Self-Denial As Self-Making: A Study Of Emily Dickinson's Poetic Writing

As the most outstanding woman poet in the literary history of the United States of America, Emily Dickinson manifests unique individual personality in her poetry, which wins for her a large readership and stimulates multiple interpretations in Dickinson scholarship. The objective of this dissertation is to study the form of self-denial in her poetry and its significance to Dickinson and her poetry. With Kant's theory of the sublime and the psychoanalytic theory of masochism as the major tools, this dissertation makes a detailed textual analysis of Dickinson's poems to reveal that the form of self-denial contributes to the self-making of Dickinson as a woman poet.Masochistic tendency is a common phenomenon in people's character and therefore often becomes the aesthetic object in literary works and the common language of the artistic creator, the appreciator and the researcher. Masochism in Dickinson's poetry has long been a major concern of Dickinson scholars. The imagery of self-denial, of which the essential element is masochism, constitutes an important form of Dickinson's poetry and contains the poet's pursuit of beauty and power. Poetic writing being almost the whole of Dickinson's life, the form of self-denial can be regarded as the important component of her spiritual world, closely connected with the woman poet's self and aesthetic position and essential to the understanding of Dickinson and her poetic world.This dissertation consists of three chapters and a conclusion. Chapter One is"Introduction". As one of the two most outstanding poets of her age (the other being Walt Whitman), Dickinson remained almost unpublished and obscure during her lifetime. It was not until after her death that the vast majority of Dickinson's poems began to be published and came to be known to a large readership. This has much to do with the fact that Dickinson's poems were much ahead of her time both in form and content. This, however, is also due to Dickinson's own choice. For Dickinson, writing poems is not only artistic creation but also the way of life and the spiritual company she selected for herself. It is her life itself."Vesuvius at Home"should be a perfect summary of Dickinson and her poetry. The love for life and the passionate pursuit of erotic love, freedom and supreme power demonstrated in the form of self-denial of Dickinson's poetry make up the space of the poet's passion. The first publication of Dickinson's complete poems in 1955 and her complete letters three years later sparked many scholars'research interest and enthusiasm in the following decades, making Dickinson stand side by side with Walt Whitman as the best American poets and exerting profound influence on American literature, especially on American modern poetry. Concerning the form of self-denial in Dickinson's poetry, scholars home and abroad have explored its nature and significance mainly from the perspectives of philosophy, psychology, feminism, archetype and aesthetics, either thinking the form of self-denial is a reflection of certain lack, pain and reality in Dickinson's life or believing Dickinson uses this form as a tool to rebel against or subvert from within the restraints of the patriarchal society. The author of this dissertation contends that the value of the form of self-denial in Dickinson's poetry is in the poetry itself. It makes up the passionate space of the poet. With that in mind, the author makes textual analysis of Dickinson's poems in an effort to represent scenes of Dickinson's life, to restore the perspective of the poet as a woman and to reveal the importance of the form of self-denial to the making of the poet's self.Chapter Two,"The Various Forms of Self-Denial in Dickinson's Poems", is a classification and summary of the forms of self-denial appearing in Dickinson's poems, analyzing the texts of her poetry in the following four aspects:A. Self-Effacement in Love. Dickinson experiences love through poetry, but in Dickinson's love poems, there is only the presence of"her"– one side of love while"he"as the beloved is always absent and never responds to love. She lies prostrate at his feet, worshipping him, begging for his attention, doing whatever pleases him and even willing to bear various afflictions and tortures. As the loving subject in a female writer's poems, Dickinson's speaker is naturally defined as a woman. Submission and humbleness are the ideal characteristics of the woman in her poetry. Even if it is a hopeless love, she still keeps longing in pain and despair. Being separated from him, she even becomes jealous of all the things he sees and touches and that are in his company, such as mountains, chariots, etc. For love, she is willing to suffer the pain of imprisonment, torture and even destruction of her physical body.B. Self-Imprisonment. Dickinson realizes that life is often an imprisonment and full of restraints. The images of imprisonment and restraints that often appear in Dickinson's poems include prison, dungeon, casement, cuffs, shackles, chains, staple, gate, cocoon, reins, narrow space and restricting