III.

A Psychoanalytical approach
III.1. Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is the name given by Sigmund Freud to a system of
interpretation

and

therapeutic

treatment

of

psychological

disorders.

Psychoanalysis began after Freud studied (188586) with the French neurologist
J. M. Charcot in Paris and became convinced that hysteria was caused not by
organic symptoms in the nervous system but by emotional disturbance. Later, in
collaboration with Viennese physician Josef Breuer, Freud wrote two papers on
hysteria (1893, 1895) that were the precursors of his vast body of psychoanalytic
theory. Freud used his psychoanalytic method primarily to treat clients suffering
from a variety of mild mental disorders classified until recently as neuroses.
Freud was joined by an increasing number of students and physicians, among
whom were C. G. Jung and Alfred Adler. Both made significant contributions,
but by 1913 ceased to be identified with the main body of psychoanalysts
because of theoretical disagreements with Freuds strong emphasis on sexual
motivation. Other analysts, including Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan, also
have contributed greatly to the field. Psychoanalysis and its theoretical
underpinnings have had an enormous influence on modern psychology and
psychiatry and in fields as diverse as literary theory, anthropology, and film
criticism.1
According to Websters Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary 2 psychoanalysis
represents a method of analysis esp. for therapeutic purpose based on the
theory that abnormal mental reactions are due to repression of desires
31

consciously rejected but subconsciously persistent. Another definition that I

find very interesting and complex is given by Longman Dictionary of English
Language and Culture3; here psychoanalysis represents a way of treating
certain nervous disorders of the mind by examination of the sufferers memories
of past life, experiences, dreams, etc. in an effort to find hidden causes of the
illness. It was developed by Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis is fairly common in
the US, but British people often have a negative view of it and are not certain
that it is effective. So there is a cultural point of view of the psychoanalytic
development through time and continents and the way people react or respond to
it.
Although psychoanalysis is a method for the investigation of mental processes
inaccessible by other means, at the same time it represents a therapeutic method
for neurotic chaos. The psychoanalysis has been gradually assembled on clinical
observation and research, accompanied by indications and theoretical ideas
concerning the structure of the human psychic, the dynamic of the mental
processes, repression, resistance, transference and more.
The definition of psychoanalysis includes knowledge acquired from the human
psychic, unconscious (which is a product that belongs to the culture), research
and finally analysis. This type of knowledge has helped on acquiring this new
form of science called psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is also applied to the
study of social, cultural, and religious phenomena. In this latter aspect,
demanding for a re-evaluation of the mechanisms and meanings of culture,
psychoanalysis has penetrated the consciousness of the wider public beyond its
therapeutic limits.
I really acknowledge that this union of literature and psychoanalysis goes
back to Freud himself because this new world of research and speculation began
when he observed that the fantasies buried deep in the unconscious provide a
clue to understanding the mind as well as the individual himself. Also Freud
noted the parallels between literary composition and some common activities
such as childrens play and daydreaming, between literature and myths, which
32

reveal the fantasies of the entire humanity.

Sigmund Freud on Psychoanalysis: Psychoanalysis is the name: of a
procedure for the investigation of mental processes which are almost
inaccessible in any other way; of a method (based upon that investigation) for
the treatment of neurotic disorders and

of a collection of psychological

information obtained along those lines, which is gradually being accumulated

into a new scientific discipline. (From "Two Enciclopaedia Articles",
1923)4Psychoanalysis may be said to have been born with the twentieth
century; for the publication in which it emerged before the world as something
new. But, as may well be supposed, it did not drop from the skies ready-made. It
had its starting-point in older ideas, which it developed further; it sprang from
earlier suggestions, which it elaborated. (From A Short Account of PsychoAnalysis. The standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of
Sigmund Freud, volume XIX (1923 1925): The Ego and the Id and Other
works, 189 210)
Freud [] invented the term psycho-analysis . (From PsychoAnalysis, 1926).
Definitely the key to understanding the psychoanalytic literature is to
recognize that literature deals with books and psychoanalysis deals with minds.
Therefore the critic who studies the psychoanalysis can talk about minds only in
relationship with the books. The psychoanalytic critic can refer to the author, the
audience and even some characters associated with the text, derived from the
text.

e can think of psychoanalysis as having three phases. In the first phase, Freud
made his great original discoveries. I mean his discoveries of free association,
unconscious processes, the Oedipus complex and infantile sexuality. I would
define this first phase as one in which people explained things by the
relationship between conscious and unconscious.

