Death, Mortality/Immortality, and the Afterlife in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson:
Demonstrating the Poet’s Belief in an Afterlife.
I)
Introduction:
Emily Dickinson (1830-86‘) was a poet
obsessed with Death, the hard-to-solve mystery of whether there is a life after
death, and the fear of the possibility of there being only oblivion after
humans die. She embodies the classic and all-too-prevailing tension between
reason, scientific learning, and rationality versus faith , trust , and
intuition that many well-known and erudite believers have suffered from and
still do so to this very day .That tension is very evident in her wavering
between certainty and doubt that can be gleaned from a study of her poetic magnum opi .But despite all that, it is
very probable from a close reading of her poems that she held a belief in an
immortal soul and that she did not view death
as final but rather as a transition point to another kind of existence.
Doubt solidifies and
strengthens faith, rather than weakening it. Many prominent historical and
contemporary Christian figures have endured frequently recurring periods of
doubt and uncertainty regarding the Supreme Being. Martin Luther, Mother
Teresa, C.S. Lewis, Charles Spurgeon, John Calvin, Pope Francis, the current
pope of the Roman Catholic Church, and a host of other religious intellectuals
and apologists. In fact, C.S. Lewis, arguably the most famous 20th century
English-speaking apologist for the Christian creed, was a fierce atheist before
once and for all reconverting to Christianity. As John Calvin, one of the
fathers of Protestantism, said, “Surely,
while we teach that faith ought to be certain and assured, we cannot imagine
any certainty that is not tinged with doubt, or any assurance that is not
assailed by some anxiety.”
Sometimes Emily Dickinson seems
courageous and unfearful as far as death is concerned. At other times, she
displays a mind-wracking, pathological fear of dying .As the American writer
Conrad Aiken said, “Death, and the problem of life after death, obsessed her.
She seems to have thought of it constantly –she died all her life, she probed
death daily.” (1945).What follows is a brief exploration of the death-related
themes and enquiries that riddle the oeuvre
of ‘The belle of Amherst ’and an attempt to
deductively argue for her belief in immortality.
II)
Analysis :
In “This World is not Conclusion “, it is very evident that ED
believed in some kind of continuance of consciousness after death .The title
speaks volumes regarding her beliefs about the immortality of the human soul.
‘Conclusion’ in that sense means end or termination. So far as life is concerned,
it means the cessation of mental functioning or the permanent halting of
thought processes .If we suppose that the speaker of the poem is a stand-in for
the poet herself, then she clearly is a dualist of sorts. Dualism is the belief
that humans have two parts to them. One is the physical body, which is mortal,
material and destroyable. The other is the soul, mind, or spirit, which is
immortal and undestroyable.
According to that
philosophical view, made famous by the 17th century French mathematician
and philosopher René Descartes, when human beings die, there is something that
survives that death, and that thing is the soul or consciousness. So this life
that we have, says the speaker of the poem, is not all that there is to human
existence. There is a transcendental realm that is waiting for those who die.
And yet, as positive as the speaker is about the reality of this realm or form
of existence, they are unable to describe it and do not believe that anybody
else can.
It “baffles” (5) or eludes comprehension and
pinning down although it “beckons” (5) or calls out to be believed in. In the
19th century and before, natural science, or the study of nature,
including human beings, was called Natural Philosophy. Hence, Dickinson’s
choice of the word “philosophy” in the second line of the second stanza to
signify science .Basically, the main point of that stanza is to assert that
science cannot help us know what is beyond the physical universe because it is
only useful when the material universe is concerned. Its subject matter is what
lies inside the universe not what is beyond the veil of kenning.
The third
stanza can be seen as a condensation of a dark and depressing chapter in the
history of Christianity. Before Christianity became legal in the Roman Empire
by Emperor Constantine I in 313 A.D., followers of Jesus Christ were persecuted
right and left throughout the Empire. In fact, all of the twelve apostles,
except the apostle John, were either crucified, killed in a ghastly manner, or tortured
to death for pleading allegiance to Christ and refusing to recant after being
captured. So the writer is saying that “Men”, or believers in a heavenly
kingdom, were despised and suffered a horrendous death for their beliefs.
