Graduation Thesis
Emily Dickinson: The Poetics of Absence
Faculty of Foreign Studies
Europe and American Studies
English Major
6103630 HIRAI Mina
2006
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1. Introduction
Emily Dickinson is an American woman poet of the nineteenth-century New England.
Although she is now regarded as one of the greatest American poets, it was only in the 1930s
when scholars and critics began to read her poetry as literary texts.
Until the major critics
such as Allen Tate or F.O. Matthiessen made literary reevaluations of Dickinson and promoted
her to a national bard, who could be equal to other celebrated male authors of the American
traditional literature, her poetry had been discussed out of the curiosity about her extremely
introverted character and the strangely eventless life.
Readers tried to find out
correspondence between the contents of her poems and her actual life, since she was regarded
as a private poetess, who wrote confessional poems without intending to publish them, as
Thomas Wentworth Higginson maintains in the preface to Poems by Emily Dickinson (1890)
(Higginson 10-12).
The impact of some biographical facts, that she seldom left her house, dressed only in
white, for example, were so strong that her image as a hermit fascinated scholars and critics
without exception.
Her works began to be discussed in the context of her historical
backgrounds in the late 1920s.
Such criticism sometimes treated Dickinson as if she were
something sacred and depicted her as an embodiment of the traditional strict Puritanism of the
nineteenth-century New England, or the most faithful follower of Transcendentalism as
Norman Foester or Conrad Aiken do in their comments on her poems (Foester 95; Aiken 114).
Following the efforts of Tate and Matthiessen and other critics of the 1930s, scholars
started to pay closer attention to the textual studies of her poems in the 1950s, when Thomas
H. Johnson’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson (1955) was published.
The collection arranged
Dickinson’s 1775 poems, which were kept almost unpublished during her life-time, in
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chronological order and recreated her original drafts without revisions or corrections.
The
publication made it clear that there were formal changes in her poetry, and contributed to the
textual readings.
It is Charles R. Anderson’s Emily Dickinson’s Poetry: Stairway of Surprise
(1960) that bears the reputation of the most pioneering critical work in this period (Ottlinger
13).
Yet critics still depicted personal side of Dickinson as a strange woman carelessly, even
after those new movements in the studies of her texts were initiated.
In the 1970s, when the
feminist criticism gathered great momentum, Dickinson’s socially isolated life came into
focus for the first time in the critical history and expanded the scope of the study on her
poetry as scholars and critics now have consented (Ottlinger14).
It has now almost become
the critical agreement that her eccentric behavior was a strategic revolt against the oppressive
patriarchy, as Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar maintain in one of the early representative
works of the feminist readings The Mad Woman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the
Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (1979), for example.
Feminist critics further
discussed Dickinson’s poetics in the context of the history of women writings in America.
Betsy Erkkila’s work of 1992, The Wicked Sisters: Womem Poets, Literary History and
Discord, is an influential critical work written from the point of view.
The aim of this thesis is to read Dickinson’s poetry in relation to the two facts
concerning her.
One is that she wrote as a woman, and the other more problematic fact is
that she refused to publish her poems during her life, even though it was quite possible.
Dickinson might have written her poetry as the “letter to the World” (1), to use her own
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phrase in her poem 441 (F 519)1, that is, as positive addresses toward the outer world.
This
statement, however, contradicts her refusal to be a public poetess in the actual world.
It is
now generally agreed that Dickinson is one of the great American poets such as Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Walt Whitman, but those two facts show clearly that she did not have any
intention to pose as a “representative” poet as they did.
Is it really possible to discuss her
poetry in the context of the “American” literary tradition when she was apparently unwilling
to be enlisted in the lines of the representative American poets?
Her poetics might be totally different from that of her male contemporaries, who
discarded the existing conventions and presented themselves as models of democratic
individuals to the world.
She had distinct attitudes toward the concept of “the self,” partially
owing to her Puritan background that might have forced her to face the overpowering
superiority of God, Nature, and death over mankind, as Helen Vendler points out (Vendler
64-65).
However, Dickinson’s poetry is so pagan and rebellious when it is read as an
expression of a Puritan spirit.
frameworks to her poetry.
In other words, it is quite difficult to set interpretive
Her poetry is so elusive that it is almost impossible to apply
comprehensive frameworks of discussions that encompass all the traits of her poetics.
Nevertheless, it could be still practical to discuss her poetry in regard to her concept of
1
Scholars began to use the recently published reading edition of The Poems of Emily
Dickinson (1999) as the textual source which I specified in the parenthesis with the letter “F.”
This collection includes newly discovered poems and recreated Dickinson’s original drafts
more faithfully by the effort of its editor R.W. Franklin, the scholar of Dickinson’s
manuscripts. It can be said that the publication of the edition is one of the achievements of
the critical shift that sheds light on Dickinson’s first hand textual evidence “Fascicles,” but the
former edition of Johnson is still popular among the critics. Since there is no large revision
on the poems I refer in this thesis, I use Johnson’s edition for my textual source. The
number of the quoted poems of each edition will be specified with the letter “J” for Johnson’s,
when I quote them without noting in the main body, and “F” for Franklin’s in accord with the
latest critical practice. I also use The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960), the
compiled version of Johnson’s edition.
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the self.
Since it is inevitably her gender and sex that required her to conform to the social
convention or made her different from the male-centered literary canon, it would be justified
to comment on the status of women in the mid-nineteenth-century America in the following
pages.
After surveying the position of female writers in the conventional Puritan community,
I will discuss Dickinson’s poetics comparing it with those of the leading figures of American
literature at the time.
Analyses of her poems would follow the preliminary references to her
historical and cultural backgrounds.
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2. Preliminary References
2.1. The Social Situation of the Nineteenth-Century New England
The nineteenth-century New England had witnessed a growing tendency toward the
commercialization stimulated by the trades with European countries.
The latest cultural
trends flourished, so that the traditional conservative systems were liberalized gradually,
according to Johnson’s biography of Dickinson (Johnson 15). This liberal trend was
prominent particularly in the religious aspect, and the doctrine of Unitarianism overspread the
country in place of traditional Puritanism.
denies the deity of Christ.
