16/03/2017

She was born in Amherst in 1830. She shared her poems only with very
close friends. She tried to publish her work but only got to publish ten
poems. Her sister discovered her bookets after her death. They were really
close.

Her poetry shows a really strong influence of philosophical Idealism. We

can link her works with philosophers as Plotinus and Plato.

She feels the ideal already in her garden, she doesnt need any more. She
didnt travel, so didnt see any world (as Whitman did). Physically, Whitman
was a really powerful man, he didnt fear anything. He needed to live
outside, meet up with everyone. Emily is the opposite, especially after the
death of her father. She shot herself away at home after that, because it
was really hard to her.
She was really close to her sister. She didnt get any recognition at her
times, her friends and the critics were critical with her poetry. She always
had platonic loves (she idealized everything). She makes of every detail an
idealization of reality, also of the love for someone else. We can see the link
with Plato. When she saw a man, she didnt see the man but the idealization
of him, the perfection. The idea of love was for her a perfection of thought.
She needed the conceptualization of reality, the attitude of the
transcendent. She fell in love with a priest that was married. She didnt fall
in love with a man, but with her idea of love. She showed herself humble
facing the man she was in love with, because he was idealized.

She was influenced by Jonathan Edwards. This author influenced on

Romantics more that it seems. Feeling the experience of God, has to do with
Religion but also with Romanticism. The idea of make the physical world
transcend is already in religion, the Romantics would demystify it. She
wrote: I find ecstasy in living, a quote that shows almost mysticism. It has
to do with this task of demystifying religion (she rewrites the theme of
religion). She can be compared with Santa Teresa.
Some of the characteristics of her writing are: intellectual wit, irony (in her
last poems mostly), ambiguity, and the use of paradoxes.

POEM 479

For instance, A Swelling of the Ground doesnt work as phenomena, but as

noumena. Capitalization here shows that it is something more than an
action (than phenomena). The action is conceptualized. In this poem,
phenomena would be people passing by, and noumena would be Death and
Immortality. Emily Dickinson is playing with Death, with the concept, that
only exists in human mind. In Romanticism, things that really matter are the
noumena, the concepts that we consider ideal. This idealization rules our
lives. Capitalization is used in this way: it gives relevance to whatever she
wants to give importance to. It suggests that reality is unhands. It gives
metaphorical meaning (a common noun it is used as a symbol).

POEM 591 / POEM 519

We are not to judge: human beings are as nature. We just exist, the same as
a flower. We deserve our existence. That way of seeing life reaches the idea
of Emerson: we are part of the general design of life. We have to distinguish
between knowledge and wisdom: we have to get knowledge, while wisdom
is personal. It is a personal is a conception of life that can be worse or
better. The perfect wisdom would be the idea of god. According to this
poem, God will be the perfection of though. All of these are the noumena,
perfection, idealism (following Plato and Plotinus). What happens, how we
judge what is happening is the conflict of the Romantics: we judge
everything in terms of idealization, but real life isnt perfect.

POEM 126

The problem with Romanticism is the anxiety it produces: what you demand
of yourself is not less than perfection. Their goal is to reach Wisdom, with
capital letters (is idealism). This idea of dreaming the impossible is really
American. But also really Romantic it this sense, trying to get perfection.
The tension is produced between phenomena and noumena. The noumena
is perhaps only in our heads but it exists anyway (capitalization of Emily
stands for it).

POEM 656

The attempt with capitalization is the idealization of everything. Dickinson

tries to make everything transcend, go into to the sublime. This is how she
perceives the phenomena in her mind: all the capital letters. The sea is not
the sea, but the Sea. She makes a concept out of everything. She takes
everything to this ideal world, the noumena.

POEM 978

Capitalization makes the phenomena approach the noumena. The dashes

show a continue dialogue with the reader. She gives the reader a gap to
think. The dashes are silences so that the reader may keep on thinking of
what she is saying. There is something hiding, something deeper. She
defines the immediate, things that are close to her, but conceptualizing
them, linking them with some perfection patrons. She doesnt have to move
anywhere (as Whitman did, searching for the absolute), because perfection
is close to her (she just has to look for it). These dashes give space to the
reader in order than he can also go to these places.

POEM 27
The phenomenon is a spider making a web: but she gives to this
phenomenon the category of noumena, the category of the absolute. Not as
something physical, but as something ideal. This conception isnt far from
Walt Whitman: he takes the universe to the category of the absolute while
Dickinson takes tiny little things to this category. Both of them transcend the
physical world (they search from the essence of things). This process comes
from religion. It consist on making for the dynamical (things that happen),
something eternal. It involves a certain pantheism. The main difference is
that Emily finds the absolute in tiny little things, her intimate life, while
Whitman finds it in Everything (he lives in the entire World). As we have
said, Emily doesnt need to move anywhere to transcend.

POEM 1545

Emily Dickinson was skeptical. By her time, a woman saying this kind of
things was really controversial. It is a very strong poem, which stand against
the institutionalized religion. In appearance, she was a really delicate
woman, but this kind of poems show the opposite thing. In her poems, she
demystifies the Bible, at the same time that she makes the little details
transcend. Rewriting whatever has been sacred so far: thats what the
Romanticism makes (the Bible isnt necessarily sacred anymore, but a shoe
can be).

POEM 620

Romantics also criticized the common sense, the importance of

materialism and business. Romantics always went beyond, into the
mysterious. They were against social conventions. Even if we can see this
attitude today (and not find it original), it begun it that time the
Romanticism was the start of this attitude. For the Romantics, and for Emily,
if you are consider insane, that proofs that you are sane.

POEM 732

Its a feminist poem, about the role that women had in her time. When a
woman gets married she is submitted to her husband requirements. At the
end of the poem, the heroine of the poem rejects her dreams just to fulfill
her husband and her duties as a wife.

POEM 788

Emily says that you dont have to publish your books because that way you
sell your wisdom: reduce no Human Spirit/ To Disgrace of Price. Do not
materialize the spirit, the ideal. Institutions must be demystified because
they are phantoms: money, capital, marriage What must be valorized are
all these tiny things that show transcendence (they are a gate to the
absolute). Despite of what she said in the poem, she tried to publish, but
she was a woman, so it was really hard to her to achieve this goal. She
asked some of her friends for publication, and got to publish poems. They
were censored and modified. She had the opportunity to success because
she was upper class. She read all the library of her father. She wrote 1.800
poems and she only published 10 during her lifetime.