Abstract

Characterized by personal emotions, Emily Dickinson's poetry has a distinctly inward tendency. The years between 1862 and 1865 are an important period in both Dickinson's life and her literary creation. This period witnesses a drastic increase in Dickinson's poetic creation, and the poet demonstrates a sense of loneliness much stronger and a pain and terror more acute. The pain has to do with the poet's inherent fiber, her frustrations in literary creation and other aspects, including the historical trauma of the American Civil War. In her experience of and reflection on pain, Dickinson gradually accepts its existence, and further transforms it into a source of literary inspiration.

Highlights

  • In The Letters of Emily Dickinson, Thomas Johnson puts the letters written between 1862 and 1865 into one special group, and observes that “The most crucial and -- though she could not know it -- historically eventful year in Emily Dickinson’s life was 1862” (388)

  • Century, Dickinson is preoccupied with death and manifests her lust for death in her intensely reclusive life, which is considered suicide of a different category, as observed by Susan Kavaler-Adler: “Others, such as Camille Claudel, Emily Dickinson, and Emily Bronte withdraw into modes of seclusion from the world that result in a living death that is a form of emotional suicide”(43)

  • Pain makes an important source for Dickinson’s poetic creation, as John Cody notes, “What motivation to write could have replaced the incentive given by suffering and loneliness?” (495)

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Summary

Introduction

In The Letters of Emily Dickinson, Thomas Johnson puts the letters written between 1862 and 1865 into one special group, and observes that “The most crucial and -- though she could not know it -- historically eventful year in Emily Dickinson’s life was 1862” (388). Pain and terror in loneliness permeate in Dickinson’s reflection on life, death, nature, religion, and poetic creation. Words describing such emotions are ubiquitous in her poetic and epistolary works. Though keeping epistolary exchanges with her friends, Dickinson, in her intense seclusion, suffers from a subsequent loneliness She withdraws in her later years to such an extent that, in many people’s eyes, she is morbid: “The impression undoubtedly made on me was that of an excess of tension, and of an abnormal life” (L342b). Dickinson’s pain evolves in the process of her life: from the early mild melancholy and depression to a stronger loneliness and agony in her later years

Characterization of Pain
Possible Solution to Pain
Conclusions
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