In the fourth stanza, the
poet is excoriating “shown-faith”, or blind, unquestioning, uncritical faith. Faith
in the doctrines of the Church without the assistance of reason. Faith that
stifles reason. Faith in the words of preachers and clergymen, mere mortals.
The polar opposite of reasoned-faith, which is arrived at through the use of
reason which sets the human race apart from animals. The person who has this
kind of faith is concerned mainly about other people’s opinion of them. Hence,
they “blush” (14) if anybody discovers their “slips”(13) , or weak and wavering
conviction in what they believe in and “Pluck(s) at a twig of evidence—” to support their collapsing faith .The use of the
term “twig” in the third line is very telling since twigs are weak .So the poet
is saying that even when people with blind faith try to support their faith
with evidence, they fail miserably.
Emily Dickinson
ends the poem with a rather spectacular and unexpected declaration. She asserts
that even mainstream Christianity, signified in the poem by the verses: “Much Gesture, from the Pulpit—/ Strong Hallelujahs roll—” (17-18), does not have the
answer to the mystery that is the afterworld. She further equates it with
“Narcotics”, or drugs taken to relieve pain but that do not cure its source, which
reminds one of her contemporary Karl Marx’s (1818-‘83) scathing criticism of
organized religion in his famous statement: “Religion is the opium of the
people.” Mainstream Christianity according to her “cannot still the Tooth / That nibbles at the soul –”.That
tooth is a poetic way of talking about the existential crisis and angst that
Emily and many other people have suffered and still suffer from.
A typical Dickinsonian poem and one that is
very suitable to the topic of this paper is “Because I could not stop for
Death”. Its overall meaning is the same as “This world is not Conclusion”,
which is that we are not just an amalgamation of physical atoms .There is something about us humans which is
immortal .Earthly life is not all that there is to human existence. Death
is not an end to human consciousness, but it is rather a bridge connecting two
realms of diametrically distinct natures. The realm of the physical, mortal,
and transient and the realm of the spiritual, immortal, and everlasting.
As any poetry
scholar knows but too well, nothing about a poem is arbitrary, even a single
comma has a function, a role to play in the conveyance of the poet’s meaning.
The structure of this poem is no exception. I believe Emily Dickinson used this
specific structural arrangement, i.e. rhyme, rhythm, punctuation, and overall
formulation to help her readers come to terms with death and fear it no more,
because it is not really the end but the beginning of a different type of
existence; and to make it so that the form of the poem reflects its subject
matter, e.g., the use of a full stop at the end of the first stanza, which
bespeaks the death of the speaker.
What is more ,the
poem is written in the form of six stanzas with four lines each , otherwise
known as quatrains. This format is also used in hymns like the all-famous
“Amazing Grace” worship song .That format is used by the poet to invoke and
assert the religious belief in an afterlife and to reassure her readers that
death is not the final stage in their existence.
Also, the meter of
the poem conforms as well to hymn meter, also known as common meter, which is
used in composing hymns. It alternates between iambic tetrameter in the
odd-numbered lines and iambic trimeter in the even-numbered ones. The first and
second lines are good illustrative examples :
Be-‘cause | I ‘could | not ‘stop | for ‘Death – (iambic
tetrameter) (1)
He ‘kind| ly s’topped
| for ‘me –(iambic trimeter) (2).
To begin our
stanzaic analysis, the figurative stopping of “Death” in the first stanza is
another way of talking about the act of dying .Death is personified as “He”.
His action is described by the adverb “kindly”(2) , suggesting that Death is a
nice gentleman, which further comforts the reader that the final voyage is not
as rough as it is said to be .In fact, it is like riding a carriage with a
polite and gentlemanly man. Moreover, the addition of “And Immortality.”(4) in
the last line of the first stanza further reinforces the writer’s belief in an
immortal soul. The poet dedicated a whole verse to it alone which gives it the
prominence it deserves.