Then

came a second phase, Freud rethought the model he built on his original
discoveries, and he and his colleagues in Vienna in the 1920s and '30s developed
33

the structural id - ego - superego model, the principle of multiple function, and
what we think of as ego-psychology.5

The

way

psychoanalysis deals with language and with interpretation, introduces a

significant approach to the hermeneutics of suspicion, the idea that there are
motives and meanings which are disguised by and work through other meanings.
According to Ricoeur the hermeneutics of suspicion is: a method of
interpretation which assumes that the literal or surface-level meaning of a text is
an effort to conceal the political interests which are served by the text.
The hermeneutics of suspicion (Paul Ricoeur's6 term) is not limited to
psychoanalytic thought but is found in structural thought generally - the idea that
we look to understand action, to sub-texts, not pre-texts.
The philosopher Jacques Derrida7 incorporated certain aspects of
psychoanalytic theory into his practice of deconstruction in order to question
what he called the metaphysic of presence or self-presence. This was the
defining trait (for Derrida) of traditional metaphysics, namely its assumption
that the meaning of utterances can be pinned down and made fully evident to
consciousness, perhaps most evident in Descartes' conception of clear and
distinct ideas. Derrida is here influenced by Freud (among others such as Marx
and Nietzsche.) For instance, Freud's insistence, in the first chapter of The Ego
and the Id, that philosophers will recoil from his theory of the unconscious is
clearly a forbearer to Derrida's understanding of metaphysical self-presence.
However, Derrida goes on to turn certain of these practices against Freud
himself, in order (in Derrida's typical manner) to reveal tensions and
contradictions in Freud's work which are nonetheless the very conditions upon
which it can operate - its

simultaneous conditions of possibility and

impossibility. For instance, although Freud will define religion and metaphysics
as a displacement of the identification with the father in the resolution of the
Oedipal complex (e.g. in 'The Ego and The Id' and Totem and Taboo) Derrida
will insist (for instance in 'The Postcard') that the prominence of the father in
Freud's own analysis is at the same time indebted to and an example of the
34

prominence given to the father in Western metaphysics and theology since Plato.
Thus, (in a similar manner to that in which Levi-Strauss reads Freud's
understanding of the Oedipal complex as but another version of the Oedipus
myth,) Derrida understands Freud as remaining partly within that theologicalmetaphysical tradition

which Freud nonetheless criticizes. However, the

purpose of Derrida's analysis is not to refute Freud per se, (which would only be
to reaffirm traditional metaphysics) but rather to reveal an aporia undecidability)
at the very heart of Freud's project. Such a 'deconstruction' (or indeed
psychoanalysis) of Freud does tend to cast doubt upon the possibilty of
delimiting psychoanalysis as a rigorous science. However in doing so it
celebrates and pledges a critical alliegance to that side of Freud which
emphasises the open-ended and improvisatory nature of psychoanalysis, and its
(methodical and ethical) demand (for instance in the opening chapters of the
Interpretation of Dreams) that the testimony of the analysand should be given
prominence in the practice

of

analysis.8

Psychoanalysis represents a type of therapy which focuses on the underlying

elements of a person's mind which may manifest in some form of mental
disorder, can also be applied to literature in terms of the same principles: the
unconscious, dream interpretation, and

repression.

But psychoanalysis's true strength lies deeper than its simple ability to analyze
literature; instead, it is the psychoanalysis' ability to inspire a greater
consciousness among people which is admirable. Psychoanalysis is a talking
cure as it has been established that the illness represents the bodys way of
communicating. The language and the narrative form are fundamental to it, so in
a way psychoanalytic therapy is the re-narratization of a person's life.
Psychoanalysis as therapy emphasizes the importance of dreams for
consideration as part of the patient's diagnosis. Dreams are regarded as beyond
the conscious mind and therefore uncensored, making use of images, symbols,
and metaphors in order to convey a message that the conscious mind would

