Is there any contradiction between what has been described as Emily Dickinson’s ‘miniaturism’ (most of her poems have less than 30 lines) and the themes she deals with?

        Emily Dickinson deals with a variety of themes in her work. It is generally agreed that there are four main recurring themes; some coming to the fore in different periods of her life. Although critics cite many smaller themes, which feed off the larger, Dickinson nearly exclusively elaborates on, or at least alludes to, the themes of Love, Death, Religion and Nature. The latter, probably the lesser (in content) of these themes, allowed her to ‘show off’ her contemporary values of ‘transcendentalism’ (cultivated also by Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman); the meta-psychological advancement of thought through nature and its elements. Perhaps she embraced this ideology as a breakaway from her strict puritan upbringing, demonstrating her affinity with more ‘modern’ thought. It is worth pointing out here, in reference to the question, that most of her critics have picked this information directly from her work; her letters, but mainly her poetry. As an extremely reclusive woman of whom only one photo exists, little is known of her inner thoughts and opinions aside from the vast amount of information gathered through her work.

        In his essay ‘Emily Dickinson: The Private World’, Archibald MacLeish notices that “Moreover she [Dickinson] offers again and again, as unostentatiously as though she herself set little value on it, that most arduous of all the proofs of verbal mastery in verse; the ability to survive without adjectives.” It was only really her nature poems that gave her the perfect vessel to display her colourful and original use of adjectives. In ‘A Bird came down the Walk’, Dickinson uses the lovely simile of describing a darting bird’s eyes as “like frightened beads”, and describes the flight of butterflies like fish “…off banks of noon [who] leap, [s]plashless as they swim..” Another fantastic example of her rich and original description is in ‘A narrow Fellow in the Grass’. She describes a snake as a “Narrow fellow in the grass” who, when he slithers, “The Grass divides as with a Comb.” She goes on to recount her immense respect for nature in the stanzas:

“Several of Nature’s People

I know, and they know me-

I feel for them a transport

Of cordiality-

But never met this Fellow

Attended, or alone

Without a tighter breathing

And Zero at the Bone-“

For me, the key word here is ‘cordiality’, whereby Dickinson outright affirms her respect and love for nature. Although she describes any encounter with a snake as terrifying - “…Zero at the Bone” – she also describes the graceful movements of the snake, and refers to him, and nature with capitals; “Nature’s People… Fellow.” This is perhaps a biblical allusion – God being always referred to as ‘He’ or ‘Him’, thus demonstrating her transcendentalist values.

        Although Nature is an important theme for Dickinson, she was perhaps more concerned with the other themes mentioned. Particularly with Religion and Death. Although initially there was more disparity between these subjects (“’Faith’ is a fine invention”; Religion, and “I’m Wife – I’ve finished that-”; Death, as examples), events in her own life – all her themes were, as they all draw on personal experience – took their inevitable toll on her writing; and morphed into each other in an almost existentialist fashion. In 1862 her mentor, Charles Wadsworth, wrote to Dickinson, informing her of his illness and that he would be “Leaving the land.” It has also been suggested that Wadsworth was a secret lover of Dickinson. She subsequently, and in alarming succession, endured the deaths of her mother, other lovers, her nephew and close friends. Her poetry commentates almost directly on these events, and caused her writing style to become all the more introspective and meta-critical, and a lot more cynical and sceptical. She wrote much less of nature, and her views of love, death and religion all started to merge as themes in her poetry.

Dickinson was such a prolific poet that it would be impossible to talk about all her work in one essay. Although I am examining some entire poems, I feel that I can cover more ground in extracting particular stanzas or lines of interest from her work to illustrate my own points. Also, it is my belief that it is more important to examine the latter works of any poet’s legacy to ‘get the best’ out of them, as, by then, they have had more experience of examining life’s rich kaleidoscope and stating what it means to them in a more eloquent and assured fashion. Although Dickinson’s poetry, in my view, became more bleak, it is her unnerving cynicism that finally gave her the character and distinction that sets her apart from other poets and gives her readers more insight into the climactic persona that embodies what she is most noted for.

Emily Dickinson’s strict puritanical upbringing seems to have catalysed her questioning of the existence of God, and it is this that latterly merged God and the exploration of death. She almost directly questioned God in the poem “I shall know why – when time is over”:

“I shall know why – when time is over-

And I have ceased to wonder why-

Christ will explain each separate anguish

In the fair schoolroom of the sky-

I shall forget the drop of anguish

That scalds me now – that scalds me now!”

