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Emily Elizabeth Dickinson is a great poetess of the nineteenth century originally from Amherst, Massachusetts, and the world-renowned for her mystic and captivating poetry. Regardless of her parents desire for her to become a well-mannered, diligent housewife, Emily Dickinson devoted herself to literature. During her saturated literature path, she developed a special attitude towards mystics in humans lives. This paper will consider Dickinsons substantial contribution of almost 1800 poems into the field of mysticism and her particular views on death within her fascinating poems.
One of the dominant themes in Emily Dickinsons poetry became mystics, death, and religion. In addition, the poetess paid the most attention to the concept of the human soul rather than the body. Dickinson sought spiritual elevation and growth and did not attach much importance to the notion of the body. Therefore, it was always Dickinsons pursue throughout her life to develop a full-fledged union with God and her soul. According to Khanday (129), she stated that it was then her greatest pleasure to commune alone with the great God and to feel that He would listen to her prayers. Thus, she determined her life and art to His service.
Emili Dickinson admitted Gods infinite power and authority over the whole universe. According to Khanday (130), since childhood, the poetess felt the great curiosity to get acquainted with Him and His dwelling. Dickinson was convinced that God was present in every piece of manifestation of humans world. Khanday (130) argues that she believed that God was everywhere, yet and nowhere tangible and visible, that God may not be perceived by common sense. Therefore, Dickinson hoped that to realize and comprehend Gods existence, an individual should develop a particular sense of spirituality.
Such a profound contribution adoration of the spiritual world contributed to a significant number of poems about death in her art. According to Song (51), the poetesss literary legacy comprises about 1800 pieces, a quarter of which is death poems. Although Emily Dickinson never left her fathers home and stayed antisocial and seclusive during her whole life, she managed to create an endless world for the human soul. Song (51) argues that in such an infinite universe, she explores the veritable meaning of life, with anti-traditional metrical forms and strange new images. The poetess offered the world a different perception of demise. According to Khanday (129), Emily Dickinson does not feel any fear of death and views it as a path to another perennial world. By doing so, Dickinson represents in her poems the concept of death not as the end of life but as its process.
Death appears to be an objective reality of peoples lives but not an unavoidable future. So, in her poetry, death constitutes a diachronic notion but not a notion of the end:
I need no further Argue
That statement of the Lord
Is not a controvertible
He told me, Death was dead. (Dickinson)
Apparently, in this poem Emily Dickinson broadens the process of dying, and death expands in space and time. Song (53) states that under Dickinsons pen, death is sometimes a part of the extended space, where time stopped with death diffusing and expanding in space only. Therefore, readers may perceive and comprehend the concept of death as a pervasive reality. The process of passing and life seems to be entangled in a perpetual flow, where death is no longer a final point that finishes existence span.
As it was already mentioned, Dickinson comprehended the end of life as a doorway to another endless world. Her views were described in the poem What Inn is This , where the human soul constitutes a traveler. In other words, dying is a threshold that opens the way to a new voyage :
What Inn is this
Where for the night
Does peculiar Traveller come?
Who is the Landlord?
Where are the maids?
Behold, what curious rooms!
No ruddy fires on the hearth
No brimming Tankards flow
Necromancer! Landlord!
Who are these below? (Dickinson)
The Inn in the given poem represents a station or a layover for the human soul. Song (53) claims that in Dickinsons death poems, death is the tavern to eternal life, ready for reach and full of warmth, where the travelers may recharge their batteries, and start a new journey. It may be concluded that the poetess considered decease as the only way to solace and rescue the soul. Naqvi (17) suggests that Dickinson deconstructs the conventional attitude towards death by introducing it in her poetry as several different personas, thus presenting death as a familiar character rather than a phenomenon. Every such metaphorical allegory in her poetry contributes to the destruction of the notion of demise as an inconceivable lethal deity. Adherence to religion may have provided her with the relevant vocabulary for such explorations. According to Khanday (128), almost the only books that Dickenson valued more than the Bible were Shakespeares tragedies. In addition to the reflection of her religious commitments in the poems, they reflect her aspiration to highlight the importance of humans inner selves.
Her fearlessness against death was emphasized in her poems by other literary devices as well. To present the process of passing more mundane and natural, the poet could write her verses in terms of a dying person. Such a manner is clearly shown in her poem I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died. The given poem constitutes a monologue of a person who is about to pass away. Although it provides the reader with the loved ones sorrow The Eyes around had wrung them dry / And Breaths were gathering firm (Dickinson). The author yet puts the main focus on how plain demise could be. She diminishes the stress and sore of death by focusing on such a trivial object as a fly There interposed a Fly / With Blue uncertain stumbling Buzz / Between the light and me. Therefore, a fly remains equal in significance to such a worrying process as death.
The above-described literary device determines Dickinsons view towards passing away. According to Naqvi (23), by posing as a dying person, the poet imagines a persons last moment equivalent to any other mundane moment in our lives as opposed to something monumental. In other words, demise may be as natural and integral part of the peoples existence as a simple fly. Thus, death represents not as a frightening trial, but as another step in a continuous humans life.
Another poem where is described Dickinsons intrepidity towards dying is Afraid? Of Whom Am I afraid? . Here, the poet directly states that she is not afraid of death:
Afraid? Of whom am I afraid?
Not Death for who is He?
The Porter of my Fathers Lodge
As much abasheth me! (Dickinson)
Therefore, the poetess remains almost cold and dauntless in the face of death and claims that there may be things more frightening in her life than demise.
As it was already mentioned, Emily Dickinson appreciated the human soul and was convinced that it lives beyond the physical world. She emphasizes the presence of the spirit in her poem I Felt my Life with Both my Hands :
I felt my life with both my hands
To see if it was there
I held my spirit to the Glass,
To prove it possible
I turned my Being round and round
And paused at every pound
To ask the Owners name
For doubt, that I should know the Sound (Dickinson)
In this verse, Emily Dickinson describes a female individual who has recently left the physical world. In addition, the above-mentioned lines describe how imponderable the soul may be compared to the physical body since the individual struggles to remember her name. Despite the physical manifestation end, this poem represents an endless life of humans mind and spirit.
Summarizing the above-mentioned evidence, it may be argued that Emily Dickinsons views towards death constitute extraordinary and rather sophisticated. The poet appreciated the human soul and was convinced that death may be nothing but a hallway that leads to the following spirit condition. Her substantial contribution of almost 1800 poems into American poetry offers a waste field of mystic and fascinating verses that provide the reader with absolutely another view on the humans life end.
Works Cited
Dickinson, Emily. Afraid? Of whom am I afraid? 1862. PoemHunter.
Dickinson, Emily. Do People Moulder Equally. 1862. American Poems.
Dickinson, Emily. I Felt my Life with Both my Hands 1862. American Poems.
Dickinson, Emily. I heard a Fly buzz when I died . 1896. Poetry Foundation.
Dickinson, Emily. What Inn is this. 1859. PoemHunter.
Khanday, Y. A. Mystical Philosophy Delineated in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson. Juni Khyat, vol. 10, no. 7, 2020, pp. 12734.
Naqvi, Sherbano. The Deathless Death: Emily Dickinsons Deconstruction of Death. 2019. John Cabot University, PhD dissertation.
Song, Mengqi. On Characteristics of Emily Dickinsons Death Poems. International Journal of Secondary Education, vol. 5, no. 4, 2017, pp. 5155. Crossref, doi: 10.11648/j.ijsedu.20170504.13.
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