35

otherwise not be able to handle or process. As dreams are in the realm of the
unconscious, so it seems is literature.
If literature is considered a sort of dream - a story born from the author's mind then psychoanalysis truly becomes the best means to understanding literature.
Both literature and dreams make use of images, symbols, and metaphors to
convey a story that is beyond words alone, a story that can be delved into in
order to find more layers of meaning. Like dreams, literature doesn't just simply
"say things", but "shows them." By analyzing literature in terms of the same
tools that literature itself uses, psychoanalysis demonstrates its strength through
its familiarity with many of literature's key elements.9
Psychoanalysis includes the idea of the unconscious and when this idea is
applied to literature, it quickly begins to reveal important information, such as
the motivations and hidden intentions of characters. It is essential for the
purpose of understanding characters on a deeper level, but it also brings a
greater level of consciousness to the world in general. It seems that if people
begin to access literature in terms of what could be lying beneath the surface of
words and actions - in terms of the unconscious - then this will encourage them
to access the world in the same way. Thus, strangely enough applying the idea of
the unconscious actually encourages increased consciousness.
What we do not think about is the similarity that can exist between poetry and
psychoanalysis because we discover a place where meaning is governed by
fantasy.
Applying psychoanalysis to Emily Dickinsons work is clearly the same
thing as putting literature next to psychoanalysis. As we can see those multiple
readings and interpretations bring us to the psychoanalytical approach of Emily
Dickinsons literature. While metaphysics deals with the rational discussions of
its phenomena, psychoanalysis deals with the struggles and the joys of human
existence, the basics of being a person.
In poetry as well as in psychoanalysis, words, sounds and silences have a very
important impact on meaning and it helps us penetrate into the depths of the
36

human soul and mind with infinite insight, or better said we hear the surface
texture of words while we seek to get a glimpse of the depths. 10 Lets take for
instance remembrance; it has been considered a source of lyric that has been
used almost by all the romantic writers, wearing it till the last drop. With Emily
Dickinson remembrance becomes the storehouse of her subconscious. This is
why we agree with Griffith the moment he discovers the poem that anticipates
the latter conquests of the psychoanalysis:
Remembrance has a rear and a front
'Tis something like a House It has a Garret also
For Refuse and the Mouse.
Besides the deepest Cellar
That ever Mason laid Look to it by its Fathoms
Ourselves be not pursued -
From a certain point of view psychoanalysis has become a psychology of the
self, although there are wide differences in the way different schools address the
self.
Throughout the entire work of Emily Dickinson I have found the mixture of her
sensational poems with that crying out of the ego. There are hundred of poems
that start with the 1st person, singular pronoun I, which is the representative of
her true self. Psychoanalysis challenges the humanist idea of the self: a being
that is entirely conscious of him/herself, who lives outside of his language and
symbols, which are the only tools of truth, stability that represented an identity.
According to the definition given by Websters Encyclopedic Unabridged
Dictionary of the English Language11, the self represents: a person or thing
referred to with respect; a persons nature, character; in philosophy, it sends to
the ego, that which knows, remembers, desires, suffers, as contrasted to that
known, remembered.
37

The study of the self, more precisely, the voyage of the outer self
towards the inner world, has as a starting point the investigation of the
common body seen as the medium by means of which the common person
experiences the world around and is experienced in the world by others.12
The voyage of I in search of the Is creates the complicated trajectory of
self-discovery13
Freud identified three levels of human mind according to Bonta Elena
study in Interpersonal Communication:
- the conscious level - includes anything that is thought, perceived or
understood;
- the pre-conscious level - includes the thoughts and memories which can
be easily recalled and brought back to the conscious level;
- the unconscious level - the place where all individual past experience
(wishes, urges memories, thoughts) can be found.
Also for Freud the human mind is in a permanent conflict with itself, a thing
that gives birth to anxiety and unhappiness. His investigation into these internal
conflicts made him draw the conclusion that the mind can be divided into three
internal conflicting tendencies: the id; the ego and the superego.
In order to live properly, the three forms of the mind have to coexist in harmony,
as a whole. The ego represents what we may call reson and common sense
whereas the id represents passions.
III.1.a. Id
The id represents the most primitive motivational force; it is governed
by the pleasure principle and this is why his demands should be satisfied at
once, no matter the circumstances or the effects. The id stands in direct
opposition with the super - ego. Also Freud proposes that the ego is part of the
id, whereas the ego seeks to bring the influence to the external world to bear
upon the id and its tendencies, trying to substitute the reality principle with the
pleasure principle that reigns unrestrictedly in the id.
38

