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This is very screwed up:
Apart from the poems written on the theme of Nature, she wrote more than a hundred poems on the theme of love. An overwhelming majority of them were written during the years 1861-1863. But with the passage of time, she altogether banished love from her poetry. Except for the years of adolescenthood, she lived in austere seclusion, declining in later years to meet even intimate friends...
The news of Wadsworth’s acceptance of a call to the calvary church was received by Emily with a sense of crisis and it is from this time onwards that she mentions calvary in her love poems. In 1862 alone this name appears in nine poems. In 1863, she began her incomplete poems in rough draft with the moving lines:
Where thou art - that is Home Cashmere or Calvary the same.
It is sometimes after this event that she adopted her “white election” and began to dress in immaculate white and withdrew from life to concentrate on her poetry. This withdrawl is often misinterpreted as renunciation. But the fact is that Emily had nothing to renounce...
With the above background of Emily’s life, it to not easy to give a clear-cut explanation of the workings of the mind and heart of Emily Dickinson. In fact, her heart and head is full of complexities which puzzle our mind incessantly. To fall in love with a married man is one thing; to cherish a love which is not even mutual is altogether a different matter. The desire to love and to be loved, is universal enough but to love without the desire to he loved is a unique case, and puzzles the mind of a the (sic) writers. If Freudian theories are pressed into service for explanation, it may appear neurotic. Neurosis, in psycho analytical terminology, is a convenient handle to explain everything which does not conform to the conventional pattern...
Emily never sought fulfilment of her love. In one poem she writes:
I’d rather recollect a setting Than own a rising sun.
Thus Emily Dickinson consciously endeavoured to preserve the freshness of her dream rather than see the reality. What she needed in life was a preceptor and a muse whom she could adore with physical passion in her imagination. In fact, it is in woman’s nature that the memory of longing survives the more fugitive memory of fulfilment. She shows her belief in the laws of opposition. According to her experiences of life, she concludes that defeat is superior to victory, since an achieved victory soon loses its value and worth. The idea of compensation or the superiority of defeat over victory is reflected in quite a number of poems of Emily. This is very significant aspect of her poetry as it reveals one of the paradoxes of Emily’s life. She mastered life by rejecting it; What she lacked in social life, she gained in secluded life. The idea of juxtaposition, paradox plays a predominant role in her poetry:
Success is counted sweetest By those who never succeed To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.
Here Emily expresses the idea of compensation; the idea that every evil confers some balancing good, that through bitterness we are able to appreciate the sweet that “water is taught by thirst”. The defeated and dying soldier in the above poem is compensated by a greater awareness of the meaning of victory or frustration over satisfaction. For the dying soldier, the material loss leads spiritual gain, which is more valuable, precious and everlasting. Thus the definition of victory is better comprehended by the defeated, dying ear...
Emily never accepted Emerson’s belief in the harmonious correspondence of man and Nature. She viewed man as an estranged, beleaguered creature, who is put under continual stress without any certainty, that his pain will merit salvation. A desire best defines a thing. Anticipation and search are all important. Desire allows the intellect and the imagination to comprehend nectar, something precious given only to gods in the heaven. Similarly she writes-
Love is done when Love’s begun Sages say,
Another example conveying the same idea:
Experience is the Angled Road Preferred against the Mind By - paradox - the Mind itself- Presuming it to lead.
Thus she ratioinalized (sic) loss into gain, relishing even the bitterness of life...
To a life of humdrum routine, she preferred the life in the world of her imagination where she could love with greater fullness and intensity.
The soul selects her own society Then shuts the Door-
--- Love Poems, in Thematic Patterns Of Emily Dickinson's Poetry / Neeru Tandon & Anjana Trevedi
