Escaping Samsara

Beyond Conflict: Emily Dickinson and the Poetics of Desire

 Conflict is the engine of good writing; it creates tension and propels a story forward while retaining the interests of the reader. Or that is what is taught in creative writing classes at a college level. I accepted this maxim without skepticism until I saw an Instagram reel which said that anointing conflict as the driving force of a story is a masculine way of approaching the creative process. An alternative, or a feminine way of approaching the engine of a story would be through desire as its driving force.

The gender-based division might be too simplistic, but it is important to consider the politics ingrained in epistemologies and how we privilege certain types of knowledge over others. While considering alternative ways of approaching writing, especially ones driven by desire, one cannot help but think about Emily Dickinson. Her genre bending and formula defying writing has been an inspiration for many writers who came after her and her poetry, although written in the 1800s is strikingly modern and driven by desire, and her work reveals more about her desires and the nature of desire than the objects of her desire.

 But one might counter this idea and ask if desire is not a form of conflict. It would depend on how desire is conceptualized. There are broadly two types of desire, a self-gratifying one and a self-effacing one. In a form of desire that prioritizes self-gratification, attaining the object of desire is prioritized in order to gratify a person’s sense of self. An example of this form of desire can be found in “The Raven” where the readers receive little knowledge about Lenore, who has passed away and exists beyond the realm of achievement, creating conflict in an unrequited desire.

A self-effacing form of desire on the other hand, concurrently suppresses and expands one’s sense of self. The priority is not on the achievement or possession of the object itself but the experience of having the desire and the way it transforms the person who desires it. It is akin to a religious experience in the way that one would humble one’s sense of self before a deity which also leads to a concurrent expansion of the sense of self by the medium of the deity who is external to their selves. Emily Dickinson’s poetry exemplifies the self-effacing form of desire. “Success is counted sweet by those who never succeed,”[1] Dickinson says in one of her most iconic poems, where she delineates the nature of her desire. Dickinson’s poetry is moved by the appreciation of the object of her desire, whether that is her desire for another human being or the desire to capture the perfume of natural beauty.

 A critique that can be leveled against modern interpretations of Emily Dickinson’s work is the over sexualization of her texts. While there is arguably a fair amount of sexual thrust in her poetry, her portrayals in films like Wild Nights with Emily (2018) imagining the extent of Dickinson’s sexual encounters with different women reveals more about contemporary imagination that it does something about Dickinson’s own work. Portraying Emily Dickinson in her achievement of the sexual fantasies transforms her poetry into one being driven by self-gratification rather than self-effacement which Dickinson prioritizes given the restrictive social values of her time. Instead of speculating the identity and features of her unnamed love interests, it is important to grapple with the intensity of Dickinson’s desires and they transfigure Dickinson’s sense of self.

Dickinson’s methods in writing desire have parallels in the work of Marcel Proust. According to Per Bjørnar Grande:

“The smells, the tastes, the forms are ways of recapturing the truth of (Marcel’s) life. At the same time, the desire he so vividly experiences among people are brought into Proust’s bedroom laboratory, in order to understand the governing principles of life…And desire for Proust is something that is capable of governing and decomposing one’s whole life”.[2]

Poetry for Dickinson is also a means of recapturing the truths of her life, whether it might look like the spinning wings of a hummingbird or feeling like a gun in the hands of her lover. Like Proust’s “bedroom laboratory”, Dickinson’s writing is a personal exploration that uses her self as a means of pointing to greater truths. Like Proust, Dickinson pushes the boundaries of her genre in using new form and style to explore the philosophies of desire, asking provocative questions about the nature of things that move our lives. “’Twas Love — not me —/ Oh punish — pray —”, Dickinson says in poem 562. She effaces her sense of self under the dominion of the overarching influence of love that drove her actions, not her own selfish motives. Dickinson compares the nature of this love to that of Jesus Christ’s, to love even though it brings pain upon the one who loves, but promulgates a greater form of love to those around her, perhaps her readers.

