In Emily Dickinson’s poem #336, the narrator feels a strong sense of despair and laments at having lost the physical ability to see in one eye. The narrator reflects upon the importance of sight in experiencing nature and finds a better appreciation for it now that she has lost her sight. By the end of the poem however, the narrator experiences transcendence, as she comes to the realization that through the act of imagination she is able to see far more than the limited view her eyes provided her with. Through the act of poetic writing, the narrator is able to capture the beauty of nature and engrave in into her soul. In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s excerpt from “Nature”, he alludes to the significance in sight when it comes to it being able to merge the human soul with nature to create perfect unity, and as such he lays the groundwork for Dickinson’s ideas that are presented within her poem. Though Dickinson’s poem may initially seem transcendental, it can also be interpreted as a mixture of Emerson’s transcendental ideas and those that support the notion of imagination. Dickinson’s poem serves as a response to Emerson’s ideas because she adds on to his thoughts and unites his idea that there is oneness present in the world with the notion that imagination and sight serve as a bridge that connects human consciousness with nature to create this oneness that Emerson believes in.
In the first stanza, the narrator says, that “I got my eye put out” (1), showing that she can now only see from one eye because of the singular use of eyes. Because she only talks of having lost sight in one eye, it can be assumed that she laments the limited vision that is now provided by her remaining eye. The narrator’s fragmented and limited vision caused b...
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...eart would split, but because she is able to see nature through her imagination she is safe from those effects, shown when she says, “So safer-guess-with just my soul” (18) While Emerson uses only sight to form a connection with nature, Dickinson uses both sight and imagination to connect people’s souls to nature when she says, “…with just my soul open the window pane”(19); the eyes are said to be the windows that lead to one’s soul, so through this statement Dickinson shows that there is a correlation between imagination, sight, and soul because through all of them one is able to become one with nature. Through the very act of writing this poem Dickinson reveals that poetic writing is another form of reaching oneness with nature.
Works Cited
Dickinson, Emily. "Before I Got My Eye Put out – (336)." Poetry Foundation. Poetry
Foundation, n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
Approaching Emily Dickinson’s poetry as one large body of work can be an intimidating and overwhelming task. There are obvious themes and images that recur throughout, but with such variation that seeking out any sense of intention or order can feel impossible. When the poems are viewed in the groupings Dickinson gave many of them, however, possible structures are easier to find. In Fascicle 17, for instance, Dickinson embarks upon a journey toward confidence in her own little world. She begins the fascicle writing about her fear of the natural universe, but invokes the unknowable and religious as a means of overcoming that fear throughout her life and ends with a contextualization of herself within both nature and eternity.
Reading a poem by Emily Dickinson can often lead the reader to a rather introspective state. Dickinson writes at length about the drastically transformative effect a book may have upon its’ reader. Alternating between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, Dickinson masterfully uses the ballad meter to tell a story about the ecstasy brought by reading. In poem number 1587, she writes about the changes wrought upon the reader by a book and the liberty literature brings.
In the opening paragraphs of his first chapter, Emerson finds that nature, like stars is always present and creates a reverence in the observer, but is also always inaccessible (14). Emerson also brings forth the idea that not everyone can really observe nature, but one must have the correct mental/spiritual state, as a child might. He discusses the improving aspects one can find in nature - youth, reason, and faith. Intrigued by visual perceptions, he claims that he looses contact with everything but nature becomes a 'transparent eye-ball' and feels that "I am part or parcel of God" (16). Emerson's emphatic words are perhaps the best description of the enthralling emotions of a 'sublime' experience as possible.
"I’ve Seen a Dying Eye," by Emily Dickinson, is a poem about the nature of death. A sense of uncertainty and uncontrollability about death seems to exist. The observer’s speech seems hesitant and unsure of what he or she is seeing, partly because of the dashes, but also because of the words used to describe the scene. As the eye is observed looking for something, then becoming cloudy and progressing through more obscurity until it finally comes to rest, the person observing the death cannot provide any definite proof that what the dying person saw was hopeful or disturbing. The dying person seems to have no control over the clouds covering his or her eye, which is frantically searching for something that it can only hope to find before the clouds totally consume it. Death, as an uncontrollable force, seems to sweep over the dying. More importantly, as the poem is from the point of view of the observer, whether the dying person saw anything or not is not as significant as what the observer, and the reader, carry away from the poem. The suspicion of whether the dying person saw anything or had any control over his or her death is what is being played on in the poem. If the dying person has no control, what kind of power does that give death? Did the eye find what it was looking for before the clouds billowed across their vision, and was it hopeful? These questions represent the main idea the poem is trying to convey. Death forces itself upon the dying leaving them no control, and if something hopeful exists to be seen after death, it is a question left for the living to ponder.
Dickinson’s Christian education affected her profoundly, and her desire for a human intuitive faith motivates and enlivens her poetry. Yet what she has faith in tends to be left undefined because she assumes that it is unknowable. There are many unknown subjects in her poetry among them: Death and the afterlife, God, nature, artistic and poetic inspiration, one’s own mind, and other human beings.
