaces,It 's time to smooth the hairAnd get the dimples ready,And wonder we could careFor that old faded midnightThat frightened but an hour.
(Dickinson 46)
For the reader, this poem represents an awakening, not just for the day, but for a lifetime. All have experienced those times of depression when all seems darkness and despair. It is the human “self” that seeks release from such suffering, and when we get there, when we find that answer of release from despair, “And wonder we could care/For that old faded midnight” it is then that we see “When night is almost done/And sunrise grows near” that the meaning of living is close at hand; close enough “That we can touch the spaces” so that we become aware of our “self” and our looks and our feelings and know “It’s time to smooth the hair/ And get the dimples ready,” letting the smile back into our being and relishing the wish to explore.
Such is the evocation of Emily Dickinson’s works. Her poems allow the reader to interpret and live through her devices, to see a new “self” and realize that Emily, also, is seeing that new “self” too. It is when the reader experiences life through words that have a life of their own that poetry becomes a living thing. From looking at “Dawn”, we can see the heart of Emily Dickinson. “She is unique among poets in that her mood is always lyrical; one finds a person in her poems rather than ideas examined objectively” (Connors 626).
Lyricism is a touch, one that we can see, feel, taste, hear, and recognize. However, lyricism is hard to define, especially in the case of Emily Dickinson in whose works it always exists. Her words and the patterns in which she weaves them are somehow familiar to all readers and awaken a response that is the same as if one of the immediate family had said them. She wields joy and suffering with equal effect; the one leading to a reader’s smile, the other to a torn heart: After great pain a formal feeling comes-
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions-was it He that bore?
And yesterday-or centuries before?
The feet mechanical go round
A wooden way
Of ground or air or Ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment like a stone.
This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived
As freezing persons recollect
The snow-
First chill, then stupor, then
The letting go.
(Dickinson 73)
How could a reclusive person feel to such depths? How could one who has stepped aside from the hubbub of life know the feeling of “great pain” when “The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;/The stiff Heart questions-was it He that bore?” Emily hits so squarely on the nature of being human because she is human, once removed. As a recluse, she can spend unfrivolous time examining the nature of her humanity and through her observations, communicate that humanity to us, through our personal realizations of what it is to be human. T. W. Higginson, the editor to which she had sent a few of her poems, begging for a review, spoke of her: “For myself, although I had corresponded with her for many years, I saw her but twice face to face, and brought away the impression of something as unique and remote as Undine or Mignon or Thekla” (Dickinson 2). Higginson, a man who had been exposed to all sorts of personalities, chose to describe Dickinson in such glowing terms, nearly mythical in nature. And, yet, she knew the harm created by her fellow women and would not indulge in their favorite past time. However, she would comment:
GOSSIPThe leaves, like women, interchange Sagacious confidence;Somewhat of nods, and somewhat of Portentous inference,The parties in both cases Enjoining secrecy, —Inviolable compact To notoriety.
(Dickinson 41)
It was not difficult for Dickinson to equate her fellow humans to other elements in nature. Her lines reflect her thoughts: “The leaves, like women, interchange,/Sagacious confidence,” as life whispers through its leaves, so women leave nothing to the imagination. The leaves nod in the wind like women’s heads at parties, creating an “Inviolable compact” that brings with it a “notoriety” webbed in “secrecy.” Emily knew of the gossip about her, about her reclusion, about her refusal to observe the social graces. Did it matter to her? The texture of “Gossip,” its verse, its use of words, leads to a chuckle for the reader, much like the chuckle Dickinson would have used. Emily Dickinson had that ability to relate to the reader, without the intent of ever being read by more than those to whom the poems were sent. One can feel in “Gossip” the secret that Emily and her intended reader have in common. Through the use of poetry, Dickinson revealed both her personality and that of the person to whom she sent the poem. It is almost like a gossip in itself as she expertly turns the tables on the gossipers by gossiping, quietly and effectively, about them. “In Dickinson’s work we continually find paradox, both within poems and between poems, and it may be from this unfathomable tension of opposites that her verses draw such disquieting power” (Scheurich 190). It is that paradox that drives much of her poetry as she sees several influences on one subject.
“Her poems often begin with a tiny object like a bee or child in a familiar scene and progress outward, upward, away, into the large and vast, eternity and immortality” (Gillespie 250). It is a technique that serves her well. From the center of her “self”, she can observe the natural things in life and marvel at them, expanding their impact from a mere existence into a device to demonstrate the enormous complexity of life. One such poem is “Simplicity,” where she starts with the small stone and moves it about a road in which it only exists for the purpose of being simple, and yet becomes necessary in the field of men:
SIMPLICITYHow happy is the little stoneThat rambles in the road alone,And doesn't care about careers,And exigencies never fears;Whose coat of elemental brownA passing universe put on;And independent as the sun,Associates or glows alone,Fulfilling absolute decreeIn casual simplicity.
(Dickinson 121)
How happy is a simple life? That is the question Dickinson seems to be asking. At the same time, she is commenting on the complexity of life that destroys the “self.” The reader comes away wondering about their day, “Whose coat of elemental brown/A passing universe put on;” and sheds the stress “In casual simplicity.” Dickinson is extremely adept at turning cares into stones. What matter the world’s fast pace when change only occurs by “Absolute decree.”
