Emily Dickinson: Mystic and Skeptic

EMILY DICKINSON: MYSTIC AND SKEPTIC By ROBERT GENE FLICK A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE COUNCIL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PABTIAL FULFILLMENT OF HIE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY' OF FLORIDA April, 1967 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To the administration and trustees of Jacksonville University I wish to express sincere thanUs for the paid leave of absence that allowed me to complete this dissertation. For their interest and support of my efforts to obtain such a grant, I am especially grateful to Dr. Dan A. Thomas, Dean of the Faculty, Dr. John E. Tilford, Chairman of the Divi- sion of Humanities, and Dr. George W. Hallam, Professor of English and a long-time friend. I want to thank those members of the English Department at the Uni- versity of Florida v^o have shown interest in my progress and have offered advice and encouragement over a period of several years. I should like to mention particularly Professors T. Walter Herbert, Edwin C. Kirkland, Peter Lisca, and Alton C. Morris. My principal debt of gratitude, for his kindness, patience, and wise counsel, must go to the chairman of my committee. Dr. John T. Fain, who has given generously of his time in going over my writing and guiding me in the various stages of this study. I am Indebted also to Dr. William Ruff, a considerate and helpful member of my committee for several years, and to the people who at various times have represented my minor in humanities: Dr. John H. Groth, an inspiring former teacher, and Dr. Eugene A. Hammond, who generously consented to replace the late Dr. Arthur W. Thompson. Finally, I wish to thank my wife and family for their sacrifices and understanding during the progress of my work. 11 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: BACKGROUND, DEFINITIONS, THE CRITICAL CONTEXT 1 XI UNCERTAINTY: THE CI£ANSING PERIL OF SKEPTICISM AND DOUBT. 34 III ECSTASY: THE AWAKENING OF THE SOUL 110 IV DESOLATION: THE PARADOX OF LOSS AND GAIN 153 V ILLUMINATION: ITANiJCENDENT CONCEPTS OF REALITY 133 VI PURGATION: THE WAY CF DEATH 225 VII RAVISHMENT: THE CONSUMMATION OF UNITY 292 CONCLUSIONS 374 A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 376 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 379 ill CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: BACKGROUND, DEFINITIONS, THE CRITICAL CONTEXT Backaround and purpose .— During the summer of 1962 I had occasion to re-read a considerable body of the poetry of Emily Dickinson In view of an illTxminating Introduction by Northrop Frye. It was partly a result of Frye's criticism that I began to see V7hat appeared to be a fusion of religious skepticism and mystical awareness in her poetry. The conception of Emily Dickinson as mystic and skeptic grew steadily from that time, culminating in the present study. This study represents an attempt to select a significant number of poems that reveal mystical or skeptical tendencies, to organize them Into meaningful phases of thought and feeling, and to explicate them emphasiz- ing their mystical and skeptical qualities. Her mysticism, though it has been discerned, has apparently never been fully documented; the poems that illustrate it have not been brought together and analyzed to deter- mine the distinctive character of her mysticism. Moreover, the unusual role of skepticism as a stimulant to her mystical temperament has not previously been described. These are some of the tasks undertaken here. In an attempt to avoid being unduly Influenced by the opinions of other critics, I postponed the reading of several of the standard works on the poet until the study was essentially complete. Though I V7as fully aware that her mystical tendencies had been noted by various writers, I Major Writers of America , ed. Perry Miller (New York, 1962), II, 3-17. had never encountered a statement describing her spiritual conscious- ness specifically as a combination of n^sticism and skepticism. It was astonishing, therefore, after the study was finished, to run on to the following passage in George Whicher's early biography. This Vas a Poet . After noting the "close parallel between her work and that of Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan," Whicher says that nevertheless she was evidently "not well acquainted" with these seventeenth century poets. She had, however, found one harbor in the seventeenth century. The writer of that period whom she most cherished, according to her statement to Higginson, was Sir Thomas Brov^ne. This is the first and last that we hear of him from her, but the hint is not to be neglected. Browne, who wrote the Religio Medici as a "private exercise" not in- tended for publication, who lived much apart from the world to speculate on the mysteries of time and death, who combined the mental attitudes of skeptic and mystic, and