Add
to that, in the second stanza, the use of the adverb “slowly” (5) to modify
Death’s driving of the carriage drives home the point that Death is gentle and
the total opposite of the Grim Reaper. I think that at this stage it is prudent
to clarify something about the narrator of the poem .The narrator is telling us
about the events that happened during the day on which they were called to
their eternal abode. Their consciousness has not ceased operating .It continues
functioning in the spiritual realm. In a sense they ‘survived’ their death,
which enables them to narrate the story of their journey into the hereafter.
In
the third stanza, the narrator continues telling us about their journey into
the eternal realm by describing to us the scenes they and Mr. Death passed on
the way .Of course we need to keep in mind that the journey being chronicled is
a metaphorical one .It should not be taken as describing something that
literally took place .It is a poetic way of talking about the process of dying
and getting spiritually resurrected in the otherworldly realm. The lines “We
passed the School, where Children strove/ At Recess–in the Ring–” (9-10) can be taken as referring to the speaker
remembering past experiences related to her childhood moments before her will
to live gave up the struggle.
It is rather eerie
since many survivors of near-death experiences report that their life’s story
flashed before their inward eye during that supernatural experience. Also, “the
Setting Sun–”(12) is a well-established symbol for the end of life in many cultures
and can be found in a myriad of myths, poems, and other fictional works the
world over .According to Guerin, Wilfred L., et
al., (1979), the setting sun is an archetype that symbolizes death.
The atmosphere suddenly changes in
the fourth stanza. The sun of the third stanza gives way to cold engendered by
“the Dews” that “drew quivering and Chill–” (14).Unfortunately for the
speaker, her “Gown” is “only Gossamer”(15), which is “any thin, light fabric”
according to Dictionary.com ;and
her “Tippet” is “–only Tulle–”(16) ,which is defined by Merriam-Webster.com as “a light,
thin type of cloth that is like a net and that is used for veils, evening
dresses, etc.” Interestingly, cold is traditionally associated with death in
films and literature, .e.g., The Sixth
Sense and the Dementors from the Harry
Potter book-series. Add to that, the presence of water in the poem
represented by the dews is very telling since water is an oft-used symbol for
resurrection and rebirth, hitting the reader on the head with the fact that the
speaker was in fact resurrected and given new life .
The fifth stanza offers a chilling
and unsettling description of the speaker’s grave. It generates in the reader
the experience of the numinous or the sublime, which is fear mixed with
incomprehension and awe and is one of the benchmarks of a Romantic work.
Instead of calling a spade a spade, the speaker uses the word “House” (17),
which has connotations of comfort, happiness, and safety to refer to her grave,
which word connotes finality, gloominess, and mortality, reemphasizing again
the non-finality of death.
The wrapping up of the poem is
done masterfully by the final stanza, which also gives credence to my earlier
statement about the speaker telling their story from the afterlife. It has been
“Centuries–” (21) since the speaker journeyed into the other
realm. The narrator continues to inform the reader that on the day of her death
she “surmised the Horses’ Heads /Were toward Eternity–” (23-24) meaning
that she knew death is a passageway to the eternal kingdom rather than the end
of the story.
In concluding, this poem is like a bottomless well of
wisdom and linguistic as well as poetic beauty that deserves pages upon pages
of analysis and discussion. The American poet and critic Allen Tate (cited in
Brown et al., 1961) observed that it is “One of the greatest in the English
language; it is flawless to the last detail.”, and I think it will continue to
be so for generations to come.
Offering further support to my thesis is the fact that
Emily Dickinson believed in the Christian scriptures. However, she did not put
much stock in the exegeses of their contents given by the clergy. She held fast
to the Lutheran doctrine of sola
scriptura, which emphasizes the importance of scripture and one’s personal
reading of it rather than the blind following of established doctrines and
religious teachings, which led her to jettison traditional ways of interpreting
the Holy Book. Moreover, she despised mindless church attendance and the
slurping down of religious doctrine as can be garnered from the lines: “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church —
I keep it, staying at Home —”
I keep it, staying at Home —”
(From “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church
—”)
In fact, she stopped going to church altogether after
about the age of thirty. Writing in the same vein, Gain (2015) says that
Dickinson did not see God as existing exclusively in the Church. Howbeit, it is
indubitable that she believed in the Christian God. In “The Body grows without –” ,
it is very evident that the poet endorses the renowned Christian view that sees
a human being as a spirit inhabiting an earthly ‘temple’, which is Jesus
Christ’s metaphorical way of referring to the physical body. In John (2:19),
Jesus replies to the demands of the Sadducees and Pharisees that he must show
some evidence for his divinity by saying: “Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (KJV).