Unitarianism is one of the Protestant faiths that
It presents the possibility of humankind to approach God, who is
traditionally deemed to be desperately distant, by the efforts of one’s reason and intelligence
as Ando Shoei says (Ando 7-8).
In spite of this increasing liberal tendency, however, the
conservative social systems were maintained in the region around Amherst, for it was
separated from the economic center of Boston.
People still believed in the original sin and
the elitism, which had been revived by Jonathan Edwards in the eighteenth century.
Amherst University was established in her birth place to preserve the traditional Puritanism
against the prevailing Unitarianism by the efforts of the leading figures of the state including
Dickinson’s father.
Johnson notes that Dickinson was also affected by the austere doctrine,
though she always felt it impossible to become a Christian (Johnson 13-33).
According to Richard Reinitz, the Puritans believed that trivial mankind was
fundamentally separated from the supreme God and one must submit to God unconditionally
(Reinitz 9-10).
All individuals are assigned distinct roles to fulfill in their society in order to
achieve an organic unity (Reinitz 10; 12).
This was the original notion that organized the
hierarchical human relationship on the basis of patriarchy in the age of the nineteenth century.
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Betsy Isreal clearly shows in her survey on the history of American women that a woman was
defined as a mere property of men and deprived of any legal right (Isreal 12).
As Gilbert
and Gubar say, a woman was strongly required to be pure, pious, and submissive.
Her
supreme mission was to keep her home as a sanctuary, where her wearied husband could rest
and feel secure after coming back from work (Gilbert, Gubar 23-24).
In such a convention, a female writer was regarded as a deviant both religiously and
sexually.
According to Sosetu Amerika Bungakusi (A History of American Literature), the
Puritans tended to turn away from artistic preoccupation, for it had been deemed to be the
profanity since the time of Cotton Mather, who condemned it to an intercourse with a whore
(Ohashi 14).
Creative and imaginative activities were supposed to be less fit for a woman
than for a man, for it was related to the temptation of the Devil, who led Eve to the
irreversible fault.
In addition to the religious background, there was a common assumption
that any creative activity was unfit for a woman, because she was not supposed to be the
subject of reproduction in patriarchal order (Gilbert, Gubar 8).
Contemporary discussions of
the nineteenth-century literature have focused on the implied meanings of the word, “the
author”; Edward Said, for example, points to the authority as the implication of the word
author, and in that case, the word is invested with the image of a creator or a progenitor as a
patriarch (Said 113).
sexual pervert.
Therefore, a woman who engaged in public writing was defined as a
She was even described as “mad and monstrous” because she was thought to
be “ ‘unsexed’ ” or “sexually fallen” (Gilbert, Gubar 63).
Although there were a good number of commercially successful female writers in the
nineteenth century, they were excluded from the tradition of American literature.
Their
literary efforts were categorized as a literary sub-genre, a minor derivative of the male norm.
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These female writers, however, agreed and even advocated that the differentiation between
two genres should be kept as it was.
According to Elaine Showalter, they did not think that
their literary achievements would go against the convention.
They defined their writing
preoccupation as their job separated from the aesthetic achievements of men, and tried to
promote public morality with their didactic works. The theme of such a work was closely
related to their everyday experience, and the central figure was usually a virtuous woman.
Although their works were excluded from the authentic literature, female writers produced
works with what might be called American qualities, distinct from the convention of
European literature.
In other words, they formed a different literary tradition that consisted
only of female writers and female audience (Showalter 16-22).
It could be said that the female writers tried to gain their independence quite
consciously in the age when there was no way for a woman to live outside of the category of
the sacred femininity defined by men.
In order to defer from such categorization, they
boldly chose to be “monstrous,” and in the way founded the female counter norm against the
male convention.
Their effort would never prove successful, however, because it is still
caught in the patriarchal structure.
The “monstrous” image of the femininity is also
produced by men in order to reinforce the submissive feminine image as the social norm.
Even if a woman chose to be “monstrous” strategically, she would end up advocating her
deviation from the normal state.
As long as the hierarchical distinction between a man and a
woman is preserved, a woman can never gain the autonomous identity.
It is the male
discourse which has the authority to decide the relative values of all the components of the
society in the patriarchal order.
It is of course impossible to know why Dickinson refused to publish her poems from
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the present point of view.
However, it would not merely because that she deemed
publication as the “Auction” (1), which might degrade her poetic art that is supposed to be
derived from her spirit (J 709, F 519).
If her poetry is the contemplation on the identity of
her self as critics have been argued, it is quite natural that she rejected publication when it was
associated with the categorization either into the aesthetic art or the moralistic product.
There is no essential quality that justifies the hierarchical order between two genres.
In other
words, each literary identity is established as a genre through differentiation from each other.
It would not, therefore, fit for Dickinson’s literary inquiry to publish her poetry, for it only
reinforces the contradiction between the male literature and the female sub-literature.
As Terry Eagleton points out, poetry had been centralized in literary theory as the
representative model of all the literary styles (Eagleton 78-79), and as there is no woman
mentioned except Dickinson as one of the great poets in Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of
Gender: A Theory of Poetry, which focuses on the relationship of successive poets of England
and America on the level of their texts, it could be said that poetry is the most traditional,
male-centered literary style.
the traditional poetics.
If so, it could have been impractical for Dickinson to carry on
In the following pages, I want to analyze and discuss how she had
released her own language from any definitions offered by existing frameworks.
I am going
to start with analyzing Dickinson’s use of language in contrast to those of Emerson and
Whitman, who also stunned the audience with their groundbreaking poetries.
2.2. The Relation between Dickinson and the Literary Trend
Transcendentalism is a literary principle that appeared in the nineteenth century and had
derived some of its traits from romanticism.
It praises the human soul as the supreme object
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of endless spiritual inquiries, and presents an ideal image of an autonomous individual.
The
major figures of American Transcendentalists were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman,
and those traits are prominent in their writings.
In their texts, they picture their ideal
individuals as poets, which are nothing less than their own self-portraits.
Emerson’s most famous essay of 1836 “Nature” begins with a six-lined poem, which
sings that “The eye reads omens where it goes, / And speaks all languages the rose” (Emerson
“Nature” 1).
As it is clear from these lines, Emerson consistently describes his poet as one
who can see and use languages.
Everything that the poet gazes at is the part of the universe,
which Emerson calls “Nature.”