III.1.b. Ego
The ego is ruled by the reality principle; it meditates the relationship
between the id and the reality around, very often suppressing the ids demands
until the appropriate moment. The ego often uses defence mechanism meant to
help its activity and, at the same time, meant to ensure the individuals stability
and sanity. Once the ego is shaped, the individual becomes a self (the individual
becomes aware of values, of needs and his actions). The ego can be
manipulated and controlled; this is why the society creates it. Once the ego
becomes a self it is impossible to be manipulated, no one can control a self.
III.1.c. Superego
The notion of Uber-Ich, super-ego has been introduced by Freud in
the study Das Ich und das Es14, 1923. He underlines the critic function that
constitutes an instance separated from the I and that seems to dominate, as the
states of spleen and pathological mourning demonstrate it, in which the subject
criticizes and disapproves himself: We consider that a part of the I interferes
with the other one taking it for an object.
The notion of super-ego belongs to the second topic of Freud. Before
introducing it into a definition, the psychoanalytical theory had already
acknowledged the place that was taken into the psychological conflict that
followed the suppression of the achievement and the acknowledgement of ones
wishes: the censorship of the dream, for instance. Moreover, Freud said that this
censorship could act in an unconscious manner; this would differentiate from the
beginning his own apprehension from the classic ones concerning the moral
consciousness.15
To what Freud is concerned, the super-ego is considered as a part of the ego.
Taking into account the notion of the super-ego, it covers the functions of
suppression and ideal. If the ideal of the ego is maintained at least as particular
substructure, then the super-ego would appear firstly as an instance that
39

represents the law and as an interdiction to breach it.

According to Freud the molding of the super-ego is bound to the
Oedipus complex16.

It is

difficult to establish which one of the identifications is specific to the formation

of the super-ego, the ideal of the ego and even the ego itself. The formation of
the super-ego may be considered as a case of successful identification with the
parental instance, says Freud in Continuare la prelegerile introductive in
psihanaliza, (Neue Folge der Vorlesungen zur Einfuhrung in die Psychoanalyse,
1932).

The superego, originating in the

child through an identification with parents, and in response to social pressures,

functions as an internal censor to repress the urges of the id. The ego, on the
other hand, is seen as a part of the id modified by contact with the external
world. It is a mental agent mediating among three contending forces: the outside
demands of social pressure or reality, libidinal demands for immediate
satisfaction arising from the id, and the moral demands of the superego.
Although considered only partly conscious, the ego constitutes the major part of
what is commonly referred to as consciousness. Freud asserted that conflicts
between these often-opposing components of the human mind are crucial factors
in the development of neurosis.17

The superego tells the

ego what is right or wrong, moral, acceptable, or realistic; at the same time, it
represents the individuals step towards the ideal, towards the achieving the
perfect goal required by society. Whenever the individual does something
wrong, unacceptable, the superego resorts to self-criticism; whenever the
individual does something good, which deserves appreciation, the superego
experiences pride and

self-satisfaction.

There are two aspects to the superego: One is the conscience, which is an
internalization of punishments and warnings. The other is called the ego ideal. It
derives from rewards and positive models presented to the child. The conscience
and ego ideal communicate their requirements to the ego with feelings like
pride, shame, and guilt.
40

I have found a structural model for better understanding the notions of

ego, id and superego:

The ego is not sharply separated from the id; its lower portion merges into it....
But the repressed merges into the id as well, and is merely a part of it. The
repressed is only cut off sharply from the ego by the resistances of repression; it
can communicate with the ego through the id." (Model of the mind which
appears in Freud's 1923 paper "The Ego and the Id").18
The American psychologist, William James, identified two main aspects of the
self: the self as a knower, ( called the I or the pure ego) - it is the active
source of behavior, the activity of consciousness, that can be directed towards
everything, including oneself;

the self as known (called the me, or the

empirical ego) - it is the passive object of behaviour; it becomes active

because we can notice what the individual may say about himself, as well as the
way he says it; it can be divided into:
a) the material me (the body, clothes or other possessions);
b) the social me (the reflected appraisals of the others around;
it is based on an inborn tendency of getting ourselves
noticed favourably by those around);
c) the spiritual me (our reflections on our own psychological
processes).

41

Thus, the SELF becomes the result of me (the bearer of the social order, of
values and norms; it ensures control over the I, determining our own behaviour)
and the I (carrier of the elements proper to the unique individual).
I have chosen a poem of love that illustrates better the relationship between the
id, ego and superego.
I started Early - Took my Dog And visited the Sea The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me And Frigates - in the Upper Floor
Extended Hempen Hands Presuming Me to be a Mouse Aground - upon the Sands But no Man moved Me - till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe And past my Apron - and my Belt
And past my Bodice - too And made as He would eat me up As wholly as a Dew
Upon a Dandelion's Sleeve And then - I started - too And He - He followed - close behind I felt His Silver Heel
Upon my Ankle - Then my Shoes
Would overflow with Pearl Until We met the Solid Town No One He seemed to know
And bowing - with a Mighty look 42