That doctrine appears as well in Paul’s letter
1 Corinthians (6:19-20): “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the
Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? / For ye are bought with a
price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.”(KJV). Interestingly, this
latter biblical passage expounds the dualistic view of the composition of human
beings, which is the same view adopted by ED.
A poem that marvelously
captures Emily’s faith in the Christian religion is “There is another sky” . In it she compares Paradise with Earthly existence. Earthly life is transient
and corrupted whereas Heavenly existence eternal and its enjoyments are much
stronger and everlasting. The word “Sky” in the first line refers to Heaven. In
fact, semantically speaking, the word “Heaven” is polysemous, meaning that it
has more than one meaning. One is ‘the
expanse of space that seems to be over the earth like a dome.’, and another is
‘the dwelling place of the Deity and the blessed dead. ’It is very likely,
especially when one considers the rest of the poem, that the poet is working
with the latter meaning, in other words, she is asserting the existence of the
kingdom come.
Emily
Dickinson describes this place as “ever serene and fair” (2), meaning that it
is always beautiful and peaceful. The total opposite of earthly life, which is
ever and anon changing and is corrupted and blemished by people’s moral
weakness and ignorance. In the third line she says that “ there is another
sunshine,” which could be taken as signifying the radiance of Jesus Christ who
in many paintings is portrayed with a solar halo behind his head and some say
is based on the myth of Apollo (Latin : Phoebus) . Taken altogether, the above
lines say that Heaven is real and there Jesus Christ is.
In
line five, we have the proper noun “Austin”. Now Austin was William Austin
Dickinson, the older brother of Emily Dickinson. This poem was originally
included in a letter written by the Gothic poet to him. She addresses him by
saying “Never mind faded forests, Austin, / Never mind silent fields—” (5-6).
These lines refer to terrestrial life. Its forests are described as “faded” and
its fields as “silent”, which conveys a very gloomy and pessimistic picture of
the physical world. From lines seven till twelve, the poet concentrates solely
on elucidating the characteristics of the divine abode.
It
is described as a forest “Whose leaf is ever green;” (8), meaning that this
perfect place never loses its beauty and aura. In the ninth line the place is
described as “a brighter garden”, which could be viewed as a direct reference
to the biblical Garden of Eden mentioned in Genesis.
“Not a frost has
been;” (10) in this ideal garden. In it there grow “unfading flowers” (11) in
whom the speaker “hear[s] the bright bee hum:” (12), which could be an
indication that the speaker is near her death and could spasmodically penetrate
the boundary between the physical world and the spiritual world to come and has
glimpses of the other side. Serving as a visceral finale, the coda of the poem
shows the speaker waxing emotionally effusive in her pleading with her brother
to come into her garden, which could be seen as an invitation to join her in
her heavenly bliss and leave the cruel world of human treachery and greed
behind.
As if the
above-analyzed poem was not proof enough of the poet’s theological allegiance, “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers -” is the
last nail in the coffin of the doubt that surrounds the authenticity of
Dickinson’s religious convictions. The poem is a description of dead people.
She uses the appellation of “the meek members of the Resurrection” (4) to
describe them. The use of the word “Resurrection” here is very telling. As
defined by Merriam-Webster, it is:
‘the rising again to life of all the human dead before the final judgment.’ So
the poet is saying that dead people are going to be brought back to life at a
certain point in the future to be judged each according to his or her deeds in
life.
To boot, the utilization of the term “Resurrection” harks back
to the narrative of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ three days after he was
crucified at the bidding of Pontius Pilate, the prefect of Roman Judaea during
the ministry of Christ, as it is recounted in the Gospels. Therefore, by using
a vocable with clear Christian connotations, the writer is betraying where her
hope lies as far as immortality is concerned.