He discovers the essential of the inhabitant of Nature
thorough the observation and gives it a proper name.
According to Emerson’s other essays,
all the things are liberated from the material world by the efforts of the poet, to return to the
“Over-Soul,” that is, the original source of the universe (Emerson “The Poets”; “The
Over-Soul”).
He composes his poetry in order to praise the integrity of the universe, and to
share it with all the individuals of America.
In a similar way, Whitman depicts his poet as the omnipotent observer.
In the preface
to 1855 version of Laves of Grass, Whitman defines a poet as “a seer,” who is “individual”
and “complete in himself” (Whitman 415).
According to Whitman, the eyesight is superior
to other senses because it is independent form the rest and “foreruns the identities of the
spiritual world” (Whitman 415).
In “Song of Myself,” the poet discovers the hidden essence
of an object through the observation.
For him, every inhabitant of the world is “a uniform
hieroglyphic” that “means” (“Song of Myself” 106; 107).
He deciphers the symbol and
translates its meaning into his language so that ordinary people could understand the truth.
In short, the poet is an interpreter standing between the universe and the people.
Emerson
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and Whitman share the notion that there should be a one-to-one correspondence between a
particular thing and a meaning.
For them, literature is defined as a practice of founding the
identities of things including themselves.
This underlying assumption is made clear
especially when they are describing the positive self image of an individual.
In “Nature,” Emerson describes the self as “a transparent eyeball” (Emerson 10).
It is
his practice to relate his self image to a spherical figure, which has “no outside, no inclosing
wall, no circumference” (Emerson, “Circle” 304).
This sphere expands itself ceaselessly
involving everything it has encountered on the way. There is no danger of disruption,
however, for its complete integrity is not suspected from the very beginning.
As long as the
self is connected to “the perfect whole” (Emerson, “Each and All” 51), its self-contained
identity will be preserved.
As Emerson does, Whitman composes his poetry in the guise of an “I” narrator.
middle of “Song of Myself,” this “I” clearly identifies itself as “Walt Whitman” (498).
In the
This
“Whitman” fuses into all the things that have entered into his sight irrespective of age, sex,
race, and sometimes of biological species.
Transforming into a catalogue of things one after
the other, “Whitman” eventually reveals himself as the representative of the American and
declares that “In all people I see myself” (402).
Now that he has merged into the every
presence on the land of America, he can even identify with “the United States,” which the
author Whitman praises in the preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass (Whitman 411).
In singing about their surrounding world, the poets of Emerson and Whitman gradually
reveal themselves as creators in their affinity with the objects of their songs.
They finally
reign over their own brand-new worlds, which have been recreated through the process of
naming as God-like narrators.
Observing Nature, that is, to gaze upon the external presence,
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is the necessary stepping-stone to the authority of the omniscient subject.
As it could be
seen from the fact that both Emerson and Whitman assume their poets as male figures, their
omnipotent image of the self is closely related to the patriarchal conception of the author.
They similarly intend to reject the conventions of their time with their unprecedented poetries,
yet they do not deny the authority of the tradition.
Instead, they try to take the place of the
preceding authors, who represent the hierarchy implicit in the concept of the tradition.
Dickinson also wrote a large number of poems of observation and refers to eyes quite
frequently.
However, Dickinson’s eyes are not the symbol of omnipotence.
Her narrator
watches things from a fixed point and keeps a certain distance from those objects.
In 328 (F
359), for example, the narrator watches every movement of a bird intently and tries to reach it,
offering “a Crumb” (14).
In spite of the narrator’s friendly approach, the frightened bird
flies away without even slightly touching the feed.
scene of the sunset.
In 219 (F 318), its narrator describes the
The narrator portrays the setting sun as a “Housewife” sweeping the sky
with “many-colored Brooms,” and calls it to “Come back” (3; 1; 4).
Their meeting is never
possible, however, since the sunset is an irresistible natural phenomenon.
Even in the poems
about vision, it is described as a temporary transient ability, which would be lost inevitably in
the course of time.
For instance, the narrator’s eyes have been put out before the poem
begins in 327 (F 336), and the dying person in 547 (F 648) loses sight at the moment of death.
As I have noted above, the distinction between the observer and the observed is recognized
clearly in Dickinson’s poetry, and it would never be blurred by any attempt by the subject.
It is still impossible to have a direct contact with other things even if the soul of the
narrator is liberated from its physical part as “Walt Whitman” does in his poem.
505 (F 348)
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could be read as the description of such experience of disembodiment.
In the second stanza
of this poem, the narrator transforms into the sound of a cornet and “Raised softly to the
Ceilings – / And out, and easy on – / Through Villages of Ether –” (11-13).
The narrator
flees from her/his2 body and the supposed confinement of “the Ceilings.” However, it is
soon revealed to be a limited freedom, for the following lines state that “Myself endued
Balloon / By but a lip of Metal – / The pier to my Pontoon –” (14-16).
It is clear from the
word “Pontoon,” an inert ship that supports a floating bridge, that the narrator cannot move on
its own.
What is further suggested here is that the narrator cannot merge into the other
presence as those poets of Emerson and Whitman do, for the “Pontoon” has the image of a
box-shaped solid object.
It must be remembered that Dickinson’s self image is always
associated with the image of confinement as it is in this poem.
It is, therefore, impossible for
the narrators of her poems to establish their identities through the descriptions of the others
while the narrators of Whitman’s poems depend on the presence of external objects in
establishing their identities.
In Dickinson’s texts, one must speak one’s dreams or
expectations of such liberation from all the limits and of the due acquirement of superiority
attributed to the subject of observation.
As the narrators are separated from their objects of descriptions, Dickinson’s poetical
language does not refer to the ordinary meanings of the words.
Dickinson places more
emphasis on the sound of the language rather than what they refer to.
In the last stanza of
505 mentioned above, the narrator expresses a desire to become a person with acute hearing
senses instead of becoming “a Poet” (17).
2
After stating that such ability is a privileged
If the narrator is the representation of Dickinson, it should be “she,” but I take the
position not to identify the narrator of Dickinson’s poetry with the author. The narrator’s sex
or gender is not made clear in this poem, so I apply her/him here.