At me - The Sea withdrew -

The poem I started early - took my dog can be interpreted as making a strange
reference to a suicide. Dickinson uses some elements in this poem that relate to
the theme of suicide, such as tone, imagery and rhyme.
Without a doubt, the metaphor silver heel in the poem represents the
desire of the poetess, the man within. He is both the water and the symbol of
emotion and sexuality. In the poem, he (the id of the poetess) always wants to
dominate her heart .The dog in the first line I started Early-Took my Dog and
visited the Sea symbolizes the ego of the poetess, it offers companionship but
not protection. The dog plays as a judge to witness the whole process of the
poetesss emotion and desire. And that is to say, no one will fulfill his/her own
desire at his/her own sweet time since the superego and ego are always there.
Initially the speaker is welcomed by the sea then she feels attacked and
frightened by it. On the symbolic level, the sea represents the meaning of her
own experience and here we have from several suggestions: the sea represents:
her oppressed sexuality, her unconsciousness, death or perhaps nature.
The speaker is in this poem an innocent woman whereas the sea is an aggressive
male. She decides to visit the Sea, her destination. At first she is attracted by
the Sea, the mermaids Came out to look at me. In stanzas one and two,
Dickinson uses the metaphor of a house to describe the Sea; the bottom of the
ocean is the Basement and its surface is The upper Floor. Nothing seems
threatening in these images, not a hint of menace. In stanza three, the sea is
personified as a man who represents no interest in the eyes of the speaker: But
no Man moved me. Up to this point she hasnt been impressed by anything,
till the Tide when she is sexually moved, the Tide moves up her body, higher
than her Belt, past her Bodice, after that all the words that follow are charged
with sexual meaning. She is afraid that her identity would be consumed by the
ocean. The repetition and emphasis of And He He followed close behind
betrays her fear and her oppressed sexuality.
The super-ego in the poem is represented by the solid town. No One
43

He seemed to know shows that no one is that various restriction and morality
that governs our society (the super-ego) and that he (the id) is unfamiliar with
them. This could be a conflict. However, the water bowing - with a Might
look illustrates that the inner-world of the poetess respects the social rules (the
super-ego) and that the strong will (the ego) of her will lead to the rejection of
that Man. This also shows that he (the id) is repressed by the rules and defeated
by the ego. The ego balances the conflict and the poetess goes back into the
reality. At last, the water (the id) goes back to the sea, the destination for the id
in reality. The poetess also tells us that the desire of a person is as infinite as the
sea. Although the sea is a living symbol of nature and we all know how deadly
nature can be.
For a person to live sanely, the three forms of the mind must exist in harmony.
Yet, in order for a person to maintain stability, society must not put any sort of
barrier between persons of any kind.

III.2. Psychoanalytical themes

III.2.a. Death
Without any doubt Emily Dickinson is considered to be a philosophical
poetess.Her meditation , even when it embraces grave themes, such as death,
nature and the inner world of man, doesnt exceed the significations of her
intellect, as she doesnt bother to integrate these themes in a familiar Universe. I
think that this represents a key to her poetry. Death obsessed her, as the only act
that could take her one step close to her vision. Death would carry her and her
wisdom clean through the mystery of her life. She postponed all her questions to
deaths solution. And so these three - whatever it was that lay beyond her
frightening vision, and the crowded, beloved Creation around her and Death
44

became her Holy Trinity. What she divined of their Holiness was what she could
divine of their poetry. And it is in her devotion to this Trinity, rather than in
anything to do with the more orthodox terminology which she used so freely and
familiarly, that she became the greatest religious poet America has produced.
The Bible was a territory of myth that she loved, but the structures upon
behavior educed from it by believers were not those she could adopt. Her
imagination released by personal discipline and strengthened by vicissitude, was
too lively to accept revealed religion and too restless to abide in the world
comfortably defined by the popular science and philosophy of the nineteenth
century
Dying
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and then
There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
45

I could not see to see.

