Emily Dickinson and Perspectivism
Throughout the vast work of Emily Dickinson there is a common theme that connects her poems together, which is the theme of perspective. The perspective on life, nature, and death are concepts that Dickinson conveys throughout her texts. These concepts lend themselves to poetry and philosophy. Dickinson bridges the gaps between the two to reconcile the chaotic world that she perceived and the lawful world in which she drew her inspirations from. The goal of this paper is to put Dickinson in conversation with Foucault and Nietzsche to create a justification for Dickinson’s most outward philosophy which is that experience through perception is a core drive within human action and conduct. For Dickinson this allows the self to be malleable, as dictated by perspective but also rigid as dictated by the core “rules” of the self.
Before we can use Dickinson’s poems to framework her position within a perspectivist narrative we must analyze her outward position as a rhetorical writer. As a writer, Dickinson uses metaphors and similes to try and persuade the reader into “coming into their own” (Hamilton 2005). The reader coming into their own simply delineates an idea that her poetry is fundamentally designed to stimulate a response in the reader (Hamilton 2005). By this it means that Dickinson’s poetry asserts a perspective that makes the reader react in a way that facilitates their own experience.
Dickinson is sharp in her use of metaphors to provoke a response from the reader. It iss almost as if by simply reading her poetry the reader engages with a conversation with her. The poetry allows you to craft your own perspective that is just as justified as hers. Hamilton uses Dickinson’s poem “The Heart is the Capital of the Mind” to describe the kind of precise metaphors she uses. In this poem Dickinson says, “The Heart is the Capital of the Mind, the Mind is a single State”. In each stanza she uses metaphors to cohesively describe the self, the interpretation of the poem is mostly left to the reader to inherit as way to come into their own. But what Dickinson does to persuade the reader into stimulating a response is by saying at the end of the stanza after “This ecstatic Nation seek” she says, “It is Yourself”.
This poem clearly shows Dickinson’s favor for rhetorical, dialogic structures to her poems, they give a sense of weight that only the reader and her can understand. “Yourself” is capitalized and comes after the constant defining and redefining of terms (Hamilton 2005). Dickinson in this regard facilitates the role of a rhetorical partner of another. That being the reader in this case, to create a perspective that defines and redefines their own worldview. If we supplement “It is Yourself” with the Greek maxim “Know Thyself” we get a clear path for which Dickinson lays out for the reader. To extrapolate upon Dickinson’s motives for “It is Yourself” and that we have shown Dickinson to be rhetorical and dialogic poet, we must put her in conversation with Foucault to give Dickinson’s meaning within her poems a perspectivist vocalization.
To compare the two writers there should be a contextual foundation in which they approach each other. A framework in which both Foucault and Dickinson can interact in so that a synthesis between their thought may be found in the Nietzschean ideas of what Deppman calls “literary pragmatism” and the recurring concept of Nietzsche called “the Free Spirit”. What Deppman defines as literary pragmatism in a Nietzschean context is that thoughts, beliefs, and language ought to be tools that best help us in life. As Nietzsche writes at the beginning of Beyond Good & Evil. In the beginning Nietzsche proposes a question, one that questions the very foundation of the human tendency to find truth through logic and objectivity “Who is it really that puts questions to us here? What in us really wants “truth”?” (BGE 9). Nietzsche questions the validity of the will to truth by asking why we not prefer deception, untruth, uncertainty, and ignorance.
In Dickinson’s poems her relationship with the truth is filled with the rush of uncertainty and its consequences. Dickinson will express her thinking as a way to facilitate a sense of order to her unreliable thoughts. Dickinson reflects the questions that Nietzsche raises and his subsequent rejection of a traditional structure of truth.
In the first stanza Dickinson embodies this perspective that is constant throughout her writing that commitment to a perspective on the world and the weight that comes with it brings order to realm of shifting and disorderly thought. Stepping from plank to plan is the brains basic operation of receiving and storing stimuli and experiences. The speaker’s cautiousness in the movements on the planks tells us that these thoughts are not entirely chaotic. The immense and seemingly unknowable forces of nature such as the stars and the sea give the speaker a chance the begin asserting a perspective on the world, one that is pragmatic and that best allows us to live a life.
