The Lifeway And Creativity: Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, one of the greatest poets of the 19th century, wrote her poetry differently than others during her time and generation. The metaphors and symbolism she uses throughout her poems are enthralling, and incites her audience to continue to reflect on her poems long after, as they decipher the intricate and witty language she uses. Her poems tell a story about her life, and how she looks at certain aspects of it, one of those major themes being her outlook on religion.
Although not popular, she expressed her opinion to break free from what she was taught as a young girl. As one reads her different works of poetry, they can identify her bold, brilliant, and blasphemous subjects and style of writing in the poems that differentiate her from any other poet we have seen. Her boldness is extremely apparent in most of her poems, but it is especially evident as she wrote Poem 202, stating that “‘faith’ is a fine invention.” She also states that “microscopes are prudent, in an emergency.” By her stating this, she is suggesting to her audience that science and medicine are what should be turned to over turning to religion when one is in need.
At this time in the mid 19th century, there was a debate about medicine and science, as some people during that time would turn to religion instead of science. “This brings up the long-standing feud that the church and science have had because one deals with believing while the other is about seeing. In this case, Dickinson is saying that she fairs more with science and how that has been more to her than her faith” (Eugenie- American Literature).
In this poem, she is also being bold by challenging the reader by the style she is writing in. By putting the word faith in those quotations, she is being cheeky as some would say, by saying that “faith” was constructed. People can use faith to alleviate their minds, but Dickinson is saying that there should be a reasonable balance between religion and science when it comes to important matters. She did not believe that religion should be relied on when science and medicine are really what are prudent in certain situations. It seems like she has been around the conservative type of religious people all throughout her life, and it is very brave and bold of her to reject how typical religion is practiced in these times and giving her thoughts and opinions on the matter so explicitly in her poems.
Along with being very bold in her poems, she also shows her brilliance through her writing. Her cleverness is well expressed in Poem 207. At first read, a reader would assume that she is just speaking about alcohol, but the poem, in fact, is not about alcohol at all. She is comparing how she feels a sort of “natural high” in nature as she would if she were to be tipsy off the alcohol she is describing. Her use of metaphors are very witty and challenges the reader to really look deeper into her poems and not take everything at face value. Not only did Dickinson use inventive metaphors in her poetry, she also used personification, especially when it came to her poems about death.
In Poem 479, she describes death like it is a human being, possibly to make it easier for the reader to understand death in a different way. She did not want to stop for death, clearly because she did not want to die, but death stopped for her instead, acting like it was a person on the street stopping for her. “The poem could hardly be said to convey an idea, as such, or a series of ideas; instead, it presents a situation in terms of human experience. The conflict between mortality and immortality is worked out through the agency of metaphor and tone.” (Modern American Poetry)
Poem 339 is another example of her how she uses metaphors to convey a message. In the second stanza, she writes, “The Beads opon the Forehead By homely Anguish strung.” She uses the language “beads” and “strung” like a necklace, but she in fact is using that as a metaphor for beads of sweat falling down the head of the person near death, stringing together like a necklace. Her use of metaphors and personification shows her intelligence and how her poems were anything but typical. It would not be correct to say that the subject matter of some of Dickinson’s poems were completely blasphemous in all senses of the word. For her to be completely blasphemous, that would mean she would have to had no respect for the religion or for God, which is not true by looking at the context of her poems.
When Dickinson was in her teen years, her family and friends made the public profession of belief in God, which was necessary for them to become full members of the church. Dickinson struggled with her relationship with God, thus deciding not to join the church to remain true to herself. Once she decided to stop attending church services altogether, she wanted to “keep the sabbath at home,” which she stated in one of her poems (Emily Dickinson Museum). Despite not practicing religion the traditional way during her time, her poems do not reflect a hatred for religion or God; at most they reflect some of her issues and doubts regarding faith.
In Poem 236, Dickinson expresses that she feels more connected to God when she is in nature than she would ever feel going to church, and that her home is her church. At the end of the poem, she states that instead of going to church like others do in order to eventually “get to heaven”, she believes that she is already going to be going all along. Dickinson does not feel the need to prove her faith and loyalty to God like others by going to church, and that God preaches to her right at her own home through nature. Just because Dickinson has doubts about God and religion does not mean that she expresses blasphemy in her poems.
Some would say that she is a non believer when it comes to getting to heaven and the afterlife, but she has not been shown to be a non believer in religion or in God through her poems. By her saying that she keeps the sabbath at home, that just shows that she is a believer in religion. To say that she is blasphemous would be a harsh criticism of her poetry. Some say that Emily Dickinson’s poems are bold, brilliant, and blasphemous. Her boldness is shown by expressing herself and her beliefs even though it is not in line with her community. Her brilliance is apparent by the witty structure of poems, as well as the language and metaphors she uses. However, I do not think that Dickinson was blasphemous, due to the fact that even though her tone in her religious poems was not typical to a religious poem, she still has faith in God.
In a called book “One Unbroken Company,” the author writes about how Dickinson’s early years in her religious schools shaped her and her outlook on religion. “The question of religious influence becomes clear in the judgement about Dickinson’s formative years at Mount Holyoke. Albert Gelpi even calls it a “nightmare” - tend to describe her “rebellion” against the authoritarianism of religion in terms of the more positive myth of the romantic or transcendental poet” (Burbick, 62). This aids to explain that growing up around religion, and learning about it continuously in school did not affect Dickinson in the same way it affected her peers. It molded her into a bold and brilliant women, who had doubts and different views about her religion, and expressed that through her poetry in a mysterious and interesting way, unlike anyone ever did before her.