There are a few themes that are presented throughout Emily’s poems, one of themes was nature. Many poets during Dickinson time wrote about nature, but Dickinson looked at nature differently than they did, and wrote about it in a different way then they did. In a lot of her poems she writes about the mystery of nature and its qualities, while also marveling at it. Emily spent much of her time studying nature and the various aspects of it. One example of a poem where she talks about nature is “A bird came down the walk.” In this poem the bird is moving around and is in action. This bird is also oblivious to a person watching it. Emily’s point in writing this poem is to say that as the person is not seen then nature keeps moving along in its random and informal way (Borus: 44-73).
Although, Emily Dickinson physically isolated herself from the world she managed to maintain friendships by communicating through correspondence. Ironically, Dickinson’s poetry was collected and published after her death. Dickinson explores life and death in most of her poems by questioning the existence of God. Dickinson applies common human experiences as images to illustrate the connection from the personal level of the human being, to a universal level of faith and God. This can be seen in Dickinson’s Poem (I, 45).
The main characteristic of Romanticism that Emily Dickinson portrays in her writing is the emphases of the importance of Nature to the Romantics. In most of her poems there is some mention or comparison to something found in Nature. In Poem 449, she refers to the moss that covers the names on the graves of the tombstones of “Beauty” and “Truth.” The Puritans believed Nature to be the realm of the devil. By including references to Nature in many of her poems, she was rebelling against the ideals of the Puritan upbringing she had hated so much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emily Dickinson were two of America’s most intriguing poets. They were both drawn to the transcendentalist movement which taught “unison of creation, the righteousness of humanity, and the preeminence of insight over logic and reason” (Woodberry 113). This movement also taught them to reject “religious authority” (Sherwood 66). By this declination of authority, they were able to express their individuality. It is through their acceptance of this individuality that will illustrate their ambiguities in their faith in God.
Nature is the most beautiful places for anyone to enjoy peace and stability in the human minds. Emily Dickinson is a naturalist poet that she wants the world to know that peace does exist in the human world and she wants to tell the world. Dickinson's poems are mostly written by "nature", "love", and "death" according to Anna Dunlap in her analysis. Dickinson's sister, Lavinia, is the one who published Dickinson's work, on her first attempt the editor that was responsible was taking her sweet time. This editor had Dickinson's work for two years so Lavinia decided to find another editor and Loomis Todd is the right person and editor for this job.
In many of her poems, Dickinson expresses her interest in nature, by comparing it to human behavior. This is evident in "Nature is a Haunted House," when Kher explains the advice that Dickinson gives:
Emerson shows the reader how a person without this knowledge of writing is omitted from expressing the beauty of nature. He tells us that the poet has the incredible ability to create images by his words to illustrate the things that we observe. Emerson believes that the poet uses his words to represent beauty (1648). The world is beautiful and it is the poet's job to paint his view of this in his words. "... but it is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but beauty is the creator of the universe..." (1648).
“I’m Nobody!Who are you?Are you Nobody too?”These are the unique words that Emily wrote to show what she wants her readers to know.Emily Dickinson was a reserved person who enjoys the idea of being alone.She always wore white and shut herself out so she could make her writing about the truth of how people really feel. Emily’s style of writing was way different from writers in her time period.One poem that shows the personality of Emily Dickinson's “I’m Nobody!”.In the poem of “I’m Nobody!”,Emily Dickinson uses tone,word choice,and point of view to reveal that it’s probably more preferable to be lonely instead of a somebody and that she wants the reader to understand that it’s okay to feel and be lonely.
Hopelessness is an intense emotion every person feels at one point in their life, a feeling closely interlinked with depression and suicide. In the poems “It was not Death, for I stood up,” and “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” by Emily Dickinson and “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, the theme of the poems is hopelessness, but the authors approach the theme differently in each poem.
Ralph Waldo Emerson(1803-1882), the leader of the Transcendentalism in New England, is the first American who wrote prose and poem on nature and the relationship between nature and man Emerson's philosophy of Transcendentalism concerning nature is that nature is only another side of God "the gigantic shadow of God cast our senses." Every law in nature has a counterpart in the intellect. There is a perfect parallel between the laws of nature and the laws of thought. Material elements simply represent an inferior plane: wherever you enumerate a physical law, I hear in it a moral rule. His poem The Rhodora is a typical instance to illustrate his above-mentioned ideas on nature. At the very beginning of the poem, the poet found the fresh rhodora in the woods, spreading its leafless blooms in a deep rock, to please the desert and the sluggish brook, while sea-winds pieced their solitudes in May. It is right because of the rhodora that the desert and the sluggish brook are no longer solitudes. Then the poem goes to develop by comparison between the plumes of the redbird and the rhodora . Although the bird is elegant and brilliant, the flower is much more beautiful than the bird. So the sages can not helping asking why this charm is wasted on the earth and sky. The poet answers beauty is its own cause for being just as eyes are made for seeing. There is no other reason but beauty itsel...