Emily Dickinson

Who Was Emily Dickinson?

Born on December 10, 1830, in
Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily
Dickinson left school as a teenager,
eventually living a reclusive life on the
family homestead. There, she secretly
created bundles of poetry and wrote
hundreds of letters. Due to a discovery
by sister Lavinia, Dickinson's
remarkable work was published after
her death—on May 15, 1886, in
Amherst—and she is now considered
one of the towering figures of
American literature.

Early Life and Education

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Her family had deep roots in New England. Her paternal grandfather, Samuel Dickinson,
was well known as the founder of Amherst College. Her father worked at Amherst and
served as a state legislator. He married Emily Norcross in 1828 and the couple had three
children: William Austin, Lavinia Norcross and middle child Emily.

An excellent student, Dickinson was educated at Amherst Academy (now Amherst

College) for seven years and then attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary for a year.
Though the precise reasons for Dickinson's final departure from the academy in 1848 are
unknown; theories offered say that her fragile emotional state may have played a role
and/or that her father decided to pull her from the school. Dickinson ultimately never
joined a particular church or denomination, steadfastly going against the religious norms
of the time.

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Family Dynamics and Writing

Dickinson began writing as a teenager. Her early influences include Leonard Humphrey,
principal of Amherst Academy, and a family friend named Benjamin Franklin Newton,
who sent Dickinson a book of poetry by Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1855, Dickinson
ventured outside of Amherst, as far as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There, she befriended
a minister named Charles Wadsworth, who would also become a cherished
correspondent.

Among her peers, Dickinson's closest friend and adviser was a woman named Susan
Gilbert, who may have been an amorous interest of Dickinson's as well. In 1856, Gilbert
married Dickinson's brother, William. The Dickinson family lived on a large home
known as the Homestead in Amherst. After their marriage, William and Susan settled in a
property next to the Homestead known as the Evergreens. Emily and sister Lavinia served
as chief caregivers for their ailing mother until she passed away in 1882. Neither Emily
nor her sister ever married and lived together at the Homestead until their respective
deaths.

Dickinson's seclusion during her later years has been the object of much speculation.
Scholars have thought that she suffered from conditions such as agoraphobia, depression
and/or anxiety, or may have been sequestered due to her responsibilities as guardian of
her sick mother. Dickinson was also treated for a painful ailment of her eyes. After the
mid-1860s, she rarely left the confines of the Homestead. It was also around this time,
from the late 1850s to mid-'60s, that Dickinson was most productive as a poet, creating
small bundles of verse known as fascicles without any awareness on the part of her family
members.

In her spare time, Dickinson studied botany and produced a vast herbarium. She also
maintained correspondence with a variety of contacts. One of her friendships, with Judge
Otis Phillips Lord, seems to have developed into a romance before Lord's death in 1884.

Death and Discovery

Dickinson died of kidney disease in Amherst, Massachusetts, on May 15, 1886, at the age
of 55. She was laid to rest in her family plot at West Cemetery. The Homestead, where
Dickinson was born, is now a museum.

Little of Dickinson's work was published at the time of her death, and the few works that
were published were edited and altered to adhere to conventional standards of the time.
Unfortunately, much of the power of Dickinson's unusual use of syntax and form was lost
in the alteration. After her sister's death, Lavinia Dickinson discovered hundreds of
poems that Emily had crafted over the years. The first volume of these works was
published in 1890. A full compilation, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, wasn't published
until 1955, though previous iterations had been released.

Emily Dickinson's stature as a writer soared from the first publication of her poems in
their intended form. She is known for her poignant and compressed verse, which
profoundly influenced the direction of 20th-century poetry. The strength of her literary
voice, as well as her reclusive and eccentric life, contributes to the sense of Dickinson as
an indelible American character who continues to be discussed today.
 Poem’s
Success is counted sweetest
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host

Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of victory

As he defeated – dying –
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear

Summary

The speaker says that “those who ne’er succeed” place the highest value on success.
(They “count” it “sweetest”.) To understand the value of a nectar, the speaker says, one
must feel “sorest need.” She says that the members of the victorious army (“the purple
Host / Who took the flag today”) are not able to define victory as well as the defeated,
dying man who hears from a distance the music of the victors.
Form
The three stanzas of this poem take the form of iambic trimeter—with the exception of
the first two lines of the second stanza, which add a fourth stress at the end of the line.
(Virtually all of Dickinson’s poems are written in an iambic meter that fluctuates fluidly
between three and four stresses.) As in most of Dickinson’s poems, the stanzas here
rhyme according to an ABCB scheme, so that the second and fourth lines in each stanza
constitute the stanza’s only rhyme.