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“License” (19), the narrator further wishes to have “the Art to stun myself / With Bolts of
Melody” (22-23).
For Dickinson, poetry is not the means to create what is called a work of
art, which is supposed to have a definite meaning.
meanings, but rather a floating “Melody.”
A poem is not an accumulation of
In 448 (F 446), which has been read as
Dickinson’s declaration of her attitudes toward writing, a poet is defined as a person who
“Distills amazing sense / From ordinary Meanings –” (2-3).
The poet not only suggests
another possible meaning of the word, but she/he also extracts “so immense” a thing “From
the familiar species / That perished by the Door –” (5-6).
Unlike the poetics of Emerson and
Whitman that creates new definitions of things through the process of naming, Dickinson’s
poetics releases words from their existing connections with particular meanings and let them
float among the lines, suggesting endless possibility of making surprising senses. Now I am
going to see these traits in 465 (F 591) as an example.
I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
Between the Heaves of Storm –
The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset – when the King
Be witnessed – in the Room –
I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away
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What portion of me be
Assignable – and then it was
There interposed a Fly –
With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz –
Between the light – and me –
And then the Windows failed – and then
I could not see to see –
Apparently, the frequent appearance of the words beginning with capitals is one of the
characteristics of Dickinson’s poetry.
A capital letter is usually applied to a proper noun, but
Dickinson uses it in common nouns such as “Fly,” “Room,” or an abstract noun like
“Stillness.”
In this poem, she also capitalizes the initial of the verb “Signed,” and an
adjective “Blue.” The rule for applying the capital letter is not clear here as it is in many
other poems.
The usage of the capital letters confuses the referential correspondence
between the words and the things designated.
Take the word “King” for instance.
The king
might be the representation of the dying narrator, or of God or Death as Kamei Shunsuke
explains in the comment on this poem (Kamei 124).
In each case, it is supposed that the
narrator is referring to a certain king, for the definite article is taken in addition to the
capitalization of the initial.
There is no further references to him, however, so it is
impossible to discover who “the King” is from the text.
The characteristic of the poem
suggests that it is also impossible to identify the contents of Dickinson’s poems with her
actual life.
The narrator of this poem might be Dickinson herself, and the scene of this
deathbed might derive its origin from the death scene of someone she knew.
These
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interpretations are just possibilities, however, which might not be true.
In this manner,
Dickinson refuses to connect her language and poetry to any experience in the actual world.
In addition to this function of bringing about confusion, the use of the capital serves to
obscure the presence of the “I” on the visual textual surface.
indicates the subject of a speech or writing clearly in general.
The capitalization of “I”
In this case, the short lines of
this short poem are so crowded with those provisional proper nouns that the narrator “I”
nearly disappears into an obscurity.
The predomination of the narrator is thus attenuated in
Dickinson’s poetry.
Another characteristic prominent in her poetry is the frequent use of a dash, which
indicates a pause or an omission.
The superficial meaning of this poem is not difficult to
understand.
The narrator recollects the scene of her/his death, which was intruded by a
buzzing fly.
Since the dash firstly means a pause, however, the narrator fails to achieve the
fluency of speech.
As if the lines reflect the heaving breaths of the dying person who cannot
speak but only at intervals, a word or a sentence, or even a stanza is not linked to the next one
directly.
As a result of this stumbling speaking, the fluent linkage of the meanings is
deterred.
Even the death of the narrator, that is, the virtual conclusion of the poem does not
complete the meaning of the whole text, because of the other function of the dash that
indicates an omission.
All the sentences and stanzas of this poem are closed with a dash, not with a period.3
Therefore, it is quite possible to suppose that there could be hidden sentences or deleted
descriptions of scenes.
3
The third and the last stanza are typical examples.
From the third
In this case, I use the word “sentence” to indicate a unit of words that seems to be
divided from the next in its meaning. For example, I read the first line “I heard a Fly buzz –
when I died – ” as a sentence independent form the following three lines.
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line of the third stanza, the sentences are linked with “and then.” Such repetitions of “and
then” suggest that the ending would be found in the future, but it also could suggest endless
continuities, because those repetitions occur no less than three times at short intervals.
The
last stanza closes stating “And then the Windows failed – and then / I could not see to see –,”
but because the dash is placed in place of a period, the conclusion of the poem is obscure.
Dickinson seems to reject the concept of completion, for the poem ends with a dash.
What is remarkable here is that this poem is the recollection of the death of its narrator.
There are a number of poems narrated by the dead besides this poem actually.
supposed to be the end, the conclusion of the whole process of life.
Death is
Considering that
Dickinson thus rejects the apparent conclusion of a text, it is supposed that she also uses the
motif of death in connection with her endings that do not end with period.
In the next
chapter, therefore, I am going to discuss several poems analyzing how Dickinson treats this
motif of death.
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3. Dickinson’s Poetry: The Motif of Death
Given the fact that Dickinson writes many poems in the guise of dead narrators, it could
be said that she escapes the conception of the physical death as an absolute end.
712 (F
479) describes the narrator’s dying as a travel with gentlemanly “Death” and begins as
follows:
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality. (1-4)
It is clear from the start that death is presented not as a goal to be attained, but as a process or
a movement itself.
What is more important is that there has already been another traveling
companion “Immortality” before the narrator joins the party.
In other words, there is a
tension between death and life in the carriage, for “Immortality” is the opposite of “Death.”
On the contrary to such a speculation, they keep quiet all thorough the journey and the
carriage pauses in front of a half buried “House” (17), that is, a grave.
It should be noticed
that the “House” is not the destination of their traveling, for they just “paused” temporarily
and did not stop (17).
In the last stanza the narrator recollects as follows:
Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity – (21-24)
It is revealed that they have been traveling for hundreds of years toward “Eternity” without
stopping.
Death is not the end but the beginning of the eternal time beyond, and because of
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this timelessness of “Death,” “Immortality,” the state of living forever, can coexist with him
peacefully.
216 (F 124).
This association of death and eternity can be found in one of the poems on death
The 1861 version of this poem describes death as follows:
Safe in their Alabaster Chambers –
Untouched by Morning –
And untouched by Noon –
Lie the meek members of the Resurrection –
Rafter of Satin – and Roof of Stone!
