“When a little Girl, I had a friend who taught me immortality – but venturing too near himself – he never returned.”
I have been reading about the life and work of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), usually considered along with Walt Whitman, as the greatest American poet. What struck me first was the clearly discernable Vedantic streak in her work.
While the Amerian Transcendentalists like Emerson who wrote the poem ‘Brahma’, Thoreau who in his ‘Walden’ mentioned ‘bathing in the waters of the Bhagavad Gita’, and Whitman who in his collection ‘Leaves of Grass’ had expressed the Vedantic spirit of onehood of everything quite clearly, for Dickinson, who is not counted among the Transcendentalists, it came to me as a surprise.
Consider this poem.
The Brain – is wider than the Sky –
For – put them side by side –
The one other will contain
With ease – and You – beside
The Brain – is deeper than the Sea –
For – hold them – blue to blue –
The One the other will absorb –
As Sponges – Buckets – do
The Brain – is just the weight of God –
For Heft them – pound to pound –
And they will differ – if they do –
As Syllable from the Sound –
The last stanza is especially profound and I cannot pretend to grasp it fully – or arrive at one clear interpretation set in stone; perhaps that is where its arresting beauty lies. An Upanishadic Rishi would possibly express his feeling in no different a way.
Emily Dickinson lived a life of a complete recluse. A spinster, for the last fifteen years of her life she was hardly seen outside her home in countryside of Massachusetts, and for long periods even outside her room. After her father passed away, she lived with her elderly mother. She took to wearing only white and shut herself out of public view. “Some keep the Sabbath going to the Church — I keep it, staying at Home” then became her abiding motto as described in a poem. Once she went out at midnight to have a view of the renovated church in the luminous moonlight with no one else in sight. Not unsurprisingly, she was considered weird by the local people who only knew of her existence but hardly ever got to see her.
Dickinson published only some five to ten poems anonymously during her lifetime and that too without titles.
Daughter of a lawyer who had also been a Congressman for a few years, she did not attend University which was anyway not common among women in those times. Her grandfather was one of the founders of the prestigious Amherst College in the area but that too was only for men. She attended a local school and seminary for a about 7-8 years. Thus like all great Western women of letters of that century – Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and George Eliot, she was mainly an auto-didact. A pupil of Dickinson’s father had introduced her to the poetical works of Wordsworth and Emerson. She had studied the Latin classics and was well-steeped in Biblical scholarship. Shakespeare’s works were an unceasing source of inspiration and a grand university for her. “Does one need need anything else,” she is known to have said.
It was only after her death, that her younger sister discovered in her bureau, some 1800 poems and thus started the enterprise of posthumous publication of her poems which continued for more than half a century.
In publishing her work a crucial role was played by a man named Thomas Higginson, himself a person of varied experiences and gifts. A clergyman who had studied at Harvard Divinity School, a military commander in the rank of Colonel, a vehement anti-slavery campaigner, author, and a women’s rights activist, Higginson was truly a multi-faceted person. He was the famed author of ‘Army Life in a Black Regiment’, published in 1870, and considered as an important book in the history of Black ethnic groups in America. In this book he had recounted his experiences with the First South Carolina Volunteers, the regiment comprising former slaves which he had the occasion to command.
In 1894, Higginson had met the then 31-year-old Vivekananda, 40 years his junior, in New York, and instantly became close to him. As the President of the Free Religious Association he invited the great Swami to speak in New York the same year. He also took an ardent interest in the Swami’s work and plans for India. Along with Betty Legget (a life-long friend and admirer of Vivekananda) Higginson also became a member of the ‘Ramakrishna Guild of Help for Girls’ and Women Welfare’ set up by Sister Nivedita in America for raising funds for her work in India.
The correspondence between Dickinson and Colonel Higginson started in 1862 and continued till the end of her life. He was, as it were, a sounding board for her thoughts and feelings. It is largely accepted that without an audience it is difficult to continue to produce literary and artistic work at such a prolific rate and Dickinson also seems to have struggled with this, but even with her profuse correspondence with Higginson she shared very few poems with him. She seems to have bothered little about publishing them at that time and the a desire of recognition also seems to be far from her mind as is evident in her letter to Higginson where she wrote, “If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her.”
The fame was to be hers and immortality too.
PS : The attached portrait is perhaps Emily Dickinson’s only one taken at the age of 16.