The speaker comments on the immediate uncertainty of perceiving a thing and crafting a judgement from it. For Dickinson this could represent many things, including what conclusions and new thoughts a judgement might lead them to. It also represents the fear that comes with experience and its relation to an eventual death. This gives the speaker a precarious or uncertain gait yet confidently asserts that the judgements one makes over objects keeps them upright and moving with the line “some call Experiences”. Dickinson gives Nietzsche’s doubts on truth an emphatic weight to them, her words embodying a preferred world where the truth is based on perspective. Dickinson’s poems then represent a variety of perspectivism that is intimate and original. Deppman labels this kind of idiosyncratic truth-telling as the “Nietzschean accomplished nihilist” (Deppman 22). The nihilist for Deppman, brandishes a language of self-interpretation and self-creation.
Self-creation in the context of Dickinson is a rather hermeneutic empowerment brought upon by her open and deferential language. Foucault enters the conversation with his analysis of the ethical power of truth-telling and the role of otherness as core tenet of governmentality and care of oneself. Dickinson and Foucault’s comparisons should be first discussed through their contrasts. Within the Courage of Truth, Foucault highlights the differences between rhetoric and parrhesia. Foucault says that rhetoric is the exact opposite of parrhesia, rhetoric as defined by Foucault is an art, technique, or process that is concerned with the way things are said (Courage of Truth 13). Rhetoric is not necessarily concerned with the relationship between the speaker and what he is saying. The good rhetor to Foucault is someone who may well say, and who is perfectly capable of saying, something completely different from what he knows, believes, and thinks (Courage of Truth 13).
There exists a sense of disconnect between the rhetors words and the speaker’s relationship to them. The disconnect in which Foucault comments on is also inherent in the writings of Dickinson. Dickinson’s poems are written in a way that does not always put herself as the speaker of those words. Dickinson’s writings represent a multitude of perspectives and their contexts are blended with her own in the poems but also the readers perspective. The rhetor’s disconnect from their own words does not imply a disconnect between their words and another. The rhetorician’s goal is create a constraining bond between the words they speak and to whom those words are said. What is unique for Dickinson is that this bond is constraining yet open. For Dickinson this means that the constraining aspect of her rhetorical message is meant to compel the reader to engage in a dialogue with her.
Dickinson seeks closeness with the reader, her goal was to stimulate the readers mind but not determine their thoughts. Deppman cites Derrida in saying that lyric poetry incites philosophical force through response and experience in reading of the poetry (Deppman 10). The reader in being exposed to Dickinson’s writings is constrained to understand her perspective, mending her own thoughts with the readers. It could be said then that Dickinson does not fit into the parrhesiastic structure that Foucault discusses, the lyrical poetry of Dickinson is bound to the rhetorical nature of its language. However, Dickinson understood the paradox of the hierarchal structure of poetry but maintained a self-conscious effort to be prosaic in her approach to truth.
Deppman seeks to place Dickinson within a role of postmodern thought to better understand her writings and her thinking and gives his own interpretation of such. It should be considered then, how Dickinson fits within the role of what could be called the “Foucauldian truth-teller”. Foucault writes that there are, what he calls, “modes of veridiction” these modes being prophecy, wisdom, teaching, and parrhesia (Courage of Truth 25). These modes of veridiction involve different personages, call for different modes for speech, and third relate to different domains (Courage of Truth 25). What is compelling for Dickinson is that she is a verdictive thinker. Dickinson’s veridiction conveys different personages through her ability to adopt and vocalize different personae in her writing, her different modes of speech are lyrical and her lexicon poetic. If parrhesia’s mode of veridiction lies within the domain of ethos, then Dickinson’s mode of veridiction lies somewhere between pathos and logos.
