Linda Poziwilko

Publication Date

5-1990

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

William McMahon, Nancy Davis, George McCelvey

Comments

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Degree Program

Department of English

Degree Type

Master of Arts

Abstract

It has long been accepted by researchers of Emily Dickinson that many of her poems are distinctly erotic, such as her widely known and often quoted "Wild Nights-Wild Nights!" (249). It is also generally acknowledged that she was in love (although disputes continue over the identity of the specific individual), and that religion was a determining force in her life. To date, there are voluminous amounts of critical research exploring Dickinson's religious poetry, and the fascination with her unidentified lover has also spurred much literary sleuthing, speculating, and hypothesizing. Relatively little has been done with her erotic poetry, however, and very few studies have attempted to link the three areas of love, eroticism, and spirituality, even though her poetry indicates an intrinsic relationship between the three.

Additionally, critical and biographical studies of Dickinson have portrayed her as a recluse who rejected her society, a partially justifiable assumption: she closed herself in her room and refused company, she wore only white, she spurned organized religion, she rejected the "traditional" female role of wife and mother, and her poetry dogmatically refused to embrace social issues, such as the Civil War raging in America during the peak of her poetic powers. Literary historians are beginning to recognize, however, that when Dickinson sequestered herself in her room, she took many years of active social involvement and an education in the classics with her, and she continued a lively correspondence with some of the finest minds of the era as well as continuing to read various contemporary publications. David Reynolds remarks that Dickinson's ". . . literariness resulted not from a rejection of socioliterary context but rather from a full assimilation and transformation of key images and devices from this context" (7). Dickinson may have chosen physical seclusion, but she never denied herself the stimulation of the outside world. To view her poetry as a product of isolation and rejection rather than synthesis is to ignore a crucial link between the stimuli she was subject to and the resultant poetry she was creating.

This study will explore the blending of eroticism, love, and spirituality found in Dickinson's poetry and it will conclude by demonstrating that rather than focusing on or rejecting any one of these areas, Dickinson was actually synthesizing the three into a vision of love as a value that transcended earthly boundaries. The eroticism present in so much of Dickinson's poetry (in far more of it than is generally recognized) is an expression of the total immersion that soul-to-soul love embraces, and she drew upon her exposure to classic literature, the Bible, contemporary writing, and personal experiences to formulate her unique vision.

The examination of Dickinson's progression toward a vision of transcendent love and her subsequent synthesis of love, eroticism, and spirituality will be approached in three major chapters. The first chapter will discuss "Love Terrene," or overwhelming physical desire, and poetry analysis will reveal the large number of erotic images, symbols, metaphors, and allusions present in Dickinson's poetry. Inseparable - from desire was the provocativeness of immersion, or "Love Marine," and the second chapter discusses Dickinson's deepening love as a force urging her toward establishment of a new identity with the beloved. The third chapter focuses on the poetry that reveals Dickinson's ultimate discovery, through human love, of "Love celestial" and the clear incorporation of eroticism, immersion, and eternity. Human love becomes the paradoxical promise of blissful and eternal union with the beloved, for it is a love too perfect for earthly realms.

A study of this nature is of significance because while critics and researchers of Dickinson readily acknowledge that her poetry contains erotic elements, few have adequately drawn connections between the reclusive, supposedly virginal Dickinson and the amatory verse she produced. She has been dissected into tiny pieces and examined closely, and Invaluable information has resulted, but future research must strive toward reassembling Dickinson and recognizing that while her poetry can be broken down into the minutest elements and investigated, all research must ultimately have the same goal-- to better understand the entire body of Dickinson's work in relation to Dickinson herself. Granted, there remains considerable enigma about Dickinson as well as about her conclusions on love and eroticism, but her poetry and letters reveal clear connections between the elements of love, terrene, love marine, and love celestial. To separate them divides Dickinson from one of her probable poetic goals: to establish a clear junction between the earthly and the divine via the channel of love.

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Creative Writing | English Language and Literature | Literature in English, North America | Poetry

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