7 - Emily Dickinson

Summary

I am afraid to own a Body -

I am afraid to own a Soul -

Profound - precarious Property -

Possession, not optional -

Double Estate - entailed at pleasure

Upon an unsuspecting Heir -

Duke in a moment of Deathlessness

And God, for a Frontier.

(J 1090/Fr 1050)

In this poem Emily Dickinson seems at her furthest remove from Walt Whitman. His “I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul . . . The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue” (Song 21) in its inclusive, expansive energy poses the most extreme counterpoint to Dickinson's exclusions, retractions, and renunciations. I wish to argue, however, that Dickinson’s work addresses cultural forces and challenges in ways continuous with Whitman’s, although ultimately with a difference in cultural position from his, that remains fundamental.