Dickinson, as stated by Harold Bloom was “besieged by perspectives” by this it means that her thoughts and her language were contingent on the perspective of others (Bloom 305). Deppman calls this siege later in his book Dickinson’s partial attitude towards associationism (Deppman 92). Associationists generally try to show ways in which thoughts join together through the association of experiences. Dickinson’s constant besiegement by perspectives was something she considered as a given, rather than an axiomatic assertion. For Dickinson she sought to exercise her thoughts, expanding the limits of her mind and thoughts to elasticize and toughen it at the core. What Dickinson herself embraces is the perspective of others but most importantly, craves the intimacy of thought, the associations between language and relationships. Recollecting upon the Greek idea of “Know yourself” Dickinson’s words and her role as a truth-teller conform to Foucault’s assertions of the role of the other surrounding truth and surrounding perspective
Foucault emphasizes the emphatic weight that relationships have on the ability to tell the truth. The culture of self that was prevalent in antiquity depended upon this relationship to what Foucault calls “the other”. One cannot take care of oneself, attend to themselves without the role of the other (Government of Self and Others 43). The role of the other for Foucault is to precisely tell the truth whether it is the whole truth or the necessary truth the latter form of truth is emphasized by Dickinson’s own words ” Tell all the truth but tell it slant” . The reader and Dickinson’s relationship are that of the other in this regard, for the reader it gives us a sense of openness to turn to, to associate with the thoughts of Dickinson. The relationship with Dickinson and the reader is symbiotically related. Dickinson’s thoughts being put into a dialogic and lyrical discourse in a way that she and the reader can connect on the same mental associations. Deppman’s introduction serves as rationalization of this concept of associative intimacy, arguing that Dickinson’s lyrical language can help us see what we are “well-nigh thinking and saying” (Deppman 1).
According to Deppman Dickinson is par excellence for what Derrida describes as poetry’s ability to neutralize the “thetic” naivety of transcendent reading. Derrida, in an interview states that poetry has the ability to enact a philosophical force of experience, a force of provocation to think “phenomenality” (Derrida 46). Poetry and literature, for Derrida and furthermore, Deppman facilitate a phenomenological access to what makes of a thesis a thesis as such. Poetry in this regard has the ability to provoke a philosophical experience for one to think of the thesis and the belief. Dickinson’s lyrical poetry fits a role akin to Gianni Vatimo’s “weak thought” in which Deppman discusses. Her language which is a synthesis of perception, veridiction, and judgement, relays to the reader a philosophical force for them to derive belief and come to their own thetic conclusions. Dickinson’s poetry then perpetuates the besiegement of perspectives to her readers.
It can be shown then that Dickinson’s lyrical poetry has a phenomenological underpinning. Before analyzing Dickinson and her relation to the poets of antiquity it should be important to understand the apogee of Dickinson’s thought in regard to perspective. Dickinson did not reject the perspectivist life, but she did not passively accept perspectives or assert them in a philosophical, and ethical way. Dickinson took perspective as a given as she did with many other disciplines of her time. This, for Dickinson allowed the self to malleable as the association with concepts dictated a mode of thinking. But for Dickinson to take this as a given meant that perspectives were a core tenet to the human life. This led Dickinson to believe that our phenomenological and idiosyncratic nature should be directed towards something. For our perspectives should be used to find new directions in life and as Bloom describes it, as if no one had perceived and described them before us (Bloom 305).
This led Dickinson to accept both the perspectivist life, but also the visceral life, one that should put forward our instincts, but also our emotions. Dickinson realized that perspectivism can be a powerful tool in creating a selfhood out of dialectical relation. Dickinson’s strive for a conservational attitude is brought out through the Ancient Greek poet, Bacchylides. In his poem about truth, he says:
As gold the Lydian touch-stone tries,
So, man-the virtuous, valiant, wise
Must to all-powerful Truth submit
His virtue, valor, and his wit.
While Dickinson’s poems are not comparable to Bacchylides’ lyrics directly, both poets have a common ground in the nature of self and selfhood. Phenomenologically speaking, Bacchylides is putting forth the same dialectical relation with the reader. Like Dickinson he provokes his reader into a philosophical force of experience. The structure of experience is Truth and man Must submit. Dickinson’s poems take great inspiration from Bacchylides’ words, her provocations like the Greek poets, invite the reader to enter a conversational ecosystem in which both the speaker and the are equals. Like man and Bacchylides are beholden to all powerful Truth, Dickinson and her readers are bound to each other through conversation, and through attitude. The ancient Roman poet Horace speaks upon the poet’s history and their benefits, the poet is constantly in relation to the other, expressing emotions to a reader who exists in the same space. For Horace, the merits of the poet come from their love of verse and their ability to temper or amplify emotion that is reflected back upon the poet herself. The effect of this relationship is highlighted by how Horace says that the poet “Quickly shaping thought with his kindly precepts” (Horace 152).
