Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief by Roger Lundin

Author:Roger Lundin [Lundin, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Dickinson, Emily, 1830–1886 — Religion
ISBN: 9781467422222
Publisher: Eerdmans Publishing
Published: 2013-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

The poem tells of the butterfly’s flight as it flutters in a field “Where Men made Hay —” and of how it struggles “hard/With an opposing Cloud —.” The poem’s speaker meets nothing in nature but “Parties — Phantom as Herself —” which, like her,

To Nowhere — seemed to go

In purposeless Circumference —

As ’twere a Tropic Show —

Upon this carnival of random beauty in senseless motion, God looks down without interest: “This Audience of Idleness/Disdained them, from the Sky —” [#610]. Deprived of the attention of its divine audience, the “phantom” self can only play its part in a “Tropic Show,” this endless play of signs without design. No longer a type of a higher spiritual reality, nature becomes in this poem a trope of human longing.

In a poem written a year later, in 1863, Dickinson made the case against design even more dramatically. The use of the word “design” is deliberate, and the implication is clear. These trees no longer hint of order, nor do they enact or orchestrate that order themselves; instead, they simply “Maintain”:

Four Trees — opon a solitary Acre —

Without Design

Or Order, or Apparent Action —

Maintain —

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