Over the past few decades, a considerable number of comments have been made on the idea of ​​eternity in Emily Dickinson's poetry. Here are some examples: Emily Dickinson's Poetry (1975) by Robert Weisbuch, Dickinson: Strategies of Limitation (1985) by Jane Donahue Eberwein, Emily Dickinson's Fascicles: Method and Meaning (1995) by Dorothy Huff Oberhaus, and Nimble Believing: Dickinson and Meaning by James McIntosh. The Unknown (2000). However, opinions vary as to how Dickinson explored the question of eternity; much ink has still been spent on the issue. This article therefore offers another discussion of the idea of ​​eternity described in Dickinson's poetry. I will approach the question by considering how his poems describe the process by which the poet finally achieves belief in eternity, overcoming the quarrel between Christianity and scientific knowledge and that between romanticism and existentialism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay To begin, let's look closely at one of the poems in which Dickinson gives a detailed account of a scene on her deathbed: The last night that She lived It was a common night, except for the dying - it made nature different to us. We noticed the smallest things - the things neglected before By this great light on our minds - italicized - as if they were. As we exited and went between her last room and the rooms where those who were supposed to be alive tomorrow were located, a blameThat others might existWhile she must end completelyA jealousy for her aroseSo almost infinite-- (P- 1100)It is presumed that Dickinson wrote this piece of verse around 1886. In May of that year, Laura Dickey, the wife of Frank W. of Michigan, died at her parents' home in Amherst. Although there is no record to prove that Dickinson was with the woman when she died, the event could have inspired the poet to write this poem. Whatever the source of the incitement, she describes, in this story, a profound moment of death and its impact on the living, through which she expresses her belief and doubts in the other world. Although it is a “common night” when the woman dies. , the speaker says, there is something unnatural in the air, for what people usually neglect or avoid is highlighted (“italicized”) by death (“great light”). The moment of death is a “Compound Vision” (P-906) for Dickinson. While, on one side, the dying woman advances towards the presence of God, on the other, the living vigorously enter and leave “her last room”. In the meantime, two different emotions - "a blame" and "a jealousy" - take hold of the speaker: she is filled with anger at the absurdity of death which carries the woman alone to the "Unknown Country" ( L-752); at the same time, she envies the woman's fate, to the extent that the dying woman can now experience the great adventure and see the world beyond death. So far, the speaker observes the dying from a Christian perspective: jealousy for the woman represents a belief in heaven and eternal life affirmed in the Bible. She wishes to share with the deceased the opportunity to have a glimpse of the afterlife, intangible for the living. However, only the woman lying on the bed can surpass the limits of this world. The speaker cannot solve the riddle of death. Here, anti-religious knowledge begins to rear its head in the speaker, or the poet. Writing to TW Higginson, Dickinson states that "My business is girth" (L-268); and according to Eberwein's interpretation, "the circumference, for Emily Dickinson,it is death” (164). Then, the inability to find the meaning of death indicates the failure of one's own enterprise. To the extent that it adheres to the Christian idea, death remains a mystery. This is why the poet turns his gaze away from Christianity so that he can accomplish his mission, which gives the poem a sudden change of tone: She mentioned, and forgot - Then lightly as a Reed leaned towards the water , struggled barely - consented and died - and we - we placed the hair - and raised the head - and then a terrible leisure was the belief of regulating - (P-1100) The woman, on the verge of death, tries to pronounce a word, in vain. She is content to fight weakly against "a reaper whose name is Death" (L-185) as if she were a defenseless reed raised against the current which tries to carry her away. In a well-known poem, “I Heard a Fly Buzzing – When I Died” (P-465), a fly spoils the crucial moment of the speaker's death with its buzzing. But there appears, on the woman's deathbed, no obstacle comparable to the fly; instead, she gives in to death with great ease, simply leaving her body behind. What the audience, including the speaker, must do now is comb her hair, straighten her head, and “regulate” their religious faith. Christians are trained to watch for signs of salvation at the time of death to look for evidence that angels are descending to take a newcomer to heaven. Yet people cannot perceive any providential signal in the woman's submission to death. As a result, they are restless and a scientific vision begins to conquer their minds. These disconcerted people need, for the moment, “terrible leisure” to rediscover an unshakeable belief. The last two stanzas thus express Dickinson's loss of faith in Christianity and in her idea of ​​life after death. She apparently looks at the dying within the limits that scientific knowledge allows: death, here, is only a simple vanishing point and there is no revelation in it. In Dickinson's time, railroads, telephones, steamboats, electricity – all these products of modern science and technology were introduced to New Englanders. And these inventions not only made their lives easier, but attracted them into materialism; therefore, science began to supplant the formulated Christian faith. Furthermore, as Cynthia Griffin Wolff points out, "Dickinson received more instruction in current mathematics and science than the average American schoolchild receives today" (342). It is likely that his attachment to science was much stronger than our speculations. Drifting from belief in Omnipotence, Dickinson came to believe only what had proof; therefore, the commitment to scientific knowledge thwarted religious learning about death and the afterlife. And with regard to these two stanzas, the abstract description of the afterlife in Scripture is considered unworthy: it does not reveal the true nature of death, the afterlife and eternity. So, can “We,” including the poet, really adjust their faith during “horrible leisure”? The answer would be "Yes" and "No", since Dickinson simply mentions that "leisure" is organized after the death of the woman. Some might overcome their skepticism; others might abandon the solemn Christian view at this point. And in the case of Dickinson herself, it can be said that she continued to be both a skeptic and a believer in Christianity. The poet with a materialist point of view needed "leisure" to reconsider Christian thought when she witnessed thedead ; she nevertheless satisfactorily understood that scientific knowledge was not enough to answer the ultimate question about life and death. In other words, Dickinson's quest for eternity moved back and forth between the orthodox Christian view and the scientific view of the world after death. I will now shift the emphasis from the clash between Christianity and scientific thought to that between romanticism and existentialism. Analysis of Poem 191 provides a good starting point: The Heavens cannot keep their secret! They tell it to the Hills - The Hills just tell it to the Orchards - And them - the Daffodils! A bird - by chance - which goes that way - Soft surprises everyone: if I had to bribe the little bird, who knows if she wouldn't say it? Heaven, that is to say the kingdom of heaven, reveals to the “hills” the secret of God and the angels; the hilly country, towards "the"The orchards", the fruit tree, with the "daffodils". "A bird" listens to their whispers, and if the speaker offers a bribe to the "little bird", "she " will probably tell him too. In a way, the gist of these lines is extremely simple; it is clear that the poet has no doubt about the possibility of interlocution between nature and human beings. The critic Hoxie Neale Fairchild urges: [.as the attempt to realize, preserve or justify that emotional experience produced by an imaginative fusion of the real and the ideal, the natural and the supernatural, the finite and the infinite, of the 'man and God (206) The attempt to discover the infinite in the finite, dealing with the anchor of human life - this is called romanticism Then it is obvious that Dickinson. was a romantic poet. She conceived nature as the representative of God in the above stanzas; she was convinced that she could listen to the Divinity. directly through nature. However, her intellect did not allow her to be satisfied with a romantic vision of nature: she could not allow herself to be completely carried away by a romantic vision. Accordingly, she compelled her speaker to address God, to borrow Sewall's expression, "with a certain sobriety" (714): So keep your secret, Father! I wouldn't want, if I could, to know what the Sapphire Fellows are doing, in your new-fashioned world! (P-191) This final coda of the poem shows that the speaker has no desire to be informed of what “the Sapphire Fellows” are doing in the Holy City even though “Father” voluntarily lets him know. There is no reconciliation, in the poet's philosophy, between the finite and the infinite. She therefore dissociates her interlocutor from romanticism while she prepares to know, through natural phenomena, all the answers to the questions about eternity. And what now holds the poet's attention is an existential idea concerning eternity. The existentialist movement spread widely in European countries after World War II; It was long after Dickinson's death that he entered the American literary world. But the philosophical movement actually originated in the 19th century, when Soren Kierkegaard used the term “Existants-forhold,” meaning “the condition of existence” or “an existential relationship.” As Kenneth Stocks surmises, she "already existed in the consciousness of Emily Dickinson's time" (52). In his work Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard notes that “God and man are two qualities separated by an infinite qualitative difference” (126), considered the fundamental doctrine of existentialism. Contrary to Romanticism, he affirms that there is no amicable settlement between the limited being and the unlimited being: the human being and the Supreme Being are not two portions of equivalent level but two elements in twodimensions. In summary, existentialism is a school of philosophy that recognizes the finitude of human beings. When we examine Dickinson's works in accordance with this definition, we can easily come across poems that illustrate her existential achievements. As an example, she sings: To be alive is power-existence-in oneself-without any other function-[no stanza break]All-power-enough-to be alive-and will! »Is capable as God-the Creator-of ourselves, be what, such being Finitude! (P-677) “Being alive” means, notes the poet, “the power”, “the existence” or the “omnipotence” of human beings. Even if they are just alive, the very ability to live is omnipotent enough. Furthermore, when they retain the "Will", they can possess divine skill: they are capable of achieving whatever God created them to be. Yet their “existence” is after all limited. However gifted they may be, they are condemned to “Finitude”. Consequently, their “Existence” is distinguished from that of God; and only “Finitude” becomes their dominant character, or “Almighty power”. Dickinson obviously approves of the heterogeneity between divinity and the nature of human beings in this poem, which introduces us to the fact that she was involved in existential thought even unintentionally. Indeed, Dickinson's idea was entirely analogous to those of Kierkegaard. The following poem is proof of this: I am aware in my room of an unformed friend - he does not attest by his posture - nor does he confirm - by speech - [. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ]Presence-is his furthest license-neither him towards me, nor myself towards him-by emphasis-renunciation of probity-[. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ] Nor if he visits the other - does he live - or not - knows that I - but instinct estimates him immortality - (P-679) In the introduction to The illness until at death, Kierkegaard insists: Christianly understood, [. . .] death is by no means the last of all; in fact, it is only a minor event within that which is all, an eternal life and, in the Christian sense, there is infinitely more hope in death than in life[. . .]. (7) Apparently, Kierkegaard is only summarizing a representative Christian theology. Yet what should be noted is that he takes Christian belief a step further. His exploration of human existence reveals that a human being cannot automatically receive eternal life after bodily extinction; according to its premises, for the inheritance of eternal life one must consciously assume interior eternity. The following quote will make his point clearer. It prescribes human existence bluntly: A human being is spirit. But what is the mind? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is the relationship that relates to the self or is the relationship that relates to the self in the relationship; the self is not the relation but the relation of the relation to itself. (13) The true way of existing, his argument suggests, is that the self always relates to itself. Related to this point we have the explanation that "the self is the conscious synthesis of infinitude and finitude which relates to itself" (29). Although a human being is only allowed to live for a limited time, his existence includes "infinitude", or the eternal within him. In other words, human existence is twofold. And what immediately emerges from these extracts is that a human being must relate to the duality of existence. Only when conscious of his doubleness can a human being receive eternity. Returning to poem 679, it is clear that the poet was as philosophical as Kierkegaard. From the first lines, the speaker admitsthat she is “aware” that a guest is visiting her “Room”. He is invisible and silent; yet she can perceive it since “Her most distant license” is “Presence”. As long as she is present, the guest also has the right to exist; as long as he retains the “permit”, it can be present. And they relate to each other with “Probity” so that they can achieve coexistence. The relationship between the speaker and the “informed friend” is therefore rather friendly. And thanks to this strong mutual relationship, she manages to deduce his true colors in the last paragraph: his "Instinct" feels that he is "Immortality". Wolff insists that "eternity" is "a term coldly indifferent to the existence of both humanity and God" and that "immortality" is linked to "the infinite life of a consciousness integral, human or divine” (293); and it tries to dispel the dissimilarity between the two terms. But the Oxford English Dictionary defines "immortality" as "absolute eternity, having neither beginning nor end" and treats the two words as synonyms; we would prefer to agree with this definition here. Therefore, the speaker of this verse is aware of the eternal within his “Presence”. Judging from the above, it is quite satisfactory that Dickinson has penetrated, in these lines, the duality of human existence as much as Kierkegaard did in his writings. Aware of the existence of an "unformed friend" in her "Room", that is to say in herself, she began to try to reveal the true character of the friend; she ultimately evaluated it as the eternal in the same sense as that used by Kierkegaard. It may well be that such a discovery of the infinite aspect of human existence enabled Dickinson to fully acquire the intrinsic conception of eternity. In one of his poems, we are told: The blunder is in the estimationEternity is thereWe say as of a StationMeanwhile, he is so close that he joins me in my walk, divides my dwelling with me . I have no friend who persists as long as this eternity (P-1684). Dickinson stated that eternity was already hidden in existence before a human being was “remembered” (L-1046). To repeat Kierkegaard's statement, a human being "cannot reject the eternal once and for all, nothing is more impossible [...]" (17); Dickinson, too, felt the persistence of this friend called eternity. Without a line, a symbol of his uncertainty, this poem thus represents his conquest of the noumenon of eternity. The poet transformed, from an existentialist perspective, his pure nostalgia for eternity into a true conviction. “I live in possibility – / A house fairer than prose –” (P-657) Dickinson sings softly. The mansion embracing “Possibility” was, of course, poetry. This article clarified how she furnished the empty house with an abstraction, eternity. Eternity is, for all human beings, one of the most intriguing subjects; countless writers choose it as the theme of their works. It can be said that there is nothing new in his poems on this subject. Yet Dickinson's uniqueness in exploration lies in her curious mind influenced by four different ideas: Christianity, scientific knowledge, romanticism, and existentialism. While these ideas perplexed her time and time again, they tickled her immeasurably; magnetized on all sides, she strove to determine which thought was the most reliable to reach the heart of eternity. And existentialism ultimately proved to be a trustworthy theory. Dickinson once wrote: "Finite to failure, but infinite to adventure" (P-847), by which she tries to show that we cannot exceed our limits unless we test our, 1975.