Commentary
Many of Emily Dickinson’s most famous lyrics take the form of homilies, or short moral
sayings, which appear quite simple but that actually describe complicated moral and
psychological truths. “Success is counted sweetest” is such a poem; its first two lines
express its homiletic point, that “Success is counted sweetest / By those who ne’er
succeed” (or, more generally, that people tend to desire things more acutely when they do
not have them). The subsequent lines then develop that axiomatic truth by offering a pair
of images that exemplify it: the nectar—a symbol of triumph, luxury, “success”—can best
be comprehended by someone who “needs” it; the defeated, dying man understands
victory more clearly than the victorious army does. The poem exhibits Dickinson’s keen
awareness of the complicated truths of human desire (in a later poem on a similar theme,
she wrote that “Hunger—was a way / Of Persons outside Windows— / The Entering—
takes away—”), and it shows the beginnings of her terse, compacted style, whereby
complicated meanings are compressed into extremely short phrases (e.g., “On whose
forbidden ear”).

I taste a liquor never brewed

I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro’ endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –

When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee

Out of the Foxglove’s door –
When Butterflies – renounce their “drams” –
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –

And Saints – to windows run –
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the – Sun!
Summary

The "liquor never brewed" has a touch of something unearthly about it. Not all the vats
upon the Rhine can produce such drink, because it is scooped in rare pearls. The
ingredients of the liquor are extraordinary. In a deeply confessional note, the poet tells us
of her addiction to drink and her sensual nature. But the drink she is addicted to is
exhilarating air and her sensual indulgence is in the dew. Tipsy with intoxication the poet
reels away her endless summer days. No edicts or edifications can bar the poet from this
indulgence, because she drinks not from earthly bars, but from the 'inns of molten blue",
meaning heavenly inns. Her intoxication, therefore, is divine. The stanza has unusual and
fresh images which are not "the worn out counters of expression."

When the landlords turn out the drunken bee from foxgloves in their gardens, and when
the butterfly drinks to her fill and renounces, the poet can still drink the draughts of
ecstasy. The poet continues to drink the divine intoxicant from the inexhaustible vessel of
nature, till the saints and angels in heaven grow jubilant to see the "little tippler leaning
against the sun. The ecstasy of divine intoxication is so profound that the poet is
transported to the sun when she leans against him.

The theme of the poem is indirectly presented through images, metaphors and symbols.
The poet speaks of her inebriety (drunkenness). The "liquor never brewed" that she tastes
does not belong to this world, but to her world of sensuous imagination. She drinks to the
less the exhilarating aspects of nature. The artist is intoxicated with divine madness. The
"little Tippler" in the poem is Emily Dickinson, who drinks in ecstasy "from the inns of
molten blue", with saints and angels. The poet, through fresh and unusual images, makes
us share her ecstasy. It was a reeling triumph to be a secret drinker while in the name of
Orthodox religion one can close the bars of Amberst, but not the "inns of molten blue"
where she drank with saints and was served by angles.
There is certain slant of light
There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –

We can find no scar,
But internal difference –
Where the Meanings, are –

None may teach it – Any –

'Tis the seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air –

When it comes, the Landscape listens –

Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death
Summary
The slant gives the speaker a heavenly hurt. It is not physical suffering, but the suffering
of the spirit. Man helplessly must endure this suffering, because the sources of suffering
are so mysterious and powerful. The forces of nature which send affliction on man are so
powerful that even landscape shudders at their approaching footsteps, and shadows
suspend their breath with fear. When they go away, it is like a look of death going away
from us.

The season, as well as the day, are suggestive of death. The slant of light on a winter day
is endowed with some anthropomorphic qualities. It is oppressive like the sad cathedral
tunes. Emily Dickinson's way of comparing the slant rays of the dying day to the weight
of the cathedral tunes, reflects the meta-physical quality of her mind. Nature represented
by the slant rays of the setting sun in winter, is a source of human suffering. Nature
causes hurt to the human spirit. This clearly reflects Emily Dickinson's tragic view of life,
and contours of her despair. The suffering caused by natural forces is not physical, but
spiritual.

The word 'heavenly' suggests that the winter light is symbolic of God. It becomes the
agent of God to inflict pain on the mind of the speaker. The hurt is not physical and
therefore leaves no visible scar on the body. The hurt is internal. It is in the spirit of man
where meanings of things lie. The air sends an imperial affliction. Again the speaker is at
the receiving end. The word 'imperial' further attests Emily's use of 'air' to symbolize
God. So, light and air, as agents of God send affliction and despair on the spirit of man.
None can resist it and none can understand their ways. None can understand the ways of
God and nature. They elude us. It is like the 'heavenly hurt'. It suggests that God is behind
the acts of nature.

