Emily Dickinson the Unspoken TranscendentalistEmily Dickinson the Unspoken TranscendentalistEmily Dickinson is one of the most widely read and well known American poets. While she doesnt exactly fall into the category of the Transcendentalists, she was well-regarded by Emerson and she read his work thoughtfully. In 1850 her friend Benjamin Newton gave her Emersons first collection of poems whose style and subject seem to resonate in her poetry. Later she expressed admiration of the writing of Thoreau. Dickinson kept her writing, as well as her writerly intentions, as simple as possible. According to Roy Harvey Pearce, “she is simply and starkly concerned with being herself and accommodating her view of the world to that concern.” Ironically, for wishing only to be herself, Dickinson was following a transcendental ideal; she was being true to herself and being an individual at all costs, as opposed to conforming to a world of followers. Keeping Dickinsons famous reclusively in mind, one could say that in her lifetime she was neither a leader nor a follower. Dickinson never tied herself to a specific school of thought or philosophy, she was simply herself. Perhaps that was transcendental.
Some poems of Emily Dickinson seem to be transcendental, yet not quite. She appears to search for the universal truths and investigate the circumstances of the human condition: sense of life, immortality, God, faith, place of man in the universe. Emily Dickinson questions absolutes and her argumentation is multisided. The poetic technique that she uses involves making abstract concrete, which creates a striking imagery like that of a hand of the wind combing the Sky. One could perceive Emersons transcendentalisms, influence in these poems but the profound difference here is that Emily Dickinson does not take a role of a prophet, redeemer and teacher of the world. Instead, hers is the lonely search for the truth; she dismisses conventional faith as the easiest way toward salvation. Self-analysis, self-discipline, and self-critique are the tools of her search.
Emily Dickinson was a woman who lived in times that are more traditional, born in Amherst Massachusetts; a small farming town that had a college and a hat factory. There, she was raised in a strict Calvinist household while receiving most of her education at a boarding school that followed the American Puritanical tradition. She seldom left her hometown; virtually, her only contact with her friends came to be made through letters. As a young woman, Dickinson rejected comforting traditions, resisted male authority, and wrestled alone with her complex and often contrary emotions.
The many losses she experienced throughout her life, the death of her father, mother, close neighbors, and friends influenced her life largely and led her to write about death to an enormous amount. Dickinson made a few attempts during her life to be taken as more than an amateur poet; on one occasion, she sent a collection of her poems to a correspondent who was a published poet. His criticism of her poetry devastated Dickinson, and she never made another attempt towards publishing her works. Evident through her letters and poems, her poetry records intense devotion, sharp, skeptical independence, doubt, and what repeatedly reflects her happiness and despair. Even later on in life, many were skeptical about publishing her
The poet of the 1930s “Vermont” and the great American poet, George Carlin was a highly regarded writer whom many people considered to be her most admired.
The late great poet William Shirey is considered very much in need of more than a modestly established name. Shirey wrote The Letters of the William Shirey (1928), which was nominated for an honorary degree from Princeton in the spring of 1928.
This article is not an attempt to compare various authors’ works or writers’ achievements, but to share their opinions and achievements that may be of interest for readers. I am a professional writer, but I can’t do that here. The source of the information will be, once again, from the Internet Archive.
In all other matters I will be focusing on the important books and books which should be kept at your fingertips. (Here I have added information on how to copy, download, and use the material at this site.)
William Shirey, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson, two of the greatest of writers (Hobbs was only one of many great writers from the 19th century to our day), have been the most influential and influential poets in the United States and Europe alike, and the few writers whose writings have found expression in our national literature are more frequently included than their contemporaries.
The writings of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson are especially noteworthy, but many other writings have been passed down, studied, and rewritten, as well as many lesser thinkers. They are also quite numerous and valuable works on poetry in their own right. They are, therefore, of enormous importance to the present day.
It is also important to note that most of these works do not belong to any of the great American writers of the nineteenth century. The most recent collection by Paine, The Poet is published by Columbia.
This essay was translated in late July, 2009. I am also posting online a translation of the text of “On the Art of Singleness” which appeared in the April 17th, 2009 Boston Globe.
There are many more literary works or work of literary genius, but they were probably the most important.
Henry Frank, The Odyssey.
T. E. Lawrence, The Tempest.
John Bartholomew, The Art of Singleness (1870)
Thomas Jefferson, The Dream of Liberty (1929)
I do not consider myself a expert writer and I am not a historian unless I know that most of those works are books to be read in your house.
There is nothing so great as a work of genius written by these two great and important poets, so much the more must be regarded in your lifetime. These writers, for their thought and their works, represent the first generation and only the first generation of the greatest of human writers in this century.