Her imagination thrust
her beyond the living into the mysteries of death and immortality. She wanted to
learn what lay beyond mortality before she experienced it. Through her poems,
she was never able to appease her curiosity or answer her endless questions but
only to speculate about them. In The spirit lasts - but in what mode The Spirit
lasts but in what mode Below, the Body speaks, But as the Spirit furnishes
Apart, it never talks The Music in the Violin Does not emerge alone But Arm in
Arm with Touch, yet Touch Alone is not a Tune The Spirit lurks within the Sea
That makes the Water live, estranged What would the Either be? Does that know
now or does it cease That which to this is done, Resuming at a mutual date With
every future one? Instinct pursues the Adamant, Exacting the Reply Adversity if
it may be, or Wild Prosperity The Rumor's Gate was shut so tight Before my Mind
was sown, Not even a Prognostic's Push Could make a Dent thereon she analyzes
the nature of man's changed life after death. Dickinson looks at the question,
could the soul exist without the body. She concludes that the body and the soul
interact to form an identity, and matter is essential to spiritual expression.
Beauty, truth and grace are too abstract for the imagination to comprehend for
the speaker in the poem so she must direct her questions outside the living only
to find Adamant.
The poem This world is not conclusion This World is not
Conclusion. A Species stands beyond - Invisible, as Music - But positive, as
Sound - It beckons, and it baffles - Philosophy - don't know - And through a
Riddle, at the last - Sagacity, must go - To guess it, puzzles scholars - To
gain it, Men have borne Contempt of Generations And Crucifixion, shown - Faith
slips - and laughs, and rallies - Blushes, if any see- Plucks at a twig of
Evidence - And asks a Vane, the way - Much Gesture, from the Pulpit - Strong
Hallelujahs roll - Narcotics cannot still the Tooth That nibbles at the soul -
addresses the question of, is immortality possible? Dickinson starts off assure
of her belief in immortality but as the poem develops that assurance breaks down
and is questioned. Human thought, intellect, and wisdom is not enough to support
the hope of immortality. All resources of the living world are unable to
understand it. It demonstrates the drive of humans to the enigmas that
immortality and death present and it represents how the question of immortality,
nibbles at the soul.
Dreaming allows Dickinson to have the speaker in the poem
question and wonder about death without experiencing it. As though she was
playing a role in a play Dickinson looks at death in a dream as a person who has
been brought to the end of mortality and has crossed over to eternity in We
dream - it is good we are dreaming. We dream -- it is good we are dreaming -- It
would hurt us -- were we awake -- But since it is playing -- kill us, And we are
playing -- shriek -- What harm? Men die -- externally -- It is a truth -- of
Blood -- But we -- are dying in Drama -- And Drama -- is never dead -- Cautious
-- We jar each other -- And either -- open the eyes -- Lest the Phantasm --
prove the Mistake -- And the livid Surprise Cool us to Shafts of Granite -- With
just an Age -- and Name -- And perhaps a phrase in Egyptian -- It's prudenter --
to dream -- The speaker is claiming to be playing a death role in a drama but
she feels uneasy with the concept that the performance actually involves dying.
The actors are all dying by some degree and making them actors in a play allows
Dickinson to use her imagination to experience death. However, she is soon
confronted with the idea of her own elimination from the living and that she
must wake up from her dream. Representation using dreaming and sleep in Where
bells no more affright the morn Where bells no more affright the morn -- Where
scrabble never comes -- Where very nimble Gentlemen Are forced to keep their
rooms -- Where tired Children placid sleep Thro' Centuries of noon This place is
Bliss -- this town is Heaven -- Please, Pater, pretty soon! Oh could we climb
where Moses stood, And view the Landscape o'er Not Father's bells -- nor
Factories, Could scare us any more! suggests that fleeing from the world is
often better than to remain and that the dead are often more tired of the living
than the living of them. The speaker dreams of being in heaven, where tired
Children Sleep, immune from her father's bells and factories that represents the
living world. Once more Dickinson is able to escape the world in a dream so that
she may imagine herself away from the busy world content and blissful in heaven.
The passing on from life to death in Emily Dickinson's poetry often takes on the
form of a journey. In most cases the narrator has been brought to the brink of
death and is confronted by glimpses into the other side only revealed to the
dead and only speculated about by the living. She is often requesting entry to
or understanding of the other side. Secrets about death are often used as an
incentive for the narrator to come so close to death, and many times the speaker
is unable to force itself to proceed into the other side because of its
mysteriousness. The joy and emotion expressed in Tis so much joy!
|