Dickinson seems angry that the answers to her own philosophical theological questions may only be answered after death, and then expresses anger at the questionable likelihood of this event. This latter point is subtle, and is only detected through her sarcastic use of the uncharacteristically optimistic and classically poetic lines “…In the fair schoolroom of the sky” - which can only be described as sarcastic - and with the lines “I shall forget the drop of anguish

That scalds me now – that scalds me now!”, the word ‘Anguish’ cropping up in several of her poems.

        Dickinson’s poem “So give me back to death” is an excellent example of her cynicism towards religion and, specifically, heaven, as acting as a ‘saviour’ for the dead. She asks ‘What about those loved ones left behind?’. Written in 1884, it also exemplifies her own collapse following the passing on of five people dear to her in the same year:

“So give me back to Death –

The Death I never feared

Except that it deprived of thee-

And now, by Life deprived,

In my own Grave I breathe

And estimate its size-

Its size is all that Hell can guess-

And all that heaven surmise-”

This poem also loosely combines her later and more confirmed views on the themes of love, religion and death by merging them together in one short poem. Although this is an example of Dickinson’s consistent fearlessness of death, it illustrates her coming to terms with it in the lines “…And estimate its size-”, meaning that she was confronting the emotional depth and scar that death imbued in her by estimating the ‘size’ of its effect and profundity on her own disposition. Dickinson describes herself as being in a ‘Grave’ of her own because she can no longer be with that person; the loss being so great that she asks “So give me back to Death,” a poignantly cynical viewpoint.

        On several occasions, Emily Dickinson went so far as calling herself a pagan, as she gradually renounced the idea of heaven and salvation as a far-removed concept. Richard Sewall states in his biography of Dickinson that “Unable to accept Heaven, [Dickinson] was left only with this brief world, which, without Heaven, seemed somewhat of a dreadful place to her. She wrote in a letter once a prayer of forgiveness for trying to enjoy life too much” – perhaps displaying a more complicated, agnostic side to her beliefs – “’Knew I how to pray,’ she wrote, ‘to intercede for your Foot were intuitive, but I am a Pagan.” She then wrote the poem ‘Of God we ask one favour’:

“Of God we ask one favour,

that we may be forgiven –

For what, he is presumed to know –

The Crime, from us, is hidden –

Immured the whole of Life

Within a magic Prison

We reprimand the Happiness

That too competes with Heaven.”

For me this poem is one of the most cynical of the lot. It is almost funny in its deeply sarcastic usage of the capital ‘H’ in ‘Happiness,’ but only a small-case ‘h’ in reference to God as ‘he’. In the line “For what he is presumed to know-”, Dickinson is outwardly facetious in her mocking of God’s supposed omnipotence, and also of her putting an almost implied juxtaposition between happiness and Heaven; “We reprimand the Happiness

That too competes with Heaven.”

        Coming back to “Emily Dickinson’s ‘miniaturism’,” Henry W Wells offers two different ways of helping to explain why Dickinson may have preferred her economical style: “Her words resemble oceans, while those of less successful writers resemble lakes” and “Emily’s words are drops of her heart’s blood.”

It is this last citation, again referring to Dickinson’s drawing of her own personal experience in her work, that, by mentioning her heart, neatly (and perhaps unintentionally) leads the reader into looking at her poetry dealing with that theme closest to her heart – Love. Although most of her love poems are about her own amorous experiences, Dickinson uses characters – lovers – who she brings together in their unity of requited love and perfect match. They are not unhappy, yet they are never allowed to be together by some higher power, perhaps linking us again with her scepticism of religious salvation. Cynthia G Wolff notices that “The same poetry that postulates marriage as the ideal also accepts as a given that this marriage can never take place” and that “The major friendships and passionate relationships of her life confirmed her deepest conviction; where passion is concerned, there must be separation.” No poem captures this paradoxical and, again, cynical view of love and life more than the poem “I cannot live with You”:

“I cannot live with You –

It would be Life –

And Life is over there –

Behind the Shelf…

…I could not die – with You –

For One must wait

To shut the Other’s Gaze down –

You – could not –…

…Nor could I rise – with You -

Because Your Face

Would put out Jesus’s –

That New Grace”

With further relation to Religion, Dickinson contentiously compares her lover to Jesus, and he outshines Him. Coupled with Dickinson’s idea of gender equality, she affirms she cannot be with her lover because they will, through death, at some point end up being without each other; “For One must wait

to shut the Other’s Gaze down”, however brief this period may be, as this line implies. She constantly, futilely, rallies against the ‘double-edged sword’ element she found in all relationships.

