Emily Dickinson: Radically complex and cryptic
Emily Dickinson's house |
Emily lived most of her life here in the house she and her family knew as the Homestead.
Her bedroom is in the upper left, and from it, she had a view of the small woods and path toward her brother's house. This small landscape and path was most of Emily's world. She sometimes would take her niece Maggie to her room, lock the door, and say to her, "This is freedom." National Public Radio has a very informative web page and podcast by Lynn Neary, which I recommend you visit for a perceptive view into Emily's world.
The woodland path between Emily's home and her brother's more stylish Italianate villa. |
The large lawn on the opposite side of the Homestead |
Austin's house |
This is a disturbing and haunting story, and I've carried a picture of Emily's austere bedroom in my mind's eye since that visit. One of her poems:
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and then
There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.
James Golden