rules. Women, dissenters and minority are dominated and confined by the society. Fate is a house without doors. Once inside, there is no way of escape. Death is an unavoidable prison, and even the Paradise is boring and unbearable like a prison. Dickinson's poems are filled with such images of self-imprisonment. Self-imprisonment is what the woman poet chooses for herself in the experience of life in poetry. By the language of imprisonment and restraints, the woman poet demonstrates her understanding of and position towards daily life.C. Self-Deprivation and Self-Abasement. The sense of deprivation and humbleness is common in Dickinson's poems. The sense of deprivation is first of all represented as deprivation of physical needs: hunger, thirst, coldness and loss of vision. Loss of friends, power, hope and happiness are also seen everywhere in her poems. Many insects, animals, human beings and other things often appear to be very humble in Dickinson's poems. They are small in size, timid in character, low in status, insignificant in importance and weak in strength.D. Self-Inflicted Pain, Death and Violence. Dickinson is almost intoxicated in the feeling and experience of pain, death and violence. In Dickinson's view, life is mostly pain. Curious about the many different pains, she is more concerned with spiritual pains, such as grief, woe, ache, agony, anguish, fear, terror, loneliness and despair. Pains sap energy and often make people despaired and heartbroken, and push them to the verge of committing suicide. Dickinson is just as careful and imaginative in her observation and description of death. In her poems, the momentary process of death is magnified and lengthened in the divided moments, one after another slowly, intensifying to the utmost the experience of death. Dickinson's fondness of violence is manifested in all the above forms of poems. Images of violence are also used in the description of love for nature and other topics.Chapter Three explores"The Aesthetic Significance of the Form of Self-Denial". From the perspective of psychoanalysis, the various forms of self-denial demonstrated in Emily Dickinson's poems are typical traits of masochism. The mechanism of masochism, deriving pleasure from pain, is identical with the aesthetic experience Kant describes about the sublime. According to Kant, we feel fear and displeasure when extremely great or terrifying forces make us feel small and weak. But after a moment when great energies are raised and discovered potential in us in correspondence with those forces, we gain pleasure. As masochism derives pleasure from pain, the aesthetic pleasure the sublime excites in us also comes from the aesthetic media that cause terror and displeasure in us. In this process, the stronger the caused displeasure, the greater the sense of the acquired power, the deeper the feeling of aesthetic pleasure. The aesthetic significance of masochism in Dickinson's poetry is that the form of self-denial helps to express feelings more powerfully, to demonstrate the pursuit of a greater power and thus to reach a higher level of poetic achievement:A. Stronger Expression of Erotic Desire. Self-effacement conveys much more intensified love, expresses much more strongly the desire to be loved and creates a space for Dickinson to indulge herself more fully in love and to pursue greater pleasure of erotic desire.B. Higher Value of Freedom. The many descriptions of various states of imprisonment, the horror caused by imprisonment, the longing for freedom and the challenge to imprisonment in Dickinson's poems help to strike an accented note of objection to all kinds of restraints and to endow freedom with a value never before felt.C. Intensified Love for Life. The masochistic experience of self-imprisonment intensifies passion for life, poetic writing and spiritual pursuit. Dickinson's conscious pursuit of the sense of deprivation brings an infinitely greater enjoyment of life while her description of various humble lives is an emphatic affirmation of the value of each individual life. In Dickinson's poems, we can also see that the masochistic experiences of pain, death and violence all help strengthen awareness of life's beauty and deepen passion for life.D. Pursuit of Greater Power. By imagining self-effacing submission to, deprivation by or self-abasing confrontation against strong forces, Dickinson empowers her speakers as well as herself to acquire strength close, equal or even superior to theirs. By self-inflicted pain, Dickinson achieves power. Extreme agony produces infinite power. Unusual pain makes unusual personality and power.In conclusion, the woman poet displays a clearer self through these forms of self-denial, such as pursuit of love and erotic desire, love for the earthly life and pursuit of a power that transcends the earthly life. With her poetry as the medium, Dickinson expands the width and depth of the world belonging to her and achieves her self-fulfillment at a higher level. To Dickinson, poetic writing is far more important than her everyday life. Poetry is her spiritual companion and is even the whole of her life. The unique nature of Dickinson