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 Disc of Snow –
It is not indicated in the first stanza, but the dead sleep in the middle of the night.
Night is
closely associated with death, for it comes at the end of a day.
The second stanza describes the outside of the white chambers.
In contrast to the
static inside, there is a dynamic movement of time. “Diadems” and “Doges” represent a
certain period of their reigns, and their surrender means the successions of their reigns in the
transition of time.
The serenity of the dead in the chambers is never disturbed, for the
overpowering time moves “above” them.
The image of the ascending time is further
emphasized by the words “Crescent,” “Arks,” and “Firmaments.” The firmament revolves
around the earth naturally, so that the dead are left behind in the state of timelessness.
In this
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way, they enjoy the eternal tranquility in the space separated carefully from the turmoil of the
actual world by the double boxes.
Death is not a fearful end but the necessary step to enter into the world of eternal
tranquility.
In this world, one can enjoy the privilege of waiting for the future recovery of
one’s life without worrying about the worldly affairs.
It is a common practice among
Christians, however, to anticipate the everlasting spiritual tranquility in the world after death.
It is a characteristic attitude especially of the Puritans to regard the actual life as the
condemned world of hardness and to look forward to the posthumous consolation as an only
hope.
The fulfillment of their wishes is possible only in the kingdom of God.
These
beliefs are reflected in the literary writings of the Puritans such as Anne Bradstreet,4 or the
romantics like William Cullen Bryant.5
As Leslie A. Fiedler discusses in Love and Death in
the American Novel, this motif of the fulfillment of the impossible wishes after death has been
also used in the later genres such as the sentimental novel and historical romance (Fiedler
204).
It should be noticed that Dickinson shared the Puritanical concept of death as a
possibility of escaping the physical disturbance and of enjoying the everlasting mercy of God.
4
In her poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband,” Bradstreet wishes that their strong
matrimonial unity would last for their lives. The poem is concluded with the expectation of
the eternity after death as follows: “That when we live no more we may live ever” (12). For
Bradstreet, the life in the heaven is more precious than the actual one, for the mortal world is
all “vanity” as she laments in another poem “Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July
10th, 1666” (36).
5
In “Thanatopsis”, Bryant depicts one’s death as the glory of joining the lines of the
patriarchs as follows: “[….] Thou shalt lie down / With patriarchs of the infant world – with
kings, / The powerful of the earth – the wise, the good, / Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages
past, / All in one mighty sepulcher. […]” (33-37). Bryant assures audience that there is
nothing that should be worried, and that they would die “Like one who wraps the drapery of
his couch / About him, and lie down to pleasant dreams” (80-81).
20
The poem 461 (F 185) depicts the death of the narrator girl as the glorious marriage to
“Savior” whose name might be “Eternity.” The girl seems to anticipate the moment when
she becomes his “Wife” and calls to him “Eternity, I’m coming – Sir, / Savior – I’ve seen the
face – before!”(1; 12-13).
However, she never describes the future scene of their bridal.
In
many other poems about such expectation of the unification, narrators similarly refuse to
describe the moments of their conjugal meetings.6
Considering these points, it could be said
that Dickinson avoids quite deliberately representing death as a positive affair, that is, the
fulfillment of impossible dreams.
As I have argued, Dickinson’s poetry has the tendency to deviate from the conventional
use of language that is supposed to refer to certain meanings or signifieds.
When the
narrator of Whitman, for instance, refers to “The Yankee clipper,” “a red girl,” or “The
runaway slave” (“Song of Myself” 180; 185; 189), readers are reminded of images shared by
the public.
When he refers to a specific name of a place such as “Manhattan” (“Song of
Myself” 496), he indicates the real city found on the map of the United States.
Because his
aim is to represent America, it is inevitable for him to depend on idioms shared and
understood by the public.
Dickinson’s words, on the other hand, would not necessarily be
shared with other people as I have said on her usage of nouns with capitalized initial letters
such as “King” or “Fly.” When she introduces common symbols to her poetry such as a
spider or a bee, she attaches to them unfamiliar images or even erases their ordinary
implications.
Her spider, for example, is neither a widow nor a spinster but is a male
seamster in 1138 (F 1163).
6
Her bees, which frequently appear in her poems, represent
One fit example is 249 (F 269), which could be one of the most sensual poems of
Dickinson. In this poem, the narrator calls to “thee” passionately that “Were I with thee /
Wild Nights should be / Our luxury!”(2-4) and that “Might I but moor – Tonight – / In
Thee!”(11-12), yet the moment of their unification never visits in the text.
21
movements that do not refer to anything.
Furthermore, while Whitman intentionally bestows
commonness on his poetry with the portrait of a man, supposedly himself, with his “hat on,
shirt open, head cocked, arm akimbo” (Folsom 139), Dickinson does not employ a narrative
figure that “invites us to read this figure symbolically, to place it in a social context” (Folsom
139).
If her language is identical with the traditional language, for instance, of Puritanism,
her language would be deprived of its potential power.
Dickinson’s language disturbs the
equilibrium and tranquility that ordinary use of language would bring about.
To describe
death as a state of serene sanctity would not be applicable to her poetics, because her poetry
engenders conflicts of language against itself.
What is the effect of speaking in the guise of the dead?
According to David Porter,
Dickinson describes the “aftermath” of her crucial experiences in the actual life (Porter 9).
Most experience referred to in a poem is not the experience itself, but is its effects.
Her
poems on death are typical examples, because to speak from the viewpoint of the dead is to
describe things as something past as it is in 712. As I have noted above, death is usually
suggestive of eternity, and Dickinson never deviates from that principle of equation.
Nevertheless, there is a difference between her use of the motif of death and the traditional
ones. While most Puritan writers tend to comment on what could happen in eternity,
Dickinson is more keenly attentive on the association of the time with the posthumous
eternity or immortality.
In other words, she does not necessarily believe in the spiritual
tranquility or the possible wish fulfillment after death, but she places more emphasis on the
timeless aspect of eternity.
As Helen Vendler points out as the most fundamental point in
understanding Dickinson’s poetry, Dickinson “alters ‘normal’ temporal organization” in order
22
to practice her poetic principles (Vendler 65).
At first, it should be taken into consideration why Dickinson avoids the “‘normal’
temporal organization.”
poem 287 (F 259).
