Introduction
It has been said that Emily Dickinson was a dark poet, that she was obsessed with death, that she did not believe in God and that she was an extreme agoraphobic. I am writing this essay, not to prove everybody wrong, but to give my view of her life and poetry, maybe with assumptions that had been made before, maybe with some new ones. What I believe is that there is one key to decode Emily Dickinson’s poetry and life and that key is light. In her poems it comes sometimes disguised, sometimes transformed but always vital. My understanding of her is that she was an –let me use the expressionenlightened lady, who had discovered a spiritual road that was not very popular in her time and that she chose to live by her rules, by the rules nature proposed to her and that she believed in God more than anybody in her household, possibly her city and probably in almost every other place on earth. When I read her poems, I don’t see an obsession with death, I see an obsession with life and how this life, valuable as it is, can be experienced properly. I am not telling she was not depressed at some point in her life, losing friends you love and members of your family usually have this effect on you, but most of the time, for me, Emily was a delightful person, with a brain possibly too big for her head and I believe that she enjoyed life purely and intensively. Like a perfect spy, Emily leaves little clues everywhere for the future generations to reveal and these little clues are burning to tell her story, her passions and ultimately, her truth.
A bit of biography
Emily Dickinson is born in Amherst, Massachusetts, near the Christmas of 1830. What we know from history is that this period was not especially friendly to women, especially women who chose their way of life and were not keen to follow the “guidelines” of the society. She goes to Amherst College where she meets some of her first mentors, like Leonard Humphrey and Edward Hitchcock, whom had written the book “Religious Truth Illustrated From Science”. You can see from the very beginning that she was not a woman to left something she was interested in unsearched. Botanology starts to become a passion of hers, which she held till the very end by constantly exploring nature and taking care of her precious garden. Later in her life, Emily attends Mount Holyoke Female Seminary and there happens that famous rebel moment of hers. When the teacher asks “All those who wanted to be Christians to rise”, Emily is the only one that remains seated. She did not want to be labeled a Christian, for she knew better that God is not something she can name or study, but something that lives within her. Ironically, she was labeled as one of the “without hope” students and soon left her studies to return home. Within the years, she creates close friendships with a variety of people, Susan Gilbert who marries her brother Austin is one of them, a contributor of the ‘Atlantic Monthly’ Thomas Wentworth Higginson is another, judge Otis Phillips Lord is one more and there are also a few others. She writes letters to all of them, passionate letters that are actually asking for one thing, to accept her way of thinking and for her to understand theirs, so they can have a meaningful relationship. Many people have struggled to find if Emily did or did not have a love affair with many of them, for me
this is totally irrelevant because what we learn from these letters is that she is an extremely passionate woman, very erotic and to open it even more she is a ‘very’ kind of lady in all of her life’s aspects. Her gifts to friends usually consists two things, a poem and some flowers, a sweet gesture that hides her insecurity about her understanding of the universe. Emily wants to be accepted, she lives somewhere were all the odds are against her and life sometimes runs past her to inhale the doubt of what she has discovered. She feels trapped to the still-clinging-to-the-old-ways world around her and even if she holds the key to her freedom, she is afraid to use it. Thankfully, she is not afraid to express herself on the paper. In her later years, Emily spends more time at home and there has been said that she did not went out of the perimeter of her house. True or not, her decision to stay inside might not be the result of certain phobias rising but simply her own choice. She wants to write more because she feels that nobody out there understands her. People, those same people who she tried to be protected from, called her “The Woman In White” and she truly was, because what color could be more perfect as a representative of light? She writes ‘Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – / I keep it, staying at Home’. There is of course sadness in that, but it would be catastrophic for her (and for us) if she decided that she could squeeze herself in that life that everybody around her seemed to enjoy. The most depressing period for her was the summer of 1884, where the one death of her loved one was coming after the other. She describes it: ‘A great darkness coming’. You can see that light meant happiness and darkness meant unhappiness, but I believe that this is not just measured in the way we use those two today just as signs
of happiness and misery, what I believe is that Emily had seen light as the true color of God and darkness as the absence of Him. Even death could not resist her love of light, Emily Dickinson died from Bright’s disease, a wonderful pun that God made especially for her. The ‘Home is so far from Home’, as she told us, was now finally reached. All of her dilemmas during her lifetime seem to be perfectly summarized by the favor she asked from her sister Vinnie before she died. Emily requested all her poems to be burned but she did not say anything about the fascicles she had hidden in a little wooden box. The marvelous diary of her days, all recited in extraordinary poetry.
The light in her poems
Re-reading Emily Dickinson while having in mind that the key is the light, I was very surprised to see how simple the poems really are. We are used to talk about them as some of the most difficult and cryptic poetic language there ever was. I am not implying that the form and words she uses to express herself is something that can only be read in one way, in fact that’s why I believe that we think of her as one of the two people (the other is Walt Whitman) who brought modern poetry to life, because they can be read in many ways, but I have also come to believe that there is another, more simple way to reveal what she is trying to say than the one we usually try. I am proposing that you read the following examples, thinking that they are written by a modern, independent woman who meditates.