"I heard a fly buzz when I died" is one of Emily Dickinson's finest opening
lines. It effectively juxtaposes the trivial and the momentous; the movement
from one to the other is so swift and so understated and the meanings so
significant that the effect is like a blow to an emotional solar plexus (solar
plexus: pit of the stomach). Some readers find it misleading because the first
clause ("I heard a fly buzz") does not prepare for the second clause ("when I
died"). The Fly, it has been suggested, is a blowfly, a fly whose eggs are
maggots which feed on carrion - Life feeding upon Death - Death generating
Life: a terrifyingly fecund Nature, a heaving Storm of generation, a squirming
and pullulating mass which waits ready to recycle the materials of which we are
constituted and squirt us forth again into the endless cycle of birth and death in
new forms. 19
The death in this poem is painless, yet the vision of death it presents is
horrifying, even dreadful. The appearance of an ordinary, insignificant fly at the
climax of a life simply startles and confuses us. But by the end of the poem, the
fly seems to have acquired its dreadful meaning. Clearly, the central image is the
fly. The most interesting thing that I could find about the symbolic meaning of
the fly, was that this insect has been considered to be sacred. In Egyptian
mythology the fly offered protection against diseases or misfortune. Also the fly
was considered a symbol of bravery. This insect makes a literal appearance in
three of the four stanzas and is what the speaker experiences in dying.
Theres silence in the room except for the fly. The poem describes a lull
between "heaves," suggesting that confusion that follows this moment and that
more confusion that will follow. It is a moment of expectation, of waiting. There
is "stillness in the air. And still the only sound is the fly's buzzing. The speaker's
tone is calm, even flat; her narrative is concise and factual.
The people witnessing the death have exhausted their grief (their eyes are
"wrung dry" of tears). Her breathing indicates that "that last onset" or death is
46

about to happen. "Last onset" is an oxymoron; "onset" means a beginning and

"last" means an end. For Christians, death is the beginning of eternal life. Death
brings revelation, when God or the nature of eternity becomes known. This is
why "the king / Be witnessed in his power." The king may be God, Christ, or
death; think about which reading you prefer and why.
She is ready to dye; she has cut her attachments to this world (given away "my
keepsakes") and anticipates death and its revelation. Are the witnesses also
waiting for a revelation through her death? Ironically the fly, not the hoped-for
king of might and glory, appears. The core of this poem lies in the way you
interpret this discrepancy. The fly is associated with the king and it suggests the
realities of death - smell, decay. Flies do, after all, feed on carrion (dead flesh).
Does this association suggest anything about the dying woman's vision of death?
or the observers' vision? Is she - are they - seeing the future as physical decay
only? Does the fly's fulfilling their expectations indicate that death has no
spiritual significance, that there is no eternity or immortality for us? There are
other interpretations of the fly. The fly may stand for Beelzebub, who is also
known as lord of the flies. Sometimes Beelzebub is used as another name for
Satan; sometimes it refers to any devil; in Milton's Paradise Lost, Beelzebub is
Satan's chief lieutenant in hell. The irony stands in the fact that the King, whom
the observers and/or the speaker is waiting for, turns out to be the devil. Due to
this the poem becomes more cheerful. What would Dickinson be saying about
eternity? Can the poem support more than one of these interpretations of the fly?
What is the effect of the fly being the only sign of life ("buzz") at the end of the
poem? The most significant thing in the entire poem is that the only sign of
vitality and aliveness is the fly.

For

literal-minded readers, a dead narrator speaking about his/her death signifies a

problem, perhaps an overwhelming one. For instance how can a dead woman
speak? Less literal readers may face dreadful possibilities. If the dead woman
can still speak, this means that dying is perpetual and continuous. Or maybe this
immortality is a state of consciousness in an eternal present.

This
47

devotion to the eternal, mystic dimension beyond time and beyond death is also
a product of her inner experiences which often left her overwhelmed by the
hidden bliss of life. Yet despite the profound inner revelations, which left her
with a bitter taste of immortality, it is clear that these did not become a
permanent reality. It is as if she often doubted her own glimpses of a life beyond
the ordinary. As Sri Chinmoy observes:
her mind violently refused to believe in the authenticity of Emily's
illumining, fulfilling and immortalizing experiences.
The mind stood adamant20 between the finite and the Infinite, between the body
and vital and the heart and soul,
between the consciously known world and the unconsciously known world21
This reflects in the inherent paradoxes and apparent contradictions within her
poetry.
One cannot read the poetry of Emily Dickinson without being struck by her
interest clearly turned into obsession, with death. It was not that she feared
death, more so she hoped that death was perhaps a solution, a way forward from
the impediments of human life and human weakness.
I died for Beauty but was scarce adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room
I Died for Beauty
Analysts may take different things from the poetry of Emily Dickinson but over
100 years after her death, she is considered -a prophet poet who contemplates
death and immortality - engaging the reader in his own contemplations.
III.2.b. Inner World
While we explore our inner world by means of different psychological states,
Dickinson tries to present the drama of the individual consciousness. Dickinson
was the one who saw the potential danger and loneliness of the world, "the
48

