Emily Dickinson and the question of ‘giving death’

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines Emily Dickinson’s ‘difficult projects of thinking’ (Deppman), and more particularly her idiosyncratic approach to death, through the reading of one famous poem – ‘It was not Death, for I stood up’. I argue that, by defining death negatively, this poem sets the stage for a thought experiment, allowing the poet to explore the difficulties inherent in any act of thinking. In an initial step, I review various critical evaluations of Dickinson’s commitment to philosophical issues, showing how the form of the lyric had a major impact on her understanding how to deal with these issues. When seeking for poetic advice from Thomas W. Higginson in 1862, Dickinson crucially wondered if her ‘verse’ was ‘alive’: for her, writing poetry and thinking radically were a question of life and death – a question I examine through the prism of Jacques Derrida’s essay, The Gift of Death (Donner la mort). In a culture still ruled by Calvinist doctrines, how can one have a practice of death, as not only a spiritual exercise, but also a philosophical one?