Dickinson quickly shapes her own thought through the canon of her writing, Dickinson, in contact with Higginson was trained to express herself in a principled manner. Dickinson, to Deppman was sometimes something she did rather than made (Deppman 60). She vocalized herself in a way so that her own mind could expand herself, to expand its need for an analytical to answer to deep concepts. Dickinson sought hermeneutics and conversations as a remedy to the chaotic mind, it was her own precepts shaping her own thought as Horace puts it. These themes of chaos play into Dickinson’s relation with the concept of death, something that constantly affected her thought. Deppman says that Dickinson could not think death or eternity but cannot “not think” about them either (Deppman 31).
Death for Dickinson is powerfully personal, in her poem “Of Death I try to think like this” Dickinson shows her pragmatic and conversationalist approach to death. She is neither analytical nor creative in her assertions of death. Dickinson’s tone is that death is always impending, always an object in which our perspective and scrutiny is leveled upon but never known. It is not only deeply personal but phenomenologically reflective. Death is a destination for each of us and how each of us think about death. Dickinson views death as a given but it also represents to us how we think and how we choose to think shapes our perspective. For Dickinson death is entirely conversational and personal. Her use of the Flow Hesperian in this poem indicates a sort of therapeutic conversation on thinking about death and how thinking about death gives us a perspective about all of our other thoughts it could be enticing to think about the destination we take our perspectives by viscerally understanding death (McClaran 18).
Further, and finally what Dickinson’s poems represent is what Nietzsche called in The Birth of Tragedy that the well of human consciousness or what Nietzsche calls “Primal unity”. The well is where each individual has sort of shared Dionysian joy where their underlying wills lies. Nietzsche describes lyrical poetry as something that expresses nothing that did not already lie hidden in the vast universality and absoluteness in the music that compelled the poet to figurative speech (Birth of Tragedy 55). For Dickinson this “music” is perspective, and it is the phenomenological notions of death and that she pragmatically approached in her writings. Nietzsche describes the genius artist as one who “turns its eyes at will and beholds itself; he is at once subject and object, at once poet, actor, and spectator (Birth of Tragedy 52).
If we consider Dickinson a kind of tragic artist, she is all of these things. She expresses her own art to the reader, a subject using the multitude of voices, and object of perception as the reader engages with her and conversates with her. She is a poet, an actor, and a spectator who Deppman says is invested in describing her own mental facts. These facts are meant to create a destination and an odyssey of thought for her and the reader. The journey is meant to explore her own thoughts but also consider the readers as well and vice versa. While Dickinson might be relatively apolitical, her thought tells us well-nigh what we are thinking. With Dickinson we can think of life as one that embraces action and embraces reason but doing so should come with the idea that we must make something of ourselves, we should remain conversationalist but also individualistic. In a Democracy we are in conversation with each other in society, through our politics, our economics, our institutions. This idea is not meant to convey a vague esotericism, democracy and society have individuals constantly interacting with each other and making decisions and what Dickinson’s thought represent is how we all choose to manifest our thoughts and our perspectives into the society around us
Dickinson rejected the traditional biblical interpretation that man is born depraved, instead favoring an Emersonian view that the greatness of the soul is the source of immortality. If Foucault’s final thoughts were that we cannot have truth without the other that our commitment to truth manifests ideas and causes. Then, Dickinson’s final thoughts would be that we cannot have action without perspective and greatness without action. Dickinson wants us to start thinking in conversations so it may lead ourselves to directions that are most pleasurable and echoing Nietzsche, tools that help us best in life. The precarious gait that Dickinson describes is the same gait that leads her to new directions and new perspectives so that we may live a life which is best for us, a life which makes us the happiest.
On this wondrous sea
Sailing silently,
Ho! Pilot, ho!
Knowest thou the shore
Where no breakers roar —
Where the storm is o'er?
In the peaceful west
Many the sails at rest —
The anchors fast —
Thither I pilot thee —
Land Ho! Eternity!
Ashore at last!
Citations
Bloom, Harold. The western canon: The books and school of the ages. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014.
Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Literature
Deppman, Jed. Trying to think with Emily Dickinson
Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Foucault, Michel. Courage of Truth
Foucault, Michel. The Government of Self and Others
Hamilton, Craig. "A cognitive rhetoric of poetry and Emily Dickinson." Language and Literature 14, no. 3 (2005): 279-294.
Horace. Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica
Nietzsche, Fredrich. Beyond Good and Evil
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy
McClaran, Nancy. "Dickinson's OF DEATH I TRY TO THINK LIKE THIS." Explicator 35, no. 2 (1976): 18.