Light as it is
‘Banish Air from AirDivide Light if you dareThey’ll meet’ Who can divide light? The answer is no one. Emily knows well that nature holds what we call ‘the whole’ and this can never be something else than what it is, it can never be transformed. ‘With Blue –uncertain- stumbling BuzzBetween the light –and meAnd then the Windows failed –and then I could not see to see-’
The light here does not represent the actual eyesight, but the enlightenment that one can experience, how repressed that way of life is in her era and how people who could “actually see” where doomed to a spiritual death. ‘The Poets light but LampsThemselves –go outThe Wicks they stimulate If vital Light’ Emily believes that this is the duty of a poet, to turn on a lamp as a representative of the divine light that only God can insert into a person’s life. ‘There’s a certain Slant of light, Winter AfternoonsThat oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes-’ Her poems often reminds us of church hymns, maybe this is the way she is trying to show that she is a device in which the divine flows freely though.
One with nature
‘Her Public— be the Noon — Her Providence — the Sun — Her Progress — by the Bee — proclaimed — In sovereign — Swerveless Tune —’ Here, she uses a flower as a metaphor of herself. Emily is proud to bloom in this life where all the others around her just grow. The nature takes cares of her and she takes care of nature.
‘For Captain was the Butterfly For Helmsman was the Bee And an entire universe For the delighted crew’ Emily’s family is nature, she feels at home there and all the guidance she needs to make it through life can be found in the universe. She realizes the importance of the whole and celebrates it. In her poem ‘I dwell in Possibility’ she celebrates nature’s treasures ‘The spreading wide my narrow Hands/To gather Paradise–’ and when she measures them in what a house has she finds them immeasurable ‘And for an everlasting Roof/The Gambrels of the Sky–’.
The of the world around her
‘I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too?’ Emily understands that the identity of a person little has to do with that person’s understanding of the true meaning of life. ‘The Heroism we recite Would be a normal thing Did not ourselves the Cubits warp For fear to be a King —’ She tells us that if everybody could come to their senses, then they would realize that they are already where they need to be and she and her similar would not have to be heroes, just normal people.
‘I think to Live — may be a Bliss To those who dare to try —’ Emily is one of those who dare to try living a life that is out of the expected, a life that everybody thinks is sad and dark but she knows that what she sees is not all of there is but just a small part and she yearns to find out more.
Fear and unsettlement
‘Afraid! Of whom am I afraid? Not Death — for who is He? (…) Of Life? 'Twere odd I fear [a] thing That comprehendeth me (…) Of Resurrection? Is the East Afraid to trust the Morn With her fastidious forehead?’ Emily trusts that what she is afraid of hides not in the elements of life’s natural flow but in the artificial ways mankind has forced as normality. ‘I prayed, at first, a little Girl, Because they told me to — But stopped, when qualified to guess How prayer would feel — to me — (…) And often since, in Danger,
I count the force 'twould be To have a God so strong as that To hold my life for me’ The quest begins for Emily when the realization comes that not all that she had been told is true they way that they present them to be. She trusts her life and hope in herself for she knows that she is not a different thing than God and she is often afraid of that power. ‘My Worthiness is all my Doubt — His Merit — all my fear — Contrasting which, my quality Do lowlier — appear —’ The fear of being “one of a kind” comes and crushes Emily many times. Her worthiness appears in her different way of thinking but generations of rules and standards hold her back in living her life to the fullest she longs for. ‘To die — without the Dying And live — without the Life This is the hardest Miracle Propounded to Belief.’ I think this poem sums up better than any other her thoughts about life. How could she die when all of her will be united with nature? How could she live when she grows in a world which keeps hurting her?
The Master Letters
Many believe that in her ‘Master Letters’ Dickinson refers to Master as a lover. I believe that she addresses Master as the light and herself as Daisy, which is not at all a random name but the name of a flower. In her miraculous world, Emily is a growing flower, whose lover is the light and is indeed ‘A love so big it scares her, rushing among her small heart- pushing aside the blood-and leaving her faint and white in the gust’s arm-’. I was able to make this assumption because the ‘Master Letters’ is not the first time where she refers to herself as a flower. She tells us: ‘I hide myself within my flower, That wearing on your breast, You, unsuspecting, wear me too— And angels know the rest.’ And: ‘To be a Flower, is profound Responsibility—’ And: ‘I tend my flowers for thee — Bright Absentee!’ She is a representative of the light on earth and speaks with it in their special way, it shines right through her and she writes. In a brief of her Master Letters she gives away a part of their ‘conversation’: ‘You ask me what my flowers said-then they were disobedient’.
Conclusion
The way I see it, all that has been said about her is true but I decided to look at them from the other side of the coin. She speaks not of death - but of life, she is not afraid to go out - she is brave enough to live not like the others, she is not lonely - she has the whole as a friend, she is not dark - she is light. I will enclose my understanding of her work with some of the lines that enclose her understanding of us. ‘This is my letter to the world, That never wrote to me,-The simple news that Nature told, With tender majesty. Her message is committed To hands I cannot see; For love of her, sweet countrymen, Judge tenderly of me!’