Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
American lyrical poet, a recluse, nicknamed the "nun of
Amherst" - only seven of Dickinson's some 1800 poems were
published during her lifetime, five of them in the Springfield
Republican. Dickinson never married. She withdrew from social
contact and devoted herself in secret into writing.
I felt a Cleaving in my Mind -
As if my Brain had split -
I tried to match it - Seam by Seam -
But could not make them fit.
The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before -
But Sequence ravelled out of Sound
Like Balls - upon a Floor.
Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a family
well known for educational and political activity. Her father, an
orthodox Calvinist, was a lawyer and treasurer of the local
college. He also served in Congress. Dickinson's mother, whose
name was also Emily, was a cold, religious, hard-working
housewife, who suffered from depression. Her relationship with her
daughter was distant. Later Dickinson wrote in a letter, that she
never had a mother.
Dickinson was educated at Amherst Academy (1834-47) and Mount
Holyoke Female Seminary (1847-48). Around 1850 she started to
compose poems - "Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain
divine, / Unwind the solemn twine, and tie my Valentine!" she
said in her earliest known poem, dated March 4, 1850. It was
published in Springfield Daily Republican in 1852.
The style of her first efforts was fairly conventional, but
after years of practice she began to give room for experiments.
Often written in the metre of hymns, her poems dealt not only with
issues of death, faith and immortality, but with nature,
domesticity, and the power and limits of language. From c.1858
Dickinson assembled many of her poems in packets of 'fascicles',
which she bound herself with needle and thread. A selection of
these poems appeared in 1890.
In 1862 Dickinson started her life long correspondence and
friendship with Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911), a
writer and reformer, who commanded during the Civil War the first
troop of African-American soldiers. Higginson later published Army
Life in a Black Regiment in 1870. On of the four poems he
received from Dickinson was the famous 'Safe in their Alabaster
Safe in their alabaster chambers,
Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,
Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,
Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.
Light laughs the breeze in her castle of
Babbles the bee in a stolid ear;
Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence -
Ah, what sagacity perished here!
Grand go the years in the crescent above them;
Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,
Diadems drop and Doges surrender,
Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.
Although Higginson was astounded by Dickinson's originality and
encouraged her literary aspirations, he advised her not to
publish. He called Emily "my partially cracked poetess at
Amherst". Dickinson's decision to follow the advise was
influenced by her ambivalent attitude toward her role as a woman
writer and desire to protect her privacy, to live in her self-impised
After the Civil War Dickinson restricted her contacts outside
Amherst to exchange of letters, dressed only in white and saw few
of the visitors who came to meet her. In fact, most of her time
she spent in her room. Meanwhile, outside, the battle between her
brother Austin, who lived next door to her house, and rest of the
family continued. Austin Dickinson (1829-1895) was a lawyer,
married to a cultivated woman, Susan Gilbert, by whom he had three
children. In his early 50s he started an affair with Mabel Loomis
Todd, who was married. The affair continued until his death, and
was a permanent source of gossips for the community. Later Mabel
edited with T.W. Higgins the first collection of Dickinson's
poems, which appeared in 1890.
Although Dickinson lived secluded life, her letters reveal
knowledge of the writings of John
Keats, John Ruskin, and Sir Thomas Browne. Most important
writers for her were Shakespeare, Elizabeth Browning, Charlotte
and Emily Brontë, George Eliot, and George Sand.
Dickinson's emotional life remains mysterious, despite much
speculation about a possible disappointed love affair. Two
candidates have been presented: Reverend Charles Wadsworth, with
whom she corresponded, and Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield
Republican, to whom she addressed many poems. In 1861-62 she
had a crisis; it is not known if she ever fully recovered.
Wadsworth had moved to San Francisco and Bowles disappointed her
by traveling in 1861 to Europe. He returned in Autumn 1862. At
that time Dickinson did not want to meet him or write to him any
Dickinson's father died in 1874. Her mother, who had a stroke,
died in 1882. During this period Judge Otis Lord, a friend and
colleague of her father, brought some love into Dickinson's life.
Lord was a widower and 18 years her senior.
Emily Dickinson died at the age of fifty-five on May 15, 1886.
She had suffered from Bright's disease from 1884. "I almost
wish there was no Eternity," she had written in her youth.