Though Dickinson sought and celebrated the simple life, she did not shy away from those fundamental elements of living that perplex all humans. The feeling of nothingness would temporarily overwhelm her at times. That blanket of despair did not affect her writing. Her verse was so ingrained within her “self” that it became undeniable, even when all seemed dark:
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.
When everything that ticked—has stopped?
And Space stares all around—
Or Grisly frosts—first Autumn morns,
Repeal the Beating Ground
But most, like Chaos—Stopless—cool—
Without a Chance, or Spar—
Or even a Report of Land
(Dickinson 98)
“That Emily Dickinson was capable of such an experience—and of facing it coolly, even with wit ("the Bells/Put out their Tongues, for Noon")—helped to make her the poet she was” (Knights 362). There are not many poets who can put their finger on such intense emotions at the time that they are experiencing those emotions. One must remember that Dickinson did not write this poem for a publication, it is an expletive on her feelings at a time of great remorse. Only a poet who has an intense connection to the “self” can produce such masterful verse at a time of distress. With that emotional connection to her “self”, Dickinson can communicate her deepest feelings to her friends through the use of poetry. As her sister pointed out, “her poems [were] the journal of her mind and soul.”
There has been much said about the power that Dickinson placed in her verse. Yes, she was depressed at times. Yes, she was often exhilarated about the smallest of things. Yes, she held her physical self back from others. However, she had a deep-seated appreciation of life that transfixes the reader. There is no doubt about her overwhelming need to live, to experience those small nuances of life that make up the “self.” Her writing not only deals with despair, but it also celebrates living, a celebration that goes well beyond the mere utterances we normal humans murmur:
Existence—in itself—
Without a further function—
Omnipotence—Enough—
‘Tis able as a God—
The Maker—of Ourselves—be what—
Such being Finitude!
(Dickinson 173)
With these few simple lines, Emily Dickinson affirms her life and the lives of all humans as significant. There can be no life without the spirit that moves it. Her connection to life is indomitable; her connection to her “self” is inviolable; her connection to her verse is unbreakable. In this poem, it is not so much the words that create and drive it, it is the lack of words, it is those spaces where she uses a dash as if there are no words to express the connection of one thought to another. As humans everywhere have experienced, and as Dickinson had pointed out in the first poem discussed (Dawn) words sometimes lack meaning and only space, filled with a line, can express the inexpressible through a touch. It is these empty spaces that make Dickinson so human. The empty space drives her life, the power resides there, in a dash to relevancy, unexpressed, inexpressible, and unfathomable, hiding a spirituality that can only mean one thing—that she exists. “For her, spirituality is not primarily about a deity, but rather about the peculiarly human situation in the universe. She captures spirituality in its most primordial manifestations, drawing upon the basic facts of having a vulnerable body in an inscrutable world (Scheurich 193). For Dickinson, the body, the spirit, and the mind are three elements woven into a single meaning.
It was not important to Emily Dickinson that life would end. She acknowledged death as a part of living. She mourned the passing of her loved ones, not because she would never see or hear or touch them again, but because they would never again exist, they would never again feel that “self” that is the essence of living:
That it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet.
Believing what we don’t believe
Does not exhilarate.
That if it be, it be at best
An ablative estate—
This instigates an appetite
Precisely opposite.
(Dickinson 127)
Emily Dickinson was a believer in the human spirit. Not in a religious contextual way, but of the spirit that yearns to know, to express, to live life to its fullest, to have meaning in being through a connection with the mysterious “self” which all humans contemplate but seldom utilize. Dickinson was unique in the use of her power of verse. Her simple desire to communicate her “self” to her friends led to a luxurious and elegant portfolio of works intended for a limited audience. It is only through the grace of that audience that the modern reader can appreciate the expression of a driven spirit so bright that she felt it necessary to hide it away. “That it will never come again” is reason enough to read and reread her verse, her confession of life.
As is so often forgotten about the greats in literature. It is that mystical connection with the “self” that elevates the few above the “others.” Emily Dickinson, through her ability to use verse as a painting of words allows the reader to experience the same things she is experiencing, and to celebrate a life documented through her vision.
Finally, when looking at her mortality, she wrote of the traveler she would be accompanying:
Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,-
Past the houses, past the headlands,
Into deep eternity!
(Dickinson 201)
Emily Dickinson’s deep sense of “self” roused her to complete her expression of life. Her verse, her theme of life, her recognition that being is much more than just living brings to the reader a new perspective on their lives. Each of her works has multiple meanings delivered from a mind that bent around the edges of words to provide the diversity of the thing that is called life.
Works Cited
Dickinson, Emily. Poems: Three Series, Complete. Project Gutenberg. Gutenberg Press, 03 May 2004. Web. 3 Apr. 2016.
Connors, Donald F. "The Significance of Emily Dickinson." College English Vol. 3.No. 7 (1943): 624-33. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 3 Apr. 2016.
Gillespie, Robert. "A Circumference of Emily Dickinson." The New England Quarterly Vol. 46.No. 2 (1973): 250-71. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 3 Apr. 2016.
Knights, L. C. "Defining the Self Poems of Emily Dickinson." The Sewanee Review Vol. 91.No. 3 (1983): 357-75. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 3 Apr. 2016.
Scheurich, Neil. "Suffering and Spirituality in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson." Pastoral Psychology Vol. 56 (2007): 189-197. ProQuest Central. Springer Science +Business Media, 25 Sept. 2007. Web. 3 Apr. 2016.