At the same time, Dickinson also uses a calculus of the cost of having desires in the society she lived in, especially ones that were not viewed as socially acceptable. Joan Burbick says the following about the economics of desires in Dickinson, where “[the] tension of not-having: loss and restraint promise greater “gain” by deferring possession and, at times, by embracing asceticism”.[3] The greater gain here is an example of a self-effacing desire that Dickinson appreciates as a part of her reclusive life and defines who she is as a person. In one of her few poems where Dickinson describes the achievement of her desires, she says that the fulfillment “hurt” her and that was better off watching the plenty of others from a distance.

“The Plenty hurt me—’twas so new—

Myself felt ill—and odd—
As Berry—of a Mountain Bush—
Transplanted—to a Road—”[4]

In this poem, Dickinson reveals how much she enjoys the “crumbs” that she receives, and the actual fulfilment of her desires is a frightening thought. Perhaps, the fulfilment could eclipse her poetic faculty and transform the way she writes poetry in unprecedented ways.

Dickinson talks about her poetic method, how she wants to capture the scent of truth in the things that she is describing as a poet, to appreciate something in a way that only poets can. This is also a form of desire that encapsulates much of her nature poems. The tension in such poems is derived from Dickinson’s own awareness of the imperfections in the way she ends up capturing the truth contained in the natural.

                                           A Route of Evanescence,

With a revolving Wheel –

A Resonance of Emerald

A Rush of Cochineal –

And every Blossom on the Bush

Adjusts it’s tumbled Head –

The Mail from Tunis – probably,

An easy Morning’s Ride –[5]

The evanescence she ascribes to the path of the hummingbird is also one she associates with many of the subject matter that she deals with in her poetry. Her compact writing style that makes use of space, dashes, and short suspended lines represent the evanescence Dickinson endeavors to capture. Dickinson wants to make sense of the suddenness of natural beauty and nature’s paradoxes. From the bees that lurk amidst the flowers to the bird that breaks a worm in half,[6] Dickinson captures the miniscule details and elicits a desire to bottle the perfume of truth inherent in nature. This type of desire is also one that is self-effacing as it requires the poet the think beyond the sense of their self to garner something from the outside world to make it a part of who they are and make it available to the readers through poetry.

It is also worth noting that Dickinson had few of her writings published during her time and she viewed publication as a form of betrayal of the self and felt the use of poetry was for personal and spiritual purposes than for sale. This rebuke for the institution of publication is also an example of her self-effacement, particularly given the fact that Dickinson was aware that her poetry would not be fully appreciated given its unconventional nature in her own times and did not want her work edited.

Dickinson’s poetry is moved by a desire to experience the world beyond her, especially given her reclusive life in which she never left the boundaries of New England. Dickinson appropriates into her poetry everything from the Himalayas to the Saharan deserts, eliciting a worldview that was vast and impressive despite her reclusive life. The same goes to her sexual desires as well as her desire to captures truths and ideas greater than herself; she wants to reveal an exclusive truth about all of them. It is this desire that drives her poetry and communicates infectiously through her retrained and provocative verses.

Bibliography

1. Burbick, Joan. “Emily Dickinson and the Economics of Desire”, American Literature, Vol. 58, No. 3. Duke University Press (1986), 361-378.
2. Dickinson, Emily. The Poetry Foundation:
3. “Success is counted sweet by those who never succeed”.
4. “I had been hungry, all the Years—“.

• “Route of Evanescence”.

• “A Bird Came Down the Walk”.

• Grande, B. Per.“Proustian Desire”, Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Michigan State University Press (2011). 39-69.

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[1] Emily Dickinson, “Success is counted sweet by those who never succeed”. The Poetry Foundation.

[2] Per Bjørnar Grande, “Proustian Desire”, Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Michigan State University Press (2011). 39-69.

[3] Joan Burbick, “Emily Dickinson and the Economics of Desire”, American Literature, Vol. 58, No. 3. Duke University Press (1986), 361-378.

[4] Emily Dickinson, “I had been hungry, all the Years—“.

[5] Emily Dickinson, “Route of Evanescence”.

[6] Emily Dickinson, “A Bird Came Down the Walk”.