depths in every consciousness from which we cannot rescue ourselves - to which

none can go with us" (she said in one of her letters in 1878). For the poet and
critic Adrienne Rich, Dickinson is the American poet whose work consisted in
exploring states of psychic extremity; Rich further asserts that: More than any
other poet, Emily Dickinson seemed to tell me that the intense inner event, the
personal and psychological, was inseparable from the universal.
Here are some poems where the inner world is best illustrated: I felt a funeral
in my brain, Theres a certain slant of light, I was not dead for I stood up,
I felt a cleaving in my mind, The Brain - is wider than the sky. For an
insightful analysis I have chosen the following poem:
I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.
And when they all were seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb.
And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead,
Then space began to toll
As all the heavens were a bell,
And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
Wrecked, solitary, here.
And then a plank in reason, broke,
And I dropped down and down49

And hit a world at every plunge,

And finished knowing - then -
I felt a funeral in my brain suggests somewhat the speaker's descent into
neurosis. It is a terrifying poem for both the speaker and the reader. The speaker
experiences the loss of self in the chaos of the unconscious, and the reader
experiences the speaker's descending madness and the horror most of us feel
about going crazy. Dickinsons use of the metaphor for funeral represents her
own acceptance that a part of her is dying, so, her reason is being overwhelmed
by the irrationality of the unconscious. A funeral is an appropriate image for this
torment and death is the most obvious suggestion that leads to it. Also a funeral
is a formal event, whose rules and procedures suggest control and order. The
control and order that are implied in a funeral contrast ironically with the lack of
control and loss of rationality that threaten the speaker. Symbolically speaking, a
funeral marks the passage from one state to another, from life to death, from
sanity to insanity. However, the poet does not observe the funeral, she is
feeling it, and she is both the observer and the participant of the funeral,
indicating somewhat that the Self is divided. By the end of the poem, the Self
will have broken into pieces and fall into the immense chaos.
The mourners represent a metaphor that expresses her pain. The act of
treading (note the repetition of the word, which gives emphasis and imply the
action) indicates a pressure that is pushing her down: And I dropped down and
down -. The speaker has a momentary impression that the sense of the tread
itself is escaping or being lost. The pressure of the treading is reasserted with the
repetition, "beating, beating. This time her mind, the only source of reasoning,
goes numb in a further deterioration of her condition.
One can trace the process of the speaker's loss of rationality in stanzas three and
four. The image of those same boots of lead that creak across her soul has
an important amount of emotion and psychological charge. The last two lines of
stanza four assess her condition; she sees herself as "wrecked, solitary." Her
descent into irrationality separates her from other human beings, making her a
50

member of "some strange race." Her isolation and incapacity to communicate

are indicated by her being enclosed by silence. In the last stanza, Dickinson uses
the metaphor of the plank that breaks and drops her over an abyss down and
down and hit a world, to describe the speaker's descent into irrationality. In
other words, her hold on rationality was insecure. She falls past "worlds," which
may stand for her past; she is losing her connections to reality. Her descent is
described as aplunge, that suggests the speed and force of her fall into the
psychological chaos. The last word of the poem, then - does not finish or end
her experience but leaves opened the door for the nightmare - the horrors of
madness.
III.2.c. Nature
Nature is a source of joy, beauty, rebirth but it can become without warning or
further cause the most threatening and dangerous for humanity. That is why
nature still represents a stranger among us, a haunted house and a less aggressive
vision. The sea still swallows people; water still drives them into the abyss of
horror in spite of the familiar appearance; but then again the mountain still
drips with sunset, a bird with rapid eyes... Like frightened beads still bites
an angle worm in halves and eat the fellow, raw; and after all the man is no
more than a narrow fellow in the grass, an earthly being. The wind brings
along with the perfume of clover, messages from death to cast the ships at sea,
flung menace at the earth, a menace at the sky. There is not a single thing that
cannot frighten the poetess. She fears whether the sun leads to solitude, she fears
whether the night will bring the dawn again. The nature that spoke to Whitman
about the joy of life, menaced Emily Dickinson with the deterioration,
announced by all sorts of strange messages from which she tries to escape.
As shown in her poems, Dickinson's spiritual journey led her from naive
nature - mysticism through disappointment, to a sacramental approach to God
and further discouragement, culminating in a mature attitude of faithful
unknowing.22 Nature is a source of joy and beauty, which can without warning
51

and without obvious cause, become threatening, dangerous. Nature is at times:

connected with death or with annihilation, perceived as a regenerative - or
renewing - force, or characterized as indifferent to humanity.23
The poetess has her own theory concerning nature; as we can see
clearly from her verse dedicated to the question what is nature? Emily
believed (surprisingly for those who insisted upon the transcendentalist side of
her poetry) in the reality of the image we have about the natural world: Nature
is what we see:
"Nature is what we see,
The hill, the afternoon Squirrel, eclipse, the bumble - bee,
Nay - nature is heaven.

