Saturday, March 5, 2016

63: The Mystique of Emily Dickinson's Poetry


 

63 

The Mystique of Emily Dickinson’s Poetry 

“This life is the way, the long sought-after way to the unfathomable,
which we call divine. There are no other ways,
all other ways are false paths.” 

THE RED BOOK
C. G. Jung 

Although I came to Emily Dickinson’s poetry late in life, despite having a copy of Emily Dickinson Selected Poems on my shelf all these many years, it wasn’t until I was nudged to read her poetry for a book that I was writing did my heart leap with joy when I discovered that Emily Dickinson was an intuitive knower of the secret way that she concealed in her poetry; and I went online and watched and listened to all the You Tube videos and podcasts on Emily Dickinson and her poetry that I could find.
I watched and listened to Dickinson readers and scholars and Professors of Literature and biographers of her life and I couldn’t get over how she perplexed them all to a person, including the pre-eminent literary critic Professor Harold Bloom who said, “She baffles us by the power of her mind.” But what they all failed to grasp, and with good reason, which Dickinson hints at in her poetry (sometimes playfully, sometimes ruthlessly, but always to protect herself), was the secret way of life that she had made her mindful path to her true self.
“My business is circumference,” wrote Dickinson in a letter, and by “circumference” she meant the fullness and completeness of her life, or what Jesus referred to as making the two into one: “For when the master himself was asked by someone when his kingdom would come, he said: ‘When the two will be one, and the outer like the inner, and the male with the female neither male nor female’” (The Unknown Sayings of Jesus, Marvin Meyer).
But this is heady stuff, and not many people want to go there for fear of how the world will react to the moral imperative of the secret way; which is why Dickinson wrote Poem 1263—and with characteristic irony, I might add—that one has to be as wise as a serpent and as gentle as a dove as Christ would say to reveal the sacred truth of the secret way of life:  

Tell all the truth but tell it slant –
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb Surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind – 

          “Poetry is an act of the imagination that transforms reality into a deeper perception of what is,” said the American poet Adrienne Rich, a lover of Dickinson’s poetry; and focussing on the mundane reality of her reclusive life, Emily Dickinson transformed the simple moments of her daily routine into such a deep perception of the truth her life that she tapped into the profound depths of her soul’s purpose—“Adventure most unto itself /The Soul condemned to be; /Attended by a Single Hound – /Its own Identity.”
This is the attraction of Emily Dickinson’s poetry—the pursuit of her own Identity like Francis Thompson’s Hound of Heaven. Her poetry is her “letter to the world,” a map of her path to her true self, which makes it endlessly fascinating because every path to one’s true self speaks the sacred truth of the secret way, if one but have the eyes to see. This is why so many lovers of poetry get hooked on Emily Dickinson: her poetry speaks to the soul.
How she did it, no one knows (perhaps she revealed it in her letters, which I have not read yet; or maybe in one of her poems which I will look for  when I get her collected works), but Emily Dickinson awakened to the secret way and made it her life’s goal to realize her soul’s purpose. As she said, “My business is circumference,” making this the axis of her life which superseded all of her other interests; but why the imperative? Why the urgency? Why the drama? That’s what I’m exploring in today’s spiritual musing…
 
The curious thing about writing my spiritual musings is that they don’t always go where I expect them to, and although I was called to write today’s musing by an idea set free by one of Emily Dickinson’s poems, my spiritual musings have a mind of their own.
For years I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a spiritual musing on the “props” that people depend upon to support their self-image—stylish clothes, nice home, winter vacations, a never-ending supply of enervating status symbols; but the “props” that I was called to focus on for today’s spiritual musing were those “props” that Dickinson symbolized in one of her most esoteric poems on the moral imperative of the secret way—Poem 729:ell all the truth but tell it slant — (1263)
Tell all the truth but tell it slant — (1263)Thel the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit liesToo bright for our infirm DelightThe Truth's superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children easedWith explanation kindThe Truth must dazzle graduallyOr every man be blind —The Props assist the House
Until the House is built
And then the Props withdraw
And adequate, erect,
The House support itself
And cease to recollect
The Auger and the Carpenter –
Just such a retrospect
Hath the perfected Life –
A past of Plank and Nail
And slowness – then the Scaffolds drop
Affirming it a Soul – 

“House” is Emily Dickinson’s symbol for what psychologist C. G. Jung called “wholeness and singleness of self,” and “building” one’s “House” takes what Gurdjieff called “conscious effort” and “intentional suffering,” but making the inner and the outer into one self with no hypocrisy demands all the moral integrity that one can muster; and when one has completed what nature cannot finish and perfected one’s life, one can throw away the props because they have affirmed their soul’s purpose. But this can take a lifetime, if one is ready.
“Many are called but few are chosen,” said Jesus, addressing the hard reality of one’s evolution through life; and only when life has made one ready for the secret way will one hear their soul’s cry for “wholeness and singleness of self,” which Emily Dickinson did and shared in her “letter to the world.” But her “letter’ can be puzzling.
“Dickinson waits for us perpetually up the road from our tardiness,” said Professor Bloom, humbly confessing that to catch up to Emily Dickinson one has to know how to get there, which few people do; but the irony of  her poetry is that the secret way cannot be seen by those that do not live it. And that’s the mystique of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. 

───

 

No comments:

Post a Comment