The Brain By Emily Dickinson

The Infinite Self!!!

An Analysis of Emily Dickinson Poems and Individual Inifinity

The individual self—mind, and imagination is infinite. Theses word echo off prominent transcendentalists lips throughout the ages. Emily Dickinson is another of these voices. “The brain—is wider than the Sky” she declares in a poem. In Dickinson’s poems The Brain—is wider than the Sky— and There is a solitude of space, she explores the infinity of human consciousness, society’s imposition on the individual, and what the individual self truly entails. Dickinson explores the unlimited human consciousness and power of mind and imagination in both of these poems. “That Dickinson lived what could be called ‘the life of the mind’ is concomitant with the extreme

“Society shall be/Compared with that profounder site/ That polar privacy,” Dickinson observes with these lines society’s mal-acceptance of the idea of someone being themself and accepting themself. She states in few words that if one is to be true to oneself, often they become exorcised from the community in one way or another, therefore experiencing “polar privacy.” She excluded herself from society, but likewise, she may have felt excluded from society, both by choice, and by her observation of exclusion when she displayed her true self. “Her reclusion has been classified as agoraphobia. But to Dickinson, reclusion was a choice against the vanity and oppression of the society she sought to eschew. Her priority as a creative person was to safeguard her art and muse,” recognizes Hermitary in their article Emily Dickinson: Poet and Recluse. She withdrew from society around the age of thirty, in 1850. This withdrawal is not entirely explained, but she certainly was very focused on the individual self, and in many of her poems and letters seems to contest in certain ways the idea being able to be oneself and have good social standing at the same time. She also struggled with religion and faith throughout her life, especially more conventional religion. “Dickinson contests the pomposity, rigidity, and self-assurance of organized religion, preferring daily rituals at home and outdoors…insisting that heaven is not a trophy earned at life’s end but places encountered on life’s way, however impermanent and mere,” affirms Megan Craig in the chapter The Infinite Person: Levinas and Dickinson of Emily Dickinson and Philosophy. Dickinson was a radical thinker who preferred to be alone, seeing it not as reclusion, but as fully connecting with the world around