The poetry of Emily Dickinson, one of the most remarkable poets of the 19th century, has the unique ability to create a sense of a special space where the action unfolds. Her images are in the sphere of the metaphysical, expressing symbolic, sublimely generalized ideas about the eternal inalienable categories of human existence. Analyzing her poems, despite the fragmentation and volume of works written by her, the impression of a full-fledged corpus of texts is created in the editor, the poet’s worldview is expressed.
Often, Dickinson in his poems concentrates on the transmission of a spiritual sensation bordering on revelation. Her lyrical hero touches or tries to approach something that transcends the limits of their knowledge, which is in the sphere of the transcendental. The poem “I stepped from plank to plank” describes the experiences of the heroine at night on the sea pier. The reader is in a situation of the most compressed imaginative and sensual perception that the poet expresses – the images are given in short and minimalistic phrases: “The stars above my head I felt, above my feet the sea” (Dickinson 870). In the second stanza of this short poem, the reader learns that the heroine is striding towards the edge of the pier, ready to fall into the night sea. The hero’s desire for death as a kind of spiritual experience also distinguishes Dickinson’s poetry. The anticipation and anticipation of this fateful moment colors the perception of the hero in special tones, making poetry more direct, conveying a short sensation of spiritual revelation.
The poem “I heard a fly buzz” directly focuses on the feelings of the hero on their deathbed. At the same time, the hero speaks about what is happening in the past tense, that is, from the mystical perspective of an inhabitant of the afterlife. Dickinson describes the process of separation of the soul from the human body, consciousness, striving for light in the process of transition to another existence. Dickinson again focuses on the description of symbolic images, metonymically depicting what is happening – that is why “the Eyes around” in this poem are a designation for relatives in the room (587). It is for an emphatically sublime symbolic meaning that Dickinson capitalizes some important visual images so that they emphasize the real drama of what is happening in her poems.
The fly in the poem is the last point of focus of the consciousness of the dying hero, before his soul finally rushes to the light. It should be noted that Dickinson’s trademark typographic sign is used as a dash for the sake of an intonation pause, which serves as an emotional enhancement. But also at the end of this poem a dash at the very end denotes the dissolution of consciousness in divine light. The poem “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun” ends with a similar sign. The dash at the end after the entry “I will die” also embodies the aspiration of human consciousness to the infinite during the transition to the afterlife. Thereby, in Dickinson’s poetry, the experience of death acts as a unique transitional state in the process of which human consciousness is able to see the eternal and spiritual.
At the same time, human experiences are also not alien to the lyrical hero Dickinson – moreover, their description in her poetry is also elevated to the level of sublime and grandiose. Dickinson’s love poetry, presented in the list, characterizes her as a poet with a unique perception of all key aspects of human life, singing them in a distinctive way. The romantic image of the raging sea can be found in the poem “Wild Nights – Wild Nights!” dedicated to the happiness and tranquility of the heart in mutual love.
At the same time, Dickinson’s poem on the theme of love is also dedicated to the bitter sensations of separation. The gradual fading of emotions and a kind of emotional paralysis are described in the poem “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”. At the same time, emotional experiences for Dickinson are strong and real, true sensations. Truth for the poet appears to be something so powerful and grandiose that it does not fit in the human mind. Truth can blind a person, so it must be given to a person gradually and proportionally, as shown in the poem “Tell all the truth – but tell it slant”.
In each of her poems, Dickinson seeks to convey his emotional life and ideas about the structure of the world, shaping his version of reality in such a way that it is accessible to the reader. Such eternal categories as love, death or hope are made in her poems more vivid and understandable, like the image of a bird in “Hope – is the thing with feathers.” Hope, portrayed as a bird in this poem, has an ease and desire to share with a person, but never take anything away from him. This precise and non-trivial image characterizes Emily Dickinson’s poetry in general. Using the sublime language and abstract images, the poet gets the opportunity to place descriptions of eternal categories in his poems, to make them understandable without losing the truth of their content.
Works Cited
Dickinson, Emily. “I stepped from plank to plank.” The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by R. W. Franklin, 1998, p. 587.
Dickinson, Emily. “I heard a fly buzz – when I died.” The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by R. W. Franklin, 1998, p. 870.