Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was a mystic Colossus who lived her external life among mental and spiritual Lilliputians. ¹  If we try to understand her from reading any of the numerous, uncomprehending biographies, her worldly life seems somewhat uneventful and prosaic.

      This is doubtless why biographers and "Dickinson scholars" have found it necessary to manufacture much more bizarre interpretations of this mystic poet:

• A crazed poetess:
  Emily Dickinson suffered a "psychotic" breakdown and her poems "portray faithfully the terror of a mind collapsing under pressures that exceed its endurance."
  John Cody, After Great Pain: The Inner Life of Emily Dickinson
  
  
• A psychically imbalanced visionary:
  According to a Jungian literary analyst, she was a "visionary artist who compensated for collective psychic imbalance through an archetypal vision of another possibility."
  Clifton Snider, "A Druidic Difference"
  
  
• A disguised Calvinist:
  "To understand Emily Dickinson, it is necessary to be familiar with the spiritual Calvinist tradition of belief in a psychological crisis of conversion from the Egypt of worldly bondage across the wilderness to the promised land.
  David R. Williams, "This Consciousness That is Aware: Emily Dickinson in the Wilderness of the Mind"

     Having recently read a number of her biographies, I was struck by the different impression one gets from that of reading her poems themselves. If readers come to Emily Dickinson's poems with an open mind, I believe they will find her to be a mystic in the tradition of Plato, Rumi, Emerson, and Blake.

Much Madness is divinest Sense-- To a discerning Eye-- Much Sense --the starkest Madness--  Emily Dickinson

"The secret of madness is the supreme strength of the mind: Go mad with love, if sanity is what you want to find." Rumi

     According to Plato, the search for wisdom (philosophia)--which includes poetry as well as philosophy--is the actual practice of learning to leave the body and live in the soul, the spiritual body. In his Phaedo, he speaks of the search of wisdom (philosophia) as dying to the outer life and attaining inner union with the One.

     Emily Dickinson evolved into a mystic of the first order, the most important part of her life being the realm of inner spiritual experience. In her disclosure of this interior life through her poems, she sounds more like Rumi than any other poet with whom I'm familiar.

"Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home."
Rumi

     Undiscerning literary critics seem to enjoy commiserating with Emily Dickinson for what they imagine to have been her great disappointments in life:

• That she was never published
  
  
• That she suffered from unrequited love
  
  
• That she was forced by circumstances to live the life of a hermit

     Anyone who reads her poems with any comprehension, realizes that she deliberately chose the life she lead, creating an inner spiritual existence far richer than mere fame, romantic love, or popularity. I suggest that if you succumb to the presumptuous temptation to feel sorry for Emily Dickinson, you try to write just one poem of her calibre. The wealth of her poetic gift would have been an overwhelming spiritual fortune for any person.

The Soul selects her own Society - Then - shuts the Door - To her Divine Majority - Present no more - Unmoved - she notes the Chariots - pausing - At her low Gate - Unmoved - an Emperor be kneeling Upon her Mat - I've known her - from an ample nation - Choose One - Then - close the Valves of her attention - Like Stone -

     Harold Bloom is correct in saying that "Dickinson is a very difficult poet; even her best critics tend to underestimate just how subtle and complex a body of work ensued from her immense cognitive originality. She thought through not less than everything for herself." She created her own style of poetry--as all great poets do.

     One of Emily's closest friends, Benjamin Franklin Newton, energetically encouraged her to pursue her poetry, sending Emily the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Newton's encouragement of Emily's inner spiritual life was doubtless a profound influence. She wrote of him:

"Mr. Newton became to me a gentle, yet grave Preceptor, teaching me what to read, what authors to admire, what was most grand and beautiful in nature, and that sublimer lesson, a faith in things unseen, and in a life again, nobler, and much more blessed —"

     Emily Dickinson read avidly, was thoroughly familiar with the Bible and Shakespeare and had read Greek and Roman classics (including Plato) in translation. She read all the leading American and English authors of her time: Thoreau, Hawthorne, the Brontes and the Brownings, Keats, Ruskin, Tennyson, and George Eliot, one of her favorites. She appears to have found inspiration for her special style of inner spiritual poetry in two lesser authors: Horace Bushnell and Edwards A. Park.

