Themes In Emily Dickinson's Poetry

A few themes occupied the poet: love, nature, doubt and faith, suffering, death, immortality - these John Donne has called the great granite obsessions of humankind.

Love: Though she was lonely and isolated, Emily appears to have loved deeply, perhaps only those who have "loved and lost" can love, with an intensity and desire which can never be fulfilled in the reality of the lovers' touch.

Nature: A fascination with nature consumed Emily. She summed all her lyrics as "the simple news that nature told,"; she loved "nature's creatures" no matter how insignificant - the robin, the hummingbird, the bee, the butterfly, the rat.

Faith And Doubt: Emily's theological orientation was Puritan - she was taught all the premises of Calvinistic dogma - but she reacted strenuously against two of them: infant damnation and God's sovereign election of His own. There was another force alive in her time that competed for her interests: that was the force of literary transcendentalism. This explains a kind of paradoxical or ambivalent attitude toward matters religious. She loved to speak of a compassionate Savior and the grandeur of the Scriptures, but she disliked the hypocrisy and arbitrariness of institutional church. In one of her poems she approached God in prayer, but she could only worship, she could not pray (#564). At times she came to God in great confidence. In another she addresses Him progressively as "Burglar, Banker, Father."

Pain And Sufferin: Emily displays an obsession with pain and suffering; there is an eagerness in her to examine pain, to measure it, to calculate it, to intellectualize it as fully as possible. Her last stanzas become a catalog of grief and its causes: death, want, cold, despair, exile. In #241, Emily says "I like a look of Agony."

Death: Many readers have been intrigued by Dickinson's ability to probe the fact of human death. She often adopts the pose of having already died before she writes her lyric - #712 and 465. She can look straight at approaching death.

A nonconformist, like Thoreau she often reversed meanings of words and phrases and used paradox to great effect. From 435:

Much Madness is divinest sense --
To a discerning Eye --
Much Sense -- the starkest Madness --
'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail --
Assent -- and you are sane --
Demur -- you're straightway dangerous
And handled with a chain –

Безумство – разум высших сфер

для видящего ока,

а в здравом смысле – тьма химер.

Но здравых слишком много,

и, как всегда, их большинство

диктует нам закон.

Не спорь – сойдешь за своего,

но только возопи –

сочтут опасным существом,

чье место – на цепи.

Her wit shines in the following poem (288), which ridicules ambition and public life:

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you -- Nobody -- Too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise -- you
know!

How dreary -- to be -- Somebody!
How public -- like a Frog --
To tell one's name -- the livelong
June --
To an admiring Bog!

Я - Никто. А ты — ты кто?
Может быть—тоже—Никто?
Тогда нас двое. Молчок!
Чего доброго—выдворят нас за порог.

Как уныло—быть кем-нибудь—
И—весь июнь напролет—
Лягушкой имя свое выкликать—
К восторгу местных болот.

Dickinson's 1,775 poems continue to intrigue critics, who often disagree about them. Some stress her mystical side, some her sensitivity to nature; many note her odd, exotic appeal. One modern critic, R.P. Blackmur, comments that Dickinson's poetry sometimes feels as if "a cat came at us speaking English." Her clean, clear, chiseled poems are some of the most fascinating and challenging in American literature.

Whatever her own views of poetry, critics have associated her work with other traditions in literature:

1. The 17th Century Metaphysical Tradition: She read a great deal and enjoyed the writings of 17th century authors. Example #585

I like to see it lap the Miles --

And lick the Valleys up --

And stop to feed itself at Tanks --

And then -- prodigious step

Around a Pile of Mountains --

And supercilious peer

In Shanties -- by the sides of Roads --

And then a Quarry pare

To fit its Ribs

And crawl between

Complaining all the while

In horrid -- hooting stanza --

Then chase itself down Hill --

And neigh like Boanerges --

Then -- punctual as a Star

Stop -- docile and omnipotent

At its own stable door --

Analysis: it describes an "iron horse" or railroad engine and its train. The poem was first published in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1955. "I like to see it lap the Miles" is a children's favorite, but critics find it wanting in the mature substance typical of Dickinson. the railroad (as a symbol of progress) was not an uncommon subject for literature in 19th century America, and indicates Dickinson's father (a lawyer) was instrumental in bringing the railroad to their home town of Amherst, Massachusetts. The station was situated not far from the Dickinson Homestead on Main Street, and the reclusive Dickinson attended its opening, watching alone from the woods.

Criticism of the poem is varied. Children love the poem, but critics find it "coy" and "lightweight". The 'peering into shanties' metaphor is thought "snobbish". The exact animal employed as a metaphor for the railroad initially proves a puzzle, but at poem's end it is decidely a horse which neighs and stops (like the Christmas Star) at a "stable door". The "horrid - hooting stanza" is the train's whistle but, at the same time, as Vendler believes, a self-criticism Dickinson makes of herself as a "bad poet".

2. The Emersonian Tradition: She frequently voices ideas of independence and individualism, of reaction against conformity and obeisance to tradition, providing us a poetic variation upon the theme of self-reliance. There is also the romantic notion of the relationship between beauty and truth. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." - John Keats. Example # 449.

I died for Beauty — but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining room —

He questioned softly “Why I failed?”
“For Beauty,” I replied —
“And I — for Truth — Themself are One —
We Brethren, are,” He said —

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night —
We talked between the Rooms —
Until the Moss had reached our lips —
And covered up — our names —

Я принял смерть — чтоб жила Красота —
Но едва я был погребен —
Как в соседнем покое лег Воин другой—
Во имя истины умер он.

"За что,— спросил он,— ты отдал жизнь?"
"За торжество Красоты".
"Но Красота и Правда — одно.
Мы братья — я и ты".

И мы — как родные — встретили ночь—
Шептались—не зная сна—
Покуда мох не дополз до губ
И наши не стер имена.

3. The New England Tradition: It has been characteristic of New England people to be shy, withdrawn, to say little, but to convey much. Emily never writes a long poem, but tends toward epigrammatic, the concentrated, carefully wrought, gemlike lyric, whose mastery of ambiguity, of allusion, of compressed syntax, of the lyric outburst, is a central concern.

4. The Nature Poetry Tradition: Possible influence of William Cullen Bryant and Henry Thoreau.

2 more poems:

I never saw a Moor—
I never saw the Sea—
Yet know I how the Heather looks
And what a Billow be.

I never spoke with God
Nor visited in Heaven —
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the Checks were given—

Я не видела Вересковых полян—
Я на море не была —
Но знаю — как Вереск цветет —
Как волна прибоя бела.

Я не гостила на небе —
С богом я не вела бесед—
Но знаю — есть такая Страна—
Словно выдан в кассе билет

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry—
This Travel may the poorest take
Without offence of Toll —
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human soul.

Нет лучше Фрегата — чем Книга —
Домчит до любых берегов.
Нет лучше Коня — чем страница
Гарцующих стихов.

Ни дозоров в пути — ни поборов —
Не свяжет цепью недуг.
На какой простой колеснице
Летит человеческий Дух!

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