Her recognition of the normal time structure can be found in the
This is the poem about a clock. The clock has stopped at the very
beginning of the first stanza, but neither the most skillful craftsman nor a doctor can repair it.
The last stanza states as follows:
Nods from the Gilded pointers –
Nods from the Seconds slim –
Decades of Arrogance between
The Dial life –
And Him – (14-18)
In this stanza, the clock is described as an object that is composed of hands that point to the
dial and therefore to time.
In other words, a clock is recognized as a circular entity that
unified fragments of present moment cut away from the stream of time.
This organic figure
of the clock is similar to the image of the self presented by Emerson and Whitman that unifies
diverse personalities into one individual.
As this structural resemblance of time and the self
shows, the construction of the self is associated with the concept of time.
One is assigned a
certain role at each stages of one’s life such as a daughter, wife, or mother in relation to the
other components of the society.
One grows up taking up those separate personalities and
dies as an individual, who has such a history of growing.
Taking at such roles means an
active participation into the categorizations that the society defines rather than the natural
attributes, so the moment one declares in the present tense that “I am ~,” she/he is involved in
the structure of the society.
The normal temporal structure, that is, the accumulation of the
23
present that makes the definition of things in the formula of “A is B,” is quite an authoritative
system.
It is this temporal structure that attributes the authority of continuous creation to a
literary work, as Said says (Said 254).
To use a language is to declare oneself as the
beginning, which justifies a work as a derivative from an original author (Said 254).
Dickinson detests such language system as “of Arrogance” and does not allow her narrators to
speak simply in present tense.
Dickinson chiefly employs two strategies to avoid the present.
One is to sing about
one’s future prohibiting the procession toward that future as she does in 461.
As I have
already seen, Dickinson closes the poem just before the narrator girl and her future husband
are joined with each other.
The poem does not suggest the possibility of narrating any
succession to the episode, for the closure of the last sentence is emphasized by an exclamation
mark, not by the ambiguous dash mark.
Another strategy is to employ the dead narrator and
describe the things as the absolute past.
The merit of using the past tense could be found in
199 (F 225).
Dickinson begins this poem using the definition formula of “A is B.” The
narrator starts singing that “I’m ‘wife’” (1), but immediately denies it by saying that “I’ve
finished that –” and continues the rest of the first stanza as follows: “That other state – / I’m
Czar – I’m ‘Woman’ now – / It’s safer so –” (2-4). The past tense shows that the present fact
is different from the statement.
By denying her lower-case “wife” state as the past, the
narrator can presently call herself a capital lettered “Czar” and “Woman,” and declares quite
strongly at the end of the text that “I’m ‘Wife’! Stop there!”(12)
There is no time for her to
rest, even though she seems to have acquired a superior position.
herself incessantly from “Czar” to “Woman” and to “Wife.”
She has to transform
If she settles on one state, her
identity would be fixed as such, and in that case she identifies herself with a “Czar,” the
24
emperor of ancient Russia, she could be condemned for the transgression of her gender or
national identity.
As long as she intends to avoid being caught in any definition, she has to
reject each of them as the past immediately.
The description of the aftermath is the strategy to escape the authoritative time that
would prohibit Dickinson’s language from presenting numerous possibilities.
Death is
neither the possibility of wish fulfillment nor the state of eternal serenity protected by the
existing discourse of the authorities.
Dickinson rather disturbs such tranquility and changes
this peaceful paradise into the field of everlasting alteration on the level of the language.
The thorough achievement of this procedure can be seen in 449 (F 448).
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 –
25
As it is clear from the text, this poem is based on the famous statement that “Beauty is truth,
truth beauty” presented by John Keats in “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (49).
449 might also be read as a poem about this aesthetic equation.
the equation is not the center of this poem.
It seems that this
Contrary to such supposition,
The narrator “I” and the talking companion “He”
do not have any necessary linkage with the two words “Beauty” and “Truth,” though they
seem to be their names at the first sight.
those words.
“I” and “He” are just someone who has died for
In other words, they are not the representations of “Beauty” and “Truth.” As
the narrator says, they already have the lower case “names,” which could be different from the
capitalized “Beauty” and “Truth” in fact. Nevertheless, it is too hasty to conclude that the
original affinity of “Beauty” and “Truth” is denied in this text, for “He” says that “Themself
are One.” The identity of the two words is emphasized by the irregular word “Themself”
and the capitalized “One.”
The irrevocable definition of Keats is not rejected, but set
remotely apart from the text by the fact that the two speakers are not identical either with
“Beauty” or “Truth.”
Similar to the tenuous connection between the talking figures of this poem and Keats’
aesthetic definition, the relationship of “I” and “He” is a remote one as well.
There is no
actual evidence such as blood in their relationship, because they are just “Brethren,” who are
united only through a spiritual empathy.
The line flows into the next one, where “I”
recollects properly that they talked “as Kinsmen.” These complete strangers happened to be
acquainted because of the affinity of their authorities, that is, “Beauty” and “Truth,” for which
they had sacrificed themselves.
As long as the relationship of “I” and “He” is interpreted as
a variation of “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” what is revealed is that such equation is not the
given essence, but is an artificial definition that has become authoritative through repetitions
26
in literary works.
Such discourses could be denied and deleted in the course of time as the
conversation between “I” and “He,” that is, the seemingly representatives of “Beauty” and
“Truth,” is eventually prohibited by the growing moss.
What is suggested by this
description is the fragility of the language that loses its authenticity lest there is the consensus
among the subjects that use it.
This poem is not, however, just the denial of the language.
Between the lines of the ironical conversation, several fragments are inserted that cannot be
explained with a general framework, and there seems to be presented another possibility for
using a language.
There are two strange phrases in this poem.
I failed’?”
One is the question made by “He,” “‘Why
It is apparent from the preceding phrase “He questioned softly” that this sentence
is supposed to be read as an inquiry, yet it seems to be rather far-fetched to accept it so.
It
should be “Why you failed” if “He” addresses to “I.” Even if it happens to be a grammatical
failure, it is still not clear why Dickinson puts the question mark out of the parenthesis when
she applies the form of direct discourse.
These three words assume a fragmental impression
which has been cut out from a continuing speech of “He” that explains a cause of his death.