     In his essay "The Poet," Emerson reminds us that the poet "is isolated among his contemporaries, by truth and by his art, but with this consolation in his pursuits, that they will draw all men sooner or later."

The Soul's Superior instants Occur to Her - alone - When friend - and Earth's occasion Have infinite withdrawn - Or She - Herself - ascended To too remote a Height For lower Recognition Than Her Omnipotent - This Mortal Abolition Is seldom - but as fair As Apparition - subject To Autocratic Air - Eternity's disclosure To favorites - a few - Of the Colossal substance Of Immortality

     Emily's life of inner spiritual experience as revealed through her poetry, seems strange to us because we spend so little time in contemplation and meditation, giving ourselves to a myriad of external distractions. We are so unfamiliar with higher mysticism that to some of us it seems literally deranged; hence the absurd attribution of "nervous breakdown" to Emily Dickinson.

     In an observation on Emerson, Henry James helps us understand that a life of contemplation was more the norm in Emily's day.

"The doctrine of the supremacy of the individual to himself, of his originality and, as regards his own character, unique quality, must have had a great charm for people living in a society in which introspection, thanks to the want of other entertainment, played almost the part of a social resource. . . There was . . . much relish for the utterances of a writer who would help one to take a picturesque view of one's internal possibilities, and to find in the landscape of the soul all sorts of fine sunrise and moonlight effects."

     Conrad Aiken clearly misunderstands Emily Dickinson when he claims that we are "perhaps justified in considering her the most perfect flower of New England Transcendentalism." ²  She cannot be typified with a tag such as Transcendentalist or Puritan or any other. She was her own person and her own distinct type of poet.

     It helps to understand her by recognizing that she was a part of a larger American Renaissance.

THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE

A Selected List of Writers, Artists, and Composers

      This list focuses not only on those creative artists working within the actual time frame of the American Renaissance, but also those whose art was a direct outgrowth of the European Renaissance and Transcendentalist thought.

Major Figures	Dates	Significance	Major Work
William Cullen Bryant	1794-1878	Poet	A FOREST HYMN
Bronson Alcott	1799-1888	Educator, Reformer	Temple School CONCORD DAYS TABLE TALK
George Ripley	1802-1880	Religious Reformer	founder Brook Farm ed. THE HARBINGER
Ralph Waldo Emerson	1803-1882	Philosopher, Poet,	ESSAYS WOODNOTES
Elizabeth Peabody	1804-1894	Feminist, Educator
Nathaniel Hawthorne	1804-1864	Author	SCARLET LETTER HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE
Henry W. Longfellow	1807-1882	Poet	POEMS ON SLAVERY EVANGELINE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH
John G. Whittier	1807-1892	Poet, Abolitionist	HOME BALLADS, POEMS, & LYRICS VOICES OF FREEDOM
Edgar Allan Poe	1809-1849	Poet, Author, Journalist	THE RAVEN ULALUME THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE THE BLACK CAT
Margaret Fuller	1810-1850	Feminist, Journalist, Literary Critic	WOMEN IN THE 19TH C. ed./essays THE DIAL
W.H. Channing	1810-1884	Christian Socialist	Brook Farm ed. THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE
Theodore Parker	1810-1860	Unitarian & Congregationalist Reformer	LETTERS TOUCHING THE MATTER OF SLAVERY
Harriet Beecher Stowe	1811-1896	Novelist, Reformer	UNCLE TOM'S CABIN
Walt Whitman	1813-1892	Poet	LEAVES OF GRASS
Jones Very	1813-1880	Poet, Mystic	POEMS & ESSAYS
Henry Ward Beecher	1813-1887	Congregationalist Minister, Reformer	SERMONS
Henry David Thoreau	1817-1862	Essayist, Naturalist, Philosopher, Poet	WALDEN CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MAINE WOODS JOURNALS
W. Ellery Channing	1818-1901	Biographer, Poet	THOREAU, THE POET-NATURALIST THE WANDERER THE WOODMAN
Julia Ward Howe	1819-1910	Poet, Reformer	SEX & EDUCATION THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC
Herman Melville	1819-1891	Author	MOBY DICK BILLY BUDD BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER
Hudson River School	1825-1850	Romantic Landscape Painters	KINDRED SPIRITS (Cole) IN THE WOODS (Durand) OLANA (Church)
Albert Bierstadt	1830-1920	Romantic Western Painter	THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS
Emily Dickinson	1830-1886	Poet	COMPLETE POEMS & LETTERS
Louisa May Alcott	1832-1888	Author	LITTLE WOMEN TRANSCENDENTAL WILD OATS BEHIND A MASK
Mark Twain	1835-1910	Author, Journalist, Satirist	HUCKLEBERRY FINN TOM SAWYER INNOCENTS ABROAD
The Luminists	1840-1880	Romantic Landscape Painters	LAKE GEORGE (Heade) LAKE GEORGE (Kensett)
Daniel Chester French	1850-1931	Sculptor	Lincoln Memorial Minuteman Statue
Edward MacDowell	1860-1908	Composer	Songs + 1ST PIANO CONCERTO
Charles Ives	1874-1954	Composer	Songs + symphonies CONCORD SONATA
Charles T. Griffes	1884-1920	Composer	Songs + PLEASURE DOME of KUBLA KHAN

