Hollowness in Emily Dickinson’s Poetic Discourse Essay example -- Biog

Hollowness in Emily Dickinson’s Poetic Discourse Much has been said about Emily Dickinson’s mystifying poetry and private life, especially during the years 1860-63. Allegedly it was during these years that the poetess, at the most prolific phase of her career, withdrew from society, began to wear her â€Å"characteristic† white dress and suffered a series of psychotic episodes. Dickinson tended to â€Å"theatricalize† herself by speaking through a host of personae in her poems and by â€Å"fictionalizing† her inner life as a gothic romance (Gilbert 584). Believing that a poem is â€Å"the best words in the best order† (to quote S.T. Coleridge) and that all the poems stemming from a single consciousness bring to surface different aspects / manifestations of the same personal mythology, I will firstly disregard biographical details in my interpretation of Dickinson’s poems 378, 341 and 280 and secondly place them in a sort of â€Å"continuum† (starting with 378 and ending with 280 ) to show how they attempt to describe a â€Å"plunge† into the Unconscious and a lapse into madness (I refrain from using the term â€Å"journey,† for it implies a â€Å"telos,† a goal which, whether unattainable or not, is something non-existent in the poems in question). Faced with the problem of articulating and concretizing inner psychological states, Dickinson created a totally new poetic discourse which lacks a transcendental signified and thus can dramatize the three stages of a (narrated) mental collapse: existential despair, withdrawal from the world of the senses and â€Å"death† of consciousness. In poem 378 the reader is introduced to the mental world of a speaker whose relentless questioning of metaphysical â€Å"truths† has led her to a state of complete â€Å"faithlessness†: l... ...son’s Poetry: Stairway of Surprise. New York: Holt, 1960. Eberwein, Jane Donahue. Dickinson: Strategies of Limitation. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1985. Feit Diehl, Joanne. â€Å"’Ransom in a Voice’: Language as Defense in Dickinson’s Poetry.† Feminist Critics Read Emily Dickinson. Ed. Suzanne Juhasz. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983. 156-75. Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the 19th Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. Homans, Margaret. â€Å"’Oh, Vision of Language’: Dickinson’s Poems of Love and Death.† Feminist Critics Read Emily Dickinson. Ed. Suzanne Juhasz. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983. 114-33. Miller, Cristanne. â€Å"How ‘Low Feet’ Stagger: Disruptions of Language in Dickinson’s Poetry.† Feminist Critics Read Emily Dickinson. Ed. Suzanne Juhasz. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983. 134-55.