In recollecting his confession, the narrator “I” extracts the three words and twists them into an
inquiry in order to have a voice.
Although once “I” was an active subject who could choose
even death, now that “I” is dead, she/he is deprived of its independence.
Through the
process of recollections and restatements, “I” recovers its autonomy and takes up the position
of the narrator in this text temporarily.
The other notable point of this poem is the second line of the last stanza, “We talked
between the Rooms –.”
Assuming that the two are laid in the connecting but divided
chambers, this line shows that there is a wall between them.
Taking it literally, however,
27
“between the Rooms” indicates a space existing between the two separate rooms.
inconceivable space, for their rooms are adjacent to each other.
It is an
Yet conceding that the
existence of such a space is possible, the line suggests that they actually meet each other
inside the very walls. Not only have they escaped from being caught in the “Beauty is truth,
truth beauty” definition, “I” and “He” also escape from their own “names” by stealing out of
chambers buried under each gravestones.
Before the growing moss deletes their epitaphs, it
had already been proved that the rooms are vacant in fact.
There is no word that designates
them any longer in the text and the narrator finally enjoys the freedom of speech with “He”
behind the prescriptive reading standards of their audience.
It should not be concluded that Dickinson replaces the speech with the writing as given
precedence, for the growing moss covers the mouths of the speakers without exception.
Dickinson does not intend to decide the relative merit between any styles of the language
expression.
What is practiced in this poem is the alteration of a language with the full
recognition of its limits.
There is no necessary correspondence between a word and its
meaning, and such one-to-one referential relationship could be altered along with the change
of the norms of a society.
In short, there is always a subject that uses a language.
As Betsy
Erkkila argues, Dickinson probably realized “that it is on the level of language that she can
resist subjection to the system of masculine power […] by questioning and distibilizing its
terms” (Erkkila 24).
Nevertheless, it cannot be concluded simply that Dickinson’s poetry is the strategic
practice to establish her identity or originality through the active denial of the male-centered
convention.
There is a more problematic and seemingly the most crucial point in her poetry,
which is also apparent in the poem 446.
The narrative of the dead that is frequently
28
employed in Dickinson’s poetry is an impossible speech that cannot happen in the actual
world.
For its state of being exterior to the actual temporal structure, the speech of the dead
narrators can alter the narrowness of the existing language system.
The dead and Dickinson
herself escape the oppressive interpretation of the common knowledge, and enjoy the
self-contained freedom of exercising their voices, as it has already been argued above.
However, the same interpretation does not apply fully to 446.
The narrator of 446 is caught in a fundamental contradiction.
The conversation
between the narrator and “He” is interrupted at the end of the poem, for their mouths are
covered with the growing moss.
The narrator ends up losing its ability of talking, and it
means naturally that the narrator cannot talk any longer after the end of the poem.
This text
is, therefore, an impossible narrative that could not have existed from the beginning.
This
basic contradiction of the text discloses the impossibility of its own narrative, and nearly
denies the validity of the language.
Dickinson’s poetry is also an insistent denial of the
language as a means for communication, for she did not publish her poems despite the blessed
environment and of her full consciousness of her audience.
nonexistent to the reading public of her time.
Her poetry was virtually
What is really under suspicion here is the
presence of the subject who uses the language, for what the readers confront is only her texts.
It is not the narrative that is impossible in this text but the narrator.
definitely exist as a text, which has been generated from nowhere.
Only the words
The question on the
certainty of the dominance of the subject over the language seems to form the basis of
Dickinson’s poetry, for it is connected to the inquiry of her identity as a poet.
Instead of presenting their thoughts and feelings directly to the readers, Dickinson and
her narrators choose to express them through the language and the texts, which postulate that
29
any authorial presence is a void.
Her language techniques reveal her full consciousness of
the potency of the literary language.
What Dickinson intends to find through her writing of
poetry is neither the means to master her own language nor the proper themes that satisfy her
requirements.
It is the stance towards writing that Dickinson contemplates thoroughly in her
poetic preoccupation.
Her blurring of the central presence of the narrator “I” by the
capitalization of other words that stand as the peers of “I” and her employment of supposedly
dead narrators tend to produce the impression that the presence of the authors and the
narrators is quite tenuous in her poetry.
The characteristic might be a reflection of the status
of women in the nineteenth century, who were deprived of subjectivity as beings inferior to
men.
In addition to that, if her poetry is the practice of annulling ordinary referential
correspondences between words and things, the weakness of the presence of the author saves
her poetry from being caught in any fixed interpretations that confront the literary qualities of
her texts.
Unlike Whitman, who sang of the democratic poetics “with a significant look, a
glance: eye/I contact” by printing the portrait of a common man (Folsom 163), Dickinson’s
poetry and its language refuse to identify with any conventions or politics.
A published book is different from a “Letter” that Dickinson intends her poems to be.
There was the literary market place that had already been commercialized in her time.
Literary texts circulated among the general readers and consumed by them one-sidedly.
In
the market place, in addition, presenting oneself as an artist before the public paradoxically
leads to the cancellation of the artistic authenticity as the origin of the writings because the
image of the author would be exposed to interpretations by the consumers along with the texts.
It would be possible to understand Dickinson’s choice to keep her poems from the public in
her life-time as a positive choice to protect her literature, the field of interactions on the level
30
of the language.
By making her poetry deliberately unconventional, that is, publicly illegible
both in forms and contents, Dickinson disturbs the originality of the authoritative language
and saves herself from using limited languages that equate words and things.
In one of her
letters to Higginson, Dickinson says that her poetry is the engagement with the
“Circumference” (Dickinson 412).
“Circumference” is neither the center nor the outside, but
the field bounded closely on the outside.
“Circumference” would not exist unless there was
a boundary that separated it from the outside.
the full recognition of the outer space.
In other words, this space is generated from
It is a field of possible conflicts, for there could be
chances to shift the boundaries or to escape beyond them.
In the poem 1099, Dickinson
describes the anxiety of a hatching butterfly that is trying to fly toward the outside world:
My Cocoon tightens – Colors tease –
I’m feeling for the Air –
A dim capacity for Wings
Demeans the Dress I wear –
A Power of Butterfly must be –
The Aptitude to fly
Meadows of Majesty implies
And easy Sweeps of Sky –
So I must baffle at the Hint
And cipher at the Sign
And make much blunder, if at last
31
I take the clue divine – (F 1107)
The moment of presenting oneself out of the “Cocoon,” for example, involves the risk of
degrading one’s beauty.