who loved to draw hermetic meanings out of scientific and mathematical figures, vjas obviously her spiritual kinsman, (p. 211) ^/hicher goes on to credit Margery McKay with the discovery that the poet's use of "circumference " is very similar to "Browne's use of the same word." Moreover, l\?hicher's recognition of contradictory tendencies in Emily Dickinson is not limited to his observation of her affinity with Browne. He says elsewhere that "like Emerson's Brahma, she was able to be both doubter and devotee in a fashion that puzzles more single-minded readers" (p. 292). Specifically concerning her work, he says, "In con- trast to her poems of affirmation, therefore, we find a number conceived in a purely skeptical mood" (p. 300). His most penetrating comment on her ambivalence is probably the following: ^George Frisbie VThicher, This Was a Poet (New York, 1939). At any moment she was ready to acknowledge in herself the claims of rationalist and mystic, Pyrrhonist and Transcen- dentalist. A mood of faith that possessed her in the morning might become matter of delicate mockery in the afternoon, a piercing grief could be sublimated overnight into a rapture of spiritual purgation, (p. 305) It would seem then that l-Jhicher observed in Emily Dickinson the same "mental attitudes of skeptic and mystic" that I have tried to docu- oient In the pages that follow. Though these statements come closest to expressing the synthesis aimed at in this study, there are quite a number of references that may be cited in support of mystical or skeptical tendencies alone. It might be appropriate to look at some of these, from both short and long works, before proceeding. Critical comments on mysticism or skepticism . —^Various short critical analyses of Emily Dickinson's achievement have been assembled 3 in the collection of essays edited by Richard B. Sewall. In most of these essays some statement may be found to suggest the poet's inclina- tion toward mysticism or skepticism. In his introduction, Sewall himself says, "She is variously a mystical poet, a romantic poet, a Metaphysical, a Transcendentalist, and, most recently, a Meditative poet" (p. 5). Conrad Aiken says that her Inability to find intellectual compan- ionship made her an easy "prey to the then current Emersonian doctrine of mystical individualism." He also remarks on her skeptical tendencies, particularly her irreverence toward the "Puritan conception of God." Commenting on her use of the expression, "Burglar, banker, father" and 3 Emily Dickinson; a Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1963). References to these essays x^ill be cited here- after by page only. on her apology to God for his own "duplicity," he concludes as follows: This, it must be repeated, is Emily Dickinson's opinion of the traditional and anthropomorphic "God," who was still, in her day, a portentous Victorian gentleman. Her real reverence, the reverence that made her a mystic poet of the finest sort, was reserved for Nature, which seemed to her a more manifest and more beautiful evidence of Divine Will than creeds and churches. (pp. 12-13) Allen Tate's essay, though it is one of the most illuminating, contains no specific reference to mysticism, but it does contain three or four statements that help to support my own conception of the poet and her work. Thougji the present study Is based almost entirely on the poetry, I have nevertheless, in the title, implied a designation for the poet herself. A comnent of Tate's tends to justify the identification of the poet with her work: "There is none of whom it is truer to say that the poet _is the poetry" (p. 19). Tate has also put his finger on the peculiar ability that made it possible for Emily Dickinson to be a mystic poet: ". like Donne, she perceives abstraction and thinks sensation ." Such perception may be con- sidered a mystical faculty, and the ability to translate the perception into concrete sensory Images is obviously a poetic faculty. He notes other "remarkable ties" between Dickinson and Donne, but the one that most clearly suggests her distinct position between mystic and skeptic is the following: In Miss Dickinson, as In Donne, we may detect a singularly morbid concern, not for religious truth, but for personal revelation. The modern word is self-exploitation. It Is ego- ism grown irresponsible in religion and decadent in morals. In religion it is blasphemy; in society it means usually that culture is not self-contained and sufficient, that the spiritual community is breaking up. This is, along vjith some other features that do not concern hs here, the per- fect literary situation, (pp. 21-23) To clarify the point Tate alludes to the situation that gave rise to Shakespeare. IThen the "world order is assimilated ... as medievalism was in Shakespeare, to the poetic vision,' it may be clearly seen for the fiction that it is.

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