Nature is what we hear,

The bobolink, the sea Thunder, the cricket Nay - nature is harmony.

Nature is what we know

Yet have no art to say,
So impotent our wisdom is
To her simplicity. (c. 1863)
The juxtaposition between the monumental (the sea, the eclipse, the
thunder) and the miniature (the bumble bee, the cricket) generates quite a
spectacular effect that astonishes the reader. Its true that, for the poetess, the
supreme reality is (physically speaking) the heaven, the harmony, because it
52

is proclaimed after the other appearances of the nature that have been denied:
Nay - nature is heaven, Nay - nature is harmony.. Although it is obvious that
here is recommended a range of opposition, not between the abstract and
concrete world, but between the habitat of man and what it involves, covering it
like a dome. The real inside of nature consists in these realities, some realities
psychologically perceived. The poetess actually referred to the harmonic
coexistence of all things in nature, or to the platonic world of the ideal
appearances.
The intelligence of man is completely useless in nature So impotent our
wisdom is and this leads to the fact that everything we do doesnt have a
reason, it actually seems meaningless. As the philosopher Sri Chinmoy used to
say: Nature has always had more force than education.
Her poetic definitions simply emphasize the essential realities that will be
confirmed latter on by her Experiment in green. The poetess perceives
vaguely the existence of these realities that- along with those directly observed constitute the complexity of what she calls nature.
Influenced perhaps by the mysticism of Ralph Waldo Emerson as
expressed in his essay, Nature, Dickinson looked to the natural world because it
seemed to have the peculiar power of awakening mystical-like moods. She also
seemed to be fully aware of the "peril" of taking such an unorthodox stance.
Using her principal metaphor of the sea to stand for the unknown and eternity,
Dickinson wrote to Abiah Root in 1850: "The shore is safer, Abiah, but I love to
buffet the sea - I can count the bitter wrecks here in these pleasant waters, and
hear the murmuring winds, but oh, I love the danger!" (L-39).24

53

Notes

54

1 http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0802510.html
2 G. & C. Merriam Company (1967):Websters Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Publishers
Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
3 Longman Dictionary of English language and Culture, New Edition, Longman.
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalysis
5 Holland, Norman.N. (1993). Psychoanalysis and Literature. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 5 - 21
6 Paul Ricoeur (1913 2005) was a french philosopher best known for combining phenomenological
description with hermeneutic interpretation.
7 Jacques Derrida (born July 15, 1930 October 8, 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher,
known as the founder of deconstruction. His voluminous work had a profound impact upon continental
philosophy, French philosophy, and literary theory.
8 Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalysis.
9 From: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/57309/psychoanalysis_in_literature.html.
10Online article taken from: http://sf-cp.org/Archive/newsroom/nr12-1996.htm
11 Websters Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, New revised Edition
(1994), Dilithium Press Ltd.
12 Cmeciu D. (1999): Virginia Woolf or the Quest for the Poetic Word , Ed. Pro Humanitate, Bucuresti,
p.18
13 Cmeciu D.(1999): ibidem p.22
14 In translation The I and the Self.
15 Jean Laplanche, J.B. Pontalis (1994): Vocabularul Psihanalizei,Ed. Humanitas, Bucuresti, p. 423 - 4
16 Not satisfying his forbidden oedipal desires, the child transforms the possession upon his parents
into an identification with them, by introspecting the forbiddance.
17 http://www.wikipedia.org
18 source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego#Freud.27s_structural_theory
19 The Course of American Literature, Emily Dickinson's Cosmic "Buzz", Sava Ioan (note de curs)
20 Adj. (of a person or behavior) firm and immovable in purpose: ex. I tied to talk her out of it but she
was adamant.
21 Sri Chinmoy (1998): Philosopher-Thinkers: The Power-Towers Of The Mind And Poet-Seers: The
Fragrance-Hours Of The Heart In The West, Agni Press.
22 From: Spirituality today, 1989, Vol.41 No. 3, pp. 226-241. Connie Doyle: 'Experiment in Green':
Emily Dickinson's Search for Faith
23 From: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/dickinson.html#themes

24 Ibidem