“Circumference” suggests conflicts between the inside and the
outside, and points to the possibility of escaping in the future.
Exactly as the butterfly in this
poem does, Dickinson finds the moment for expressing herself through a language that
generates frictions between itself and the public convention, which is the outside for her.
In
order to satisfy the requirements of her literary ideal, that is, to make her texts into fields
where the productive multidimensional aspects of language interact, Dickinson resigns to
keep herself absent.
32
4. Conclusion: The Significance of Being Absent
It was probably because her poetics is very similar to those of the modernists that
Dickinson was discovered and reevaluated in the twentieth century.
It is impossible to
define the characteristics of the modernist movements in simplified terms, for they have
myriad aspects and the aims and achievements are varied with each practitioner.
Against the
risk of simple generalization, it could be said that representative modernists found it necessary
to cut away from the literary tradition when they faced the collisions of “the underlying value
systems that had shaped centuries of art” at the time of turning centuries (Ruland, Bradbury
240).
Modernist poetics tends to do away with the conventional forms and focus on the use
of the languages that construct literary texts.
Of various achievements of the modern poetics,
it is the Imagism advocated by poets such as H.D. or Marianne Moore, who might be called
successors to Dickinson, that has close affinities with Dickinson’s poetry.
As David Perkins
shows, Imagist poets recast the conventional long verse and compose poems rather musically
than accumulating the meanings by redundant massive words (Perkins 333-336).
Although
they are also attentive to images as their appellation represents, they avoid using “symbol as
ornament or a figure for something other than itself” (Ruland, Bradbury 260).
It is clear that Dickinson’s poetry foreruns all these characteristics of modern poetics.
It might be said that she has been discovered as the founder of another tradition of American
poetry that sets “language prior to reality” (Ruland, Bradbury 261), distinct from the
successors of Emersonian, Whitmanian poets such as Robert Frost, Charles Olson, and Allen
Ginsberg who believe that the poems are forms of the vocal expressions breathed forth from
their bodies.
Dickinson’s poetry might embody what T.S. Eliot tries to achieve through his
literary practice.
As it can be seen in “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Eliot advocated
33
the establishment of the new tradition of art, which accompanies the denial of the
authoritative identity of each artist who is supposed to be unique.
It is clear from the text
that Eliot still believes in the conventional premises on the literary tradition, because he takes
it for granted that the tradition should be established by male artists.
He designates a poet
“he” and mentions only male authors such as Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, and John Keats.
What is remarkable is that he has deprived the fixed authenticity from the tradition and
defined it as a flexible system, which is renovated continually by the entry of new artists.
Participating in the tradition, however, does not reinforce the originality of the artists, for their
discourses have already been founded by their predecessors.
To put it briefly, being an artist
is “a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality” in Eliot’s terminology
(Eliot 40).
Although Dickinson and Eliot are different in their methods of composition, they
similarly try to erase the presence of the authors from their texts.
Dickinson deletes the
figure of the author by writing short discontinuous poems that do not possess the integrity of
organic form that Whitman aims at in Leaves of Grass, which has been supposedly written by
a single author present in the actual history as Walt Whitman.
composes lengthy poems by quoting preceding literary texts.
Eliot, on the other hand,
Through the appropriation of
the existing texts, Eliot denies originality of his literary language.
The poetries of Dickinson
and Eliot thus demand that the readers should focus “not upon the poet but upon the poetry,”
for the poetry is not “the expression of personality, but an escape from personality” (Eliot 40;
43).
Because of the “subversive” characteristics that Dickinson’s poetics has, contemporary
feminist criticism, for example, often find her use of language favorable to their causes.
34
Dickinson preferred to write as an unpublicized absent poet in an age when being an author
almost immediately meant to be the representative of the society.
However, she could have
been aware of the advantages of being an absent author, as those feminist critics point out.
As I have discussed in the preceding chapters, her language deviates from the conventional
use based on the idea of referential correspondences between words and things, and in a
consequence, counters the conventional language system that was mostly patriarchal.
Her
supposedly dead narrators reveal the narrowness and fragility of the speech directly derives
from the author whose language might be subverted by another language that emphasizes the
disconnection between the author and her/his language.
However, all the speculations are vein in the face of Dickinson’s insistence on being
absent.
It therefore means that my own speculations are only valid as one of the versions of
possible interpretations of the absence.
interpretations necessarily are.
My reading could be a political one as the feminist
Yet, while political and ideological criticisms tend to reduce
the languages of the artists to meanings defined in their frameworks and insist that those
meanings are present in the literary texts, my argument aims at evoking a poet, whose absence
is radically subversive of productions of “meanings” within the political and ideological
frameworks.
Dickinson probably knew that any political action or presenting herself in
public would be inconsistent with her poetic language, for her poetry, which was written in
the affluent environment of the upper middle class, is not basically “egalitarian.” Unlike her
contemporary female writers who were forced to write for their living, Dickinson did not have
to worry about economical affairs and therefore could commit herself to “literary art” totally,
as David S. Reynolds clearly says (Reynolds 419).
Apparently any frameworks for interpretation cannot encompass all the possibilities
35
that lurk in Dickinson’s poetics.
Reynolds declares that Dickinson’s supposed
“representativeness lies in her incomparable flexibility, her ability to be by turns coy, fierce,
domestic, romantic, protofeminist, antifeminist, prudish, erotic” (Reynolds 421).
An attempt
to find an author speaking from behind the lines invariably falls into a dilemma between
contradictions that Reynolds underlines.
Likewise, any attempt to apply a single
interpretative framework to all or most of her texts would end up in failure, since her poems
are often quite different from each other and different personae are adopted in nearly 2000
fragmental pieces.
Readers are required to transform their reading strategies along with her
shifting elusive texts and are almost banned from reading them according to any literary or
critical principles.
If there is something left for the readers could turn to for the basis of their
readings, it is only her language and her texts that are there and would not be the figure of the
author who is called Emily Dickinson.
36
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