EMILY DICKINSON
Death poems
LIFE & POETRY
• Born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts
• Started writing poetry in her twenties
• Excellent student, but frequently ill
• Poor health, fragile mental state
• Influenced by: Benjamin Franklin Newton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Wordsworth
• Looking after her mother, feeling secluded, depressed
• Died of kidney disease in 1886
• Little of her work published before her death, and those were edited/altered
• Poignant and compressed verses, huge influence on 20th century poetry
TO WHAT EXTENT WAS EMILY DICKINSON THE
ECCENTRIC RECLUSE SHE IS OFTEN PORTRAYED
AS BEING?
• The legend of Emily Dickinson has created an exaggerated
portrait of the Amherst poet. She was not always a recluse and,
in fact, was a gifted conversationalist.
• She spent long hours in her room not hiding, but writing or
reading.
• However, as time passed, Dickinson did become more reclusive.
She turned away many visitors, even friends who came to see
her, and rarely left her home. Dickinson's reclusive tendencies
caused gossip to build around her even while she lived–some
Amherst townspeople referred to her as "The Myth."
IMPORTANT TERMS – THE GREAT REVIVAL
• The Great Revival = The Second Great Awakening -
· A religious movement that swept New England
around 1850. A renewal of religious conviction and
activity, a recommitment to Jesus Christ and the tenets
(=principles) of Christianity.
• It rejected the skeptical rationalism.
METHODIST CAMP MEETING, 1839 (J. MAZE BURBANK)
TRANSCENDENTALISM
• Transcendentalism: A philosophical and literary
movement popular in New England between about
1836 and 1860.
• Its central precepts focus on the divinity of man and his
relationship to nature. It leaned on the philosophy of
Immanuel Kant and the English romantic poets
Coleridge and Wordsworth. In America, Ralph Waldo
Emerson was the most prominent proponent of
Transcendentalism.
AMHERST?
New England New England in the USA
LIFE & POETRY
DEATH POEMS
• Very important role in her writings
• Out of a 1770 poems 500-600 are about it
• The reason why is still unknown
• Influences: general cultural inheritance, the Bible, American Puritanism, metaphysical
poets
• Circumstances: self-immurement [imprisonment], geographical, physical, existential,
strategic
• Thomas Johnson: death is a mystery to be solved, but even she didn’t have a solution
• Jane Donahue: death is the ultimate form of limitation and transformation, which
Dickinson was fascinated by; she tests her own religion, faith, belief in them
• Katharina Ernst: death is subordinated to life; it’s either everything that ends or what’s
after it, „outside”; the condition of what they are said to escape
I HEARD A FLY BUZZ – WHEN I DIED -
I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away
The Stillness in the Room What portion of me be
Was like the Stillness in the Air - Assignable - and then it was
Between the Heaves of Storm - There interposed a Fly -
The Eyes around - had wrung them dry - With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -
And Breaths were gathering firm Between the light - and me -
For that last Onset - when the King And then the Windows failed - and then
Be witnessed - in the Room - I could not see to see –
I HEARD A FLY BUZZ – WHEN I DIED -
• About the last minutes of being alive
• All half-rhymes (Room/Storm, firm/Room) except for the last stanza which is a full rhyme
(me/see) > building tension, true completion with the final stanza (by death)
• Mental distractions by irrelevant details even at the moment of death
• Macabre: the tiny fly becomes death itself
• Detailed evocation of a deathbed scene
I FELT A FUNERAL IN MY BRAIN
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And then I heard them lift a Box
And Mourners to and fro And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
Then Space - began to toll,
That Sense was breaking through -
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And when they all were seated, And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
A Service, like a Drum -
Wrecked, solitary, here -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb - And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then –
I FELT A FUNERAL IN MY BRAIN
• The speaker’s descent into madness, terrifying for both the speaker and the reader
• Funeral
• the part of the speaker which is „dying”
• it’s an event which suggests control and order
• passing from one state to another; the speaker from sanity to insanity
• Speaker: both observer and participant > Self/mind is divided
• Mourners: representation of her own pain
• In the last two stanzas: shattered mind, „wrecked, solitary”
• Last stanza: standing on a plank > insecure about her rationality; losing her connection to
reality; she „plunges” into madness
• Last word: „then—”, it’s not the end, leaves it open for further nightmares and horror
BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH
Because I could not stop for Death – Or rather – He passed Us –
He kindly stopped for me – The Dews drew quivering and Chill –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves – For only Gossamer, my Gown –
And Immortality. My Tippet – only Tulle –
We slowly drove – He knew no haste We paused before a House that seemed
And I had put away A Swelling of the Ground –
My labor and my leisure too, The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –
For His Civility –
Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
We passed the School, where Children strove
Feels shorter than the Day
At Recess – in the Ring –
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
Were toward Eternity –
We passed the Setting Sun –
BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH-
• Gossamer = ökörnyál, fátyolszövet, tippet = körgallér, cornice = párkánykoszorú
• Multiple version of this poem
• Death is portrayed as a suitor, a gentleman, a kind civil man
• She stops the carriage because of his kindness and agrees to go with him
• She’s not ready for the journey with Death > she’s not dressed properly
• Drive itself: journey through death, from childhood (school, playing children) through
maturity („gazing grain” is ripe) and the setting (dying) sun to her grave
• Children and grain can also stand for a possible future
• „Passed” is repeated multiple times in the 3rd and 4th stanza; it becomes damp and cold
(in contrast to warmth from previous stanzas); activity becomes inactivity
• They pause at the grave
BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH-
• Fifth stanza: the speaker is dead, the language becomes a bit abstract
• Since then – ’tis Centuries and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
• The speaker’s been dead for a long time now, but she still remembers this vivid memory
• The speaker is not an active participant of the happenings around her
• Death is not chaperoning her, she is following him
• She only guesses („surmised”) they’re heading for Eternity