     In his 1837 Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Address, The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson had set the pace for poets like Emily Dickinson--as well as artists of all kinds.

"We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. . .  A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men."

     Emily Dickinson walked on her own feet, creating the most exalted mystical poetry, revealing the journey of a great soul within an inner celestial realm.

Alone, I cannot be -
For Hosts - do visit me -
Recordless Company -
Who baffle Key -

They have no Robes, nor Names -
No Almanacs - no Climes -
But general Homes
Like Gnomes -

Their Coming, may be known
By Couriers within -
Their going - is not -
For they're never gone -

Other Emily Dickinson poems featured here.

_________

¹ Lilliputians were 6 inch high fictional inhabitants of the land of Lilliput in Jonathan Swift's novel, Gulliver's Travels. While the giant-sized man named Gulliver slept, the Lilliputians tried to bind him and make him their slave.

²  “Transcendentalism was a philosophic and literary movement that flourished in New England as a reaction against 18th century rationalism, the sceptical philosophy of Locke, and the confining religious orthodoxy of New England Calvinism. Its beliefs were idealistic, mystical, eclectic and individualistic, shaped by the ideas of Plato, Plotinus, as well as the teaching of Confucious, the Sufis, the writers of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, the Buddhists and Swedenburg. Transcendentalism had at its fundamental base a monism holding to the unity of the world and God and the immanence of God in the world. Because of this indwelling of divinity, everything in the world is a microcosm containing within itself all the laws and the meaning of existence. Likewise the soul of each individual is identical with the soul of the world, and latently contains all that the world contains. Man may fulfil his divine potentialities either through rapt mystical state, in which the divine is infused into the human, or through coming into contact with the truth, beauty, and goodness embodied in nature and originating in the Over-Soul. Thus occurs the correspondence between the tangible world and the human mind, and the identity of moral and physical laws. Through belief in the divine authority of the soul’s intuitions and impulses, based on the identification of the individual soul with God, there developed the doctrine of self reliance and individualism, the disregard of external authority, tradition, and logical demonstration, and the absolute optimism of the movement. The most important literary expression of transcendentalism is considered to lie in Thoreau's 'Walden' and in the works of Emerson. Others in the movement were A.M. Alcott, father of Louisa May Alcott, German transcendentalism (Goethe, Richter, Novalis) influenced Coleridge, Carlyle, and Wordsworth. The greatness of these figures and the universal respect for their ideas has led to the use of the word ‘transcendental’ by business organisations masquerading as spiritual paths."
Emily Dickinson’s Mystic Poetry — by Graham Brown