Emily Dickinson: An August Love on Earth by Ser T. Habil

Abstract

Reviewed by: Emily Dickinson: An August Love on Earth by Ser T. Habil Ser T. Habil (bio) Habil, Ser T. Emily Dickinson: An August Love on Earth. 2019. University of Valencia, Spain, PhD dissertation. That Love is all there isIs all we know of Love (Fr1747) Emily Dickinson's scholars have always encountered a logjam that is hard to break when dealing with the theme of love in her poetry. While some believe that her poetry is a bolted boudoir to which the identity of the lover(s) is the only key, recently others have assumed that her poetry draws its strength from the mystery behind which it safely hides. Thus, any attempt to dig into her private affairs would distract the reader from the true beauty of her poetry. The reader simply should not "Split the Lark" for the sake of discovering its "Music" (Fr905). Undeniably, Dickinson's love poetry is packed with half-legible meanings that hint at unknown biographical underpinnings. At times, her description of spring's alluring transformations alludes to more than just observations of a natural phenomenon, and her offering of her "biggest Bobolink" in order "to see his face" is not just simple, humorous banter (Fr266). Dickinson uses the truth to entice the reader to what actually lies behind it. At times, the truth can only be told in a slanted way, and once it is grasped, the spirit will be "eased." Just as an [End Page 142] explanation of "Lightning" comforts frightened "Children," she assures that the truth must be revealed "gradually," so that the reader does not become "blind[ed]" by the poem's point (Fr1263). My thesis examines three of Dickinson's forty fascicles. The form, content, and arrangement of fascicles 11, 12, and 13 (a total of sixty-six poems) shows a period when she wrote about loss, the passage of time, and disappearance of natural phenomena, alongside nineteen poems about love (eight poems in fascicle 11; eight poems in fascicle 12; three poems in fascicle 13), which coincidentally or intentionally suggest some significant currents in Dickinson's own emotional life. I do not claim that these three fascicles show a love that does not exist in previous or later fascicles, but it is a more central concern in the fascicles I treat in my dissertation. More importantly, I argue that this love, which can be read as idolatrous in fascicle 11 and starts declining in fascicle 12, gradually diminishes in fascicle 13, which contains only three love poems. This trend testifies to inner torment. After losing her love, Dickinson turns to nature in a dramatic way to "naturalize loss," as Sharon Cameron has observed in Choosing Not Choosing (101). Ser T. Habil Ser Habil is a short-story writer, poet, and illustrator based in Amsterdam and raised in Valencia, where he obtained his Ph.D. in English philology. Work Cited Cameron, Sharon. Choosing Not Choosing: Dickinson's Fascicles. U of Chicago P, 1992. Google Scholar Copyright © 2021 Johns Hopkins University Press