Emily Dickinson

It's hard to write about such a mysterious person. Emily Dickinson grew up in a small city on the East Coast, Amherst. She was raised by her father in a very puritanical, Protestant way. It is believed that it might have been one of the reasons of her later mental illness. Emily wrote her poems sitting in a small room and gazing out of a window. Even though she didn't travel a lot, wasn't well educated and didn't have literature professors around, she created innovative and exceptional poetry. But she wasn't recognized as genius immediately. After she passed away in 1886, her sister found 1775 poems in a box in Emily's room. She went to another poet, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who decided to change them and adapt the poems to ruling way of writing. Even her portrait was retouched. Emily Dickinson was discovered again in 1995, when the poems were published in their original form.

Emily saw and described in her poems the paradoxes and contradictions that rule our lifes. She was writing from the viewpoint of an isolated and insular person who can use few things and phenomena around her to tell us about general rules. She created original metaphors, symbols and surprising definitions.

67

Succes is counted sweetest 

By those who ne'er succeed.

To comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host

Who took the Flag today

Can tell the definition

So clear of Victory

As he defeated - dying - 

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph

Burst agonized and clear!

Emily Dickinson says that a desire of something tells us far more about it that the fact of reaching the goal. She gives an example of a person defeated in a battle who hears the sound of a victory of the other group.

The lack of something provokes our curiosity, ambition and willingness to fight for it. Then, waiting for something makes us think about it all the time. Finally, the loss in a battle (understood symbolically) blights all our efforts. The triumph is simple. We are happy, we demonstrate the success to other people. But a loss needs an explanation, some reflections. We don’t think about what we have till we lose it.

Based on: Dickinson Emily, Wiersze wybrane, tłum. oraz wstęp Barańczak Stanisław, Znak, Kraków, 2016.