"To think that we must forever live and never cease to
be." After Dickinson's death her poems were brought out by
her sister Lavinia, who amazed at the bulk of Emily's poetry. She
co-edited three volumes from 1891 to 1896. Despite its editorial
imperfections, the first volume became popular. In the early
decades of the twentieth century, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, the
poet's niece, transcribed and published more poems, and in 1945
BOLTS OF MELODY essentially completed the task of bringing
Dickinson's poems to the public.
The publication of Thomas H. Johnson's edition of Emily
Dickinson's poems finally gave readers a complete and accurate
text. Johnson's work was not made easier that the author had left
alternative versions of words, lines and sometimes of whole poems.
Johnson found a valuable assistant in Theodora Ward, who was then
completing an edition of Dickinson's letters to her
grandparents.As editor of Emily Dickinson's Selected Poems
Aiken (1889-1973) was largely responsible for establishing
that poet's posthumous literary reputation.
Dickinson's works have had considerable influence on modern
poetry. Her frequent use of dashes, sporadic capitalization of
nouns, off-rhymes, broken metre, unconventional metaphors have
contributed her reputation as one of the most innovative poets of
19th-century American literature. Amherst has became a pilgrimage
for her fans and aspiring lyricists, her life and work has
attracted a number of scholars, and like Sylvia
Plath, her poetry has inspired feminist writers. Dickinson is
also one of those poets whose words have given much comfort for
people who have mental problems.
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Later feminist critic have challenged the popular conception of
the poet as reclusive, eccentric figure, and underlined her
intellectual struggle and passive aggressiveness. Her verse is
full of allusions to volcanoes, shipwrecks, funerals, and other
manifestations of natural and human violence, which she hide into
her writings. Pain and extreme psychic feelings were among her
central themes. In a letter she wrote to Higginson, "I had a
terror - since September - I could tell to none - and so I sing as
the Boy does by the Burying Ground - because I am afraid."
Scholars have explored Dickinson's relationship with her
sister-in-law, Sue Gilbert, her admiration for the English poet Elisabeth
Barren Browning's (1806-1861) work and her affection for US
writer Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885). Dickinson read poetry
voraciously and called poets "the dearest ones of time, the
strongest friends of soul." Judith Farr have pointed out that
she spoke of the soul or souls 141 in her poems.
Soul was for her a lost boat, an internal lamp, a storm within, an
emperor. "The Soul unto itself / Is an imperial friend - / Or
the most agonizing Spy / An Enemy - could send - "
For further reading: The
Editing of Emily Dickinson by R.W. Franklin (1967); The
Poetry of Emily Dickinson by Ruth Miller (1968); A
Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. by S.P.
Rosenbaum (1964); The Life of Emily Dickinson by Richard
Benson Sewall (1974, paperback 1994); Feminist Critics Read
ed. by Suzanne Juhasz (1983); Undiscovered Continent
by Suzanne Juhasz (1983); Emily Dickinson
by Paul J. Ferlazzo (1984); Austin and Mabel by Polly
Longsworth (1984); The Dickinson Sublime by Gary Lee
Stonum (1990); Emily Dickinson, ed. by Harold Bloom
(1990); Emily Dickinson by Victoria Olsen, Martina S.
Horner (1990); The Passion of Emily Dickinson by Judith
Farr (1992); The Poems of Emily Dickinson: An Annotated Guide
to Commentary Published in English, 1978-1989 by Joseph
Duchac (1993); Emily Dickinson: A Collection of Critical
Essays, ed. by Judith Farr (1995); Emily Dickinson's
Fascicles by Dorothy Huff Oberhaus (1995); Emily
Dickinson's Gothic by Daneen Wardrop (1996); Dickinson
and Audience, ed. by Martin Orzeck (1996); The Essential
Dickinson, ed. by Joyce Carol Oates (1996); Emily
Dickinson, ed. by Helen McNeil (1997); A Critical Study
of Emily Dickinson's Letters by Robert Graham Lambert
(1997); Emily Dickinson's Visions by James R. Guthrie
(1998); Emily Dickinson and Her Contemporaries: Women's Verse
in America, 1820-1885 by Elizabeth A. Petrino (1998); An
Emily Dickinson Encyclopedia, ed. by Jane Donahue (1998); The
Emily Dickinson Handbook, ed. by Gudrun Grabher (1999); The
Dickinsons of Amherst by Jerome Liebling, et al (2001) - Trans.:
Among others the writers Katri Vala, Helvi Juvonen, Aale Tynni,
and Aila Meriluoto have translated Dickinson's poems into
Finnish. A relatively large collection of Dickinson's poems,
translated and edited by Merja Virolainen, was published in
2004. - See also: