Dickinson’s Attitude Towards Life and Love
Attitude to life is a very comprehensive
term which encompasses a great many aspects of life. Life consists of not a few
elements, but almost an infinite variety of things. However, a poet usually
does have some attitude towards life which in his/her case may mean he/she
highlights some particular aspect of life – not too many, of course. In the
case of Emily Dickinson we find that she has highlighted some important aspects
of life - friendship, society, pain and suffering and growth in life, and the
most potent factor of life, that is love.
In some of Dickinson’s poems she talks
about dear a person who seems to be regarded more as beloved friends than as
objects of romantic ardour. Later in life Dickinson wrote to Samuel Bowles, “My
friends are my estate”, and still later she declared that letters feel to her
like immortality because they contain the mind “Without corporeal friend”. From her statements it seems that sometimes
she treasured friendship held at a distance more than the actual presence of
friends.
Dickinson has distinctive views on pain, suffering, and growth as an integral part of life. Suffering plays a major role
in her poems about death and immortality, just as death appears in her poem on
suffering. Her poems on the themes of suffering and growth belong to three
groups: (1) deprivation as a cause of suffering; (2) suffering leading to
disintegration, and (3) suffering as bringing compensatory rewards of spiritual
growth.
Some of her poems reflect her belief
that suffering is necessary for creativity. Poems on love and on nature suggest
that suffering will lead to a fulfillment of love or that the fatality which one
feels in nature elevates one and sharpen his sensibility. “Death-blow is a life
blow to some” implies that every apparent evil has a corresponding good, and
good is never brought to birth without evil.
Dickinson considered the subject of love
from a philosophical point of view, although her love-poetry had its source in
her own experience of passion. She glorified love to such a degree that it was
almost equated with God. Love, in her eyes, triumphs over both life and death,
and achieves an almost divine status.
The poems of her early period contain
her most sentimental passion of life. Poems dealing with brides and marriages
are her most artistic love poems. The human love remains shadowy, and the
vision of the lover’s heavenly marriage changes to an actual celestial union
with god. The blending of spiritual love and human passion occurs in some other
group of poems. “Title Divine is Mine”, blends spiritual love ad human passion,
developing the ritual of an actual marriage without the human bridegroom.
Dickinson’s attitude to life and love
forms important aspects of her poetry. Her attitude towards thee gripping
aspects of life is very distinctive, and distinguishes he form other poets of
the world.
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