When the 'heavenly hurt' or the 'imperial affliction' comes, the landscape shudders with
fear and shadows suspend their breath. When it goes, it makes little difference. It leaves
the marks of death. When the light comes with its heavenly hurt, or when the air brings
the imperial affliction, the rest of Nature, like the landscape and shadows, trembles with
fear. When it goes, it is only like a look of death going a little farther from the speaker,
that is, it still leaves the speaker pale with fear and marks of death left behind

I felt a funeral in my brain

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -
And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -
Summary
This is one of the greatest poems of Emily imaginary. The theme of the poem is not the
funeral, real or imaginary, but an aberration of the mind, the gradual break-up of rational
powers and the final onset of madness. The theme is presented through the medium of the
funeral image. Emily Dickinson finds the funeral the saddest experience in human life.
She finds in it, therefore, appropriate symbols to evoke the image of decay of the mind.
The poem has richly symbolic vocabulary.

Through the funeral symbols, Emily Dickinson has concertized the experience of the sick
mind obsessed with its approaching disintegration. In her use of symbols and evolving
images through them and in finally communicating the experience, Emily Dickinson was
unwittingly a forerunner of modern symbolist movement in poetry.

Some ineffable experience of the madding mind is described through the images drawn
from funeral ceremony. There is no real funeral involved here. But all emotions
associated with a funeral are felt in the mind of the speaker. Possibly a picture of sad,
slow marching funeral procession is evoked in her mind. The Pall bearers and mourners
are described as treading. The whole ceremony takes place in the theatre of the speaker’s
mind. By the oppressive weight of the treading mourners, the sense of the speaker
experiences a break-up of her rational faculties. This is the initial experience of the
disintegrating mind.

When the mourners were seated there was a drum heard, perhaps, as a part of the
ceremony. Like the tread of the mourners in the first stanza, the heavy beat of the drums
and the sadness evoked by them are unbearably oppressive that the speaker now begins to
feel that her mind is becoming numb. The incessant beating of the drum (suggested by the
repetition of the beating) has nearly benumbed the speaker's mind. This is the second
stage of the dying of the rational faculty of the speaker.

The third and final part of the funeral is burial. This stanza uses symbols drawn from the
burial process. In this stanza the air of approaching lunacy is thickened. To an already
insufferable weight of the mourners' tread and the drum beat, a box and boots of lead are
added. The boots of lead also suggest the numbness or dullness of the soul. With the box
and boots of lead cracking 'across my soul' the speaker's mind has begun to crack, that is,
the sanity of the speaker's mind is being buried by the pall-bearers. The disintegration of
the mind is nearly complete. Till now the entire action ceremony has taken place in the
brain of the speaker. Now the reference to 'space and its 'toll' suggests that the theatre of
action is the external world. The outside world seems to toll the death bells.

In a stroke of fancy, the speaker imagines the space as tolling the bell and that the
Heavens themselves are acting like bells. The heavens are like a huge bell and the space
is tolling the bell. The speaker's physical being is one gigantic ear listening to the toll of
the bell. With the toll of the bell the speaker's rational faculties are buried; there is total
lunacy now. In the midst of the sounds of the bell there is no place for silence. Silence is
alienated from the world of noise as much as the speaker is alienated from the world of
rational beings.
One of the versions of the poem has the following four lines as concluding stanza:

And then a plank in reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down

And bit a world, at every plunge,

And got through knowing—then—

The presence of this stanza does not make any substantial difference in the interpretation
of the poem, On the contrary it strengthens our approach to the poem. The plank stands
for a kind of scaffolding across the open grave. Like all these things, the plank (Reason)
is broken by the weight of the mourners’ drum beats and boots of lead and creaking box.
That completes the disintegration of the speaker's mind "then", speaker plunges into the
condition of lunacy. The final word, then looks grotesquely inappropriate here. But then
the incoherence and disorderliness of speech are an indication of the total disintegration,
which the speaker has experienced.

The use of funeral as a metaphor symbolically stands for the death of rationality. Funeral
directly implies death and also a formal event where rules and procedures are counted.
The strict rules and regulations in funeral ironically shows the gap between the situation
of sanity and insanity. In insanity there is no control and rationality is threatened. Funeral
is a process of moving from life to death that is parallel to the speaker’s moving from
sanity to insanity. The speaker is not actually observing the funeral, but feeling it and
being a part of it.
References

D'Arienzo (2006); the original is held by Amherst College Archives and Special
Collections

"Emily Dickinson biography". Biography.com. Retrieved 25 August 2018. "The Emily

Dickinson Museum indicates only one letter and ten poems were published before her
death". Emilydickinson,useum.org. Retrieved 25 August 2018. McNeil (1986), 2.

Sewall (1974), 321.

"Dickinson, #657". Itech.fgcu.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-10-04. Retrieved

2016-09-12. Sewall (1974), 17–18.

Sewall (1974), 337; Wolff (1986), 19–21.

Wolff (1986), 14.

Wolff (1986), 36.