By Walker Joyce
In the mid-19th Century, a literary genius toiled in secrecy, creating a canon of imperishable verse that wasn’t discovered until after her death.
I refer to Emily Dickinson, a Victorian Era spinster who spent her life in the house where she was born, and where she would die. It was a stately mansion for its time, her family’s estate for generations in Amherst, Massachusetts.
As she aged, she became eccentric, leading to a reclusive middle age. For the last 15 years of her life, she rarely left the second floor, talking to others from behind her bedroom door.
Since the publication of her poems began in 1890, critics and scholars have analyzed everything about her life and work, and still, she remains an enigma.
Her output totaled nearly 1800 poems, but only ten, plus one of her voluminous letters, were printed in her lifetime. These were heavily edited, which may be one of the reasons she both craved and resisted being published.
She begged her sister to burn her papers after she died, but blessedly, when Livinia discovered the handwritten manuscripts sewn into bundles, she limited the destruction to less significant items.
For decades, the poems continued to be edited to suit contemporary tastes. Titles were added, and all of Emily’s odd punctuation was removed.
Surely, this enhanced the early appeal of her work, as did the emphasis on her nature subjects and bits of homespun philosophy; truly, the pure texts, which wouldn’t appear until the 1950s, are often hard to read.
Verses like this found their way into schoolbooks:
“If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.”
Another famous excerpt:
“Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.”
Here are some of her most familiar lines:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –“
So yes, Emily can conjure sweet images and charming thoughts, but she could also pen more profound musings. From her window, she could see the town cemetery and witnessed scores of funeral processions. She lost many loved ones and lived through the Civil War, so it’s not surprising that she often wrote of Death and the Afterlife.
I’ve quoted these lines in many a condolence letter:
“This world is not conclusion.
A species stands beyond.
Invisible as Music
But positive, as Sound.”
I’ve also toured her house, and seen the bed chamber that doubled as her office, and the tiny desk where she wrote—often by the light of an oil lamp, late into the night. These things are preserved as they were when she used them, and you almost expect her to drift back inside, wearing her trademark white dress.
These days, her love life is the aspect most speculate about. She did express passion (“Wild nights-wild nights! Were I with thee, wild nights should be our luxury!”), and her correspondence with men and women often included intimate longing.
Her relationship with her sister-in-law, Susan, was incredibly close, and naturally, the gay community wants her to be lesbian.
There is no conclusive proof, and many other corners of her inner life are ambiguous or complete mysteries.
What is undeniable is that Emily Dickinson lived a multi-faceted, fully rounded, productive life for 55 years, and her legacy is priceless.