        However, there could be construed to exist a more positive aspect to Dickinson’s view on relationships. Cynthia Wolff notes that the love poetry of Dickinson is not “…idealizing and incorporeal…” but rather it is “…ardent and filled with sexual invitation….” One of Dickinson’s poems breaks, to an extent, the recurrence of what the reader has come to expect. “Wild Nights – Wild Nights!” explores Dickinson’s ability for passion and possibly a yearning for it:

“Wild Nights  Wild Nights!

Were I with thee

Wild Nights should be

Our luxury!

Futile – the Winds –

To a Heart in a port –

Done with the Compass –

Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden –

Ah, the Sea!

Might I but moor – Tonight –

In Thee!”

If a little injected with innuendo, this poem gives a lot of evidence for Dickinson’s capacity for passion, although the conditional and subjunctive moods in the first stanza lend a little ambiguity to the scale of the apparent optimism. Indeed, Wolff notes that “…critics generally supposed that the principle reason for her art lay in some unfulfilled affair of the heart”. Although not exactly a positive poem, this is a rare example of a described love situation where the passion and/or love depicted in a poem is not indefinitely suspended by separation.

        In coming to a close, it would be relevant to refer back to the earlier theme of Nature. This (even ‘She’), to Dickinson, seems to be her only true love, as it would always be there for her, out-live her and assist her transcendentalist procession. Nature seems to replace Religion for her, giving her more faith and security. In her poem ‘This is my letter to the World’, it seems both apparent that her love and respect of nature never waned, and that Dickinson knew her poetry would be unearthed, as it posthumously was:

“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”

Instead of God, Nature - now referred to with a capital ‘S’ with ‘She’ – is delivering the good news (Dickinson’s version of the gospel?) to the world.

        In conclusion, and direct approach to the essay question, I have found there to be an enormous contradiction between ‘Emily Dickinson’s ‘miniaturism’’ and the huge themes she deals with. A poet can never be more honest than when they draw upon their own personal experience as direct inspiration for their work. Emily Dickinson the Agnostic; Emily Dickinson the Transcendentalist and Nature Lover; Emily Dickinson the Mortality Philosopher; and Emily Dickinson the Unrequited Lover; not to mention her sarcasm, at times sardonic wit, scepticism and cynicism. Her way with words is, to an extent, unprecedented. Her ability to condense so much meaning into so little a meter is remarkable. She was a prolific writer, and her view on her main themes of Death, Love, Religion and Nature are clearly on display in her work, the aphoristic and economic style lending many of her poems a beautiful subtlety whereby meanings are deciphered on a number of levels, often requiring the pleasure of re-reading. In an essay, Albert Gelpi aptly rewarded Dickinson’s reserved yet flowing eloquence with: “From the native strengths of words and from her experiments in expanding their scope [Dickinson]  fashioned a unique language. She chose words with stinging freshness; she flavoured speech with earthy New England Colloquialisms…. Emily Dickinson sought to speak the uniqueness of her experience in a personal tongue by reconstituting and revitalizing – at the risk of eccentricity – the basic verbal unit.”

Bibliography:

• ‘Emily Dickinson’ by Cynthia G Wolff, Addison-Wesley Longman, 2000.
• ‘The Life of Emily Dickinson’ by Richard Benson Sewall, Harvard University Press, 1994.
• ‘Emily Dickinson’ by Simon Vestdijk, in the anthology ‘Lier en Lancet’, Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 1939.
• ‘Emily Dickinson: Three Views’, ed. Archibald MacLeish, Amherst College Press, 1960.
• ‘Emily Dickinson’ by Paul J Ferlazzo, Twayne Publishers, 1976.
• ‘Critics on Emily Dickinson’, ed. Richard H Rupp, University of Miami Press, 1972.
• ‘Emily Dickinson’ by Richard Chase, Methuen and Co., 1952.
• ‘The Norton Anthology of American Literature 1820-1865; Volume B; Sixth Edition’, ed. Nina Baym, Norton and Company, 2003.
• ‘http://www.georgetown.edu/bassr/health/syllabuild/iguide/dickinson.html’, contributing editors Peggy McIntosh and Ellen Louise Hart.
• ‘www.oed.com’ – The Oxford English Dictionary Online.

---