Proffering further superfluous proof of ED’s belief in the reality of the afterlife is “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -”. From
the title/first line, we learn that the speaker of the poem will be telling us
what happened moments before she took her last breath. It is a story narrated
by a spirit from beyond the veil of human understanding. In plain English, the
speaker of the poem is already dead and buried but her spirit lives on in a
region foreign to human knowledge.
The first stanza does a sterling job of setting up the
deathbed scene. Silence reigned supreme in the room where the speaker had their
deathbed as shown by the lines “The Stillness in the Room/ Was like the Stillness in
the Air / Between the Heaves of Storm -”. (2-3-4).
The air is so heavy and thick that it can be cut with a knife. The “Heaves” can
either be a metaphorical way of speaking about the two major episodes in the
speaker’s life – the
vigor and vitality of the speaker’s life before she fell fatally ill and the
moment of death. Or they could refer to the spasmodic heaves of the dying
speaker as she was experiencing the violent spasms that accompany the process
of dying.
In the second stanza, the speaker
moves from describing the room where she died to talk about the people that
were with her in those last moments and kept vigil at her bedside. Their eyes
“had wrung them dry–”(5), meaning that the eyes of these vigil keepers
waxed water-impoverished as a result of a rather long bout of crying. The line
“And Breaths were gathering firm” (6) is
saying that these personages were expecting something or someone. In the next
line, we learn what that is. It is the “the last Onset – when the King/ Be witnessed – in the Room –”.
An ‘onset’ is an attack or an assault, and the “King” in the seventh
line most probably refers to Death. So taken as a whole, the speaker uses the
second stanza to convey the meaning that the individuals surrounding her are
waiting for death to come and take her soul after having cried their hearts out
in sorrow over the fact that their friend and relative is about to take a
permanent of their company. Curiously, the vocable “King” can also refer to the
King of the universe according to Christian doctrine, .i.e., Jesus Christ.
The New Testament is riddled with instances where Christ is referred to
as “king”. In Mathew (2: 1-2), Jesus is referred to by the Magi as “King of the
Jews”. Also, in Matthew (27:42), he is called
“King of Israel;”.If that was not enough biblical textual evidence for the
notoriety of Jesus’ nomination as “King”, in 1 Timothy (6:15), he is called
“the King of kings,”. So it stands to reason that she had Jesus Christ in mind
when Emily Dickinson used the word “King”. Basically, the speaker is saying
that the vigil keepers around her are waiting tensely for the moment when Jesus
Christ shall come and take her soul irrevocably to the other side.
III) Conclusion:
I hope that my paper will make its readers
reread Emily Dickinson’s poetry from a fresh perspective. However, when I sat
down to write it, I knew that the debate over Emily Dickinson’s religious
beliefs is not going to be solved by a ten-page research paper. Rather, my aim
is to encourage scholars of ED’s body of work to go back to it with new ideas
and exegeses in mind and to test them to see if they hold any water.
For clarity’s sake, my thesis can be thought
of as the conclusion of the following syllogistic argument:
·
Premise 1:
Belief in Christianity necessitates belief in the afterlife. (A given).
·
Premise 2: It
is very probable that Emily Dickinson believed in the God of the Christian
faith. (Sub-thesis).
·
Conclusion:
Ergo, Emily Dickinson very probably believed in the afterlife. (Thesis).
III) Bibliography:
Aiken,
C., & Benét, W.R. (Eds.). (1945). An anthology of
famous English and American poetry .New York: Random House. Guerin, Wilfred L.,
et al. (1979). Mythological and Archetypal Approaches. In A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, p.185. New York: Harper & Row. Brown, Clarence A., &
Flanagan, J.T.(Eds.).(1961). American
Literature : a College Survey, p.436.New York : McGraw-Hill. Gain, A. (2015).
Ambiguous Relationship with Religion: The Poems of Emily Dickinson. International
Journal of English Language, Literature
and Humanities, 3(7), 347-355. Williams, T.A. (2010).The
foundations of Calvin’s doctrine of assurance. In The Heart of Piety: An Encouraging Study in Calvin's Doctrine of
Assurance (pp. 79-102).
III) Webliography:
·
Dictionary.com
·
Merriam-Webster.com
·
bloggingdickinson.blogspot.com
·
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/
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