American
poet, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was one of three children of a
loving family who came to prefer her privacy and lived a solitary
existence as an adult. Only seven poems were published in her
lifetime although these were well-received, but her sister discovered
over one thousand poems hidden away in her room after her death,
mostly untitled and undated.
Her
poetry has a Puritanical slant and is about love, nature and
mortality. She is religious and yet often stricken by doubt, which
instils dramatic tension into her poetry. Generally, the poems are
fairly short and it is a challenge for a poet to establish meaning in
so few words, but Dickinson's work contains multi-layered meanings.
In
1955, Thomas H. Johnson produced a three volume edition: The
Poems of Emily Dickinson,
containing all 1775 poems. The
Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson appeared
in 1970.
Stanza
1
Rearrange
a 'Wife's' affection!
When
they dislocate my Brain!
Amputate
my freckled Bosom!
Make
me bearded like a man!
Stanza
2
Blush,
my spirit, in thy Fastness -
Blush,
my unacknowledged clay -
Seven
years of troth have taught thee
More
than any Wifehood may!
In
this poem, the first three lines of the first stanza end in an
exclamation mark, adding a keen sense of outrage to their delivery,
further enhanced by the strong verbs Dickinson uses to convey the
depth of her feelings. The poet's brain is 'dislocated' and the verb
'Amputate' in the next line is shocking in its implication of female
vulnerability to the insensitive male. In the second stanza, it seems
the poet has learned through her betrothal that marriage promises
little of any value for a woman.
Stanza
3
Love
that never leaped its socket -
Trust
entrenched in narrow pain -
Constancy
thro' fire - awarded -
Anguish
- bare of anodyne!
Stanza
4
Burden
- borne so far triumphant -
None
suspect me of the crown,
For
I wear the 'Thorns' till Sunset
-Then
my Diadem put on.
In
stanza 4, Dickinson is comparing her suffering to to that of Jesus
Christ, adorned with a crown of thorns as he died on the cross. It is
a burden that she, like Jesus, is forced to endure. However, the poet
hides her real anguish from the world, as expressed in Stanza 5:
Stanza
5
Big
my Secret but it's bandaged
-
It
will never get away
Till
the Day its Weary Keeper
Leads
it through the Grave to thee.
Dickinson's
special achievement
Dickinson's
independence of spirit and the links she makes between personal
experience and the universal, reveal a strongly individualistic poet.
This uncompromising individualism becomes more compelling when we
consider the difficulties she encountered. Clayton Eshleman, in
response to the questionnaire: 'What is American about American
Poetry?' says: 'At the turn of the century, American poetry, with the
compelling exceptions of Whitman and Emily Dickinson, was still
filled with Victorian decorum, and was a poetry of taste, on
extremely restricted subjects, written almost exclusively by white
males.'
To
have earned the honour of being separated from this restrictive
Victorian decorum and taste, and to do so as a woman before the onset
of feminism, is clearly Dickinson's special achievement.
The
Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson,
ed. Thomas H. Johnson, Faber and Faber, London, 1970.
'What
is American about American Poetry?', Companion
Spider by
Clayton Eshleman, Wesleyan University Press, CT, U.S.A. 2001
Emily
Dickinson,
by Helen MacNeil, Virago, London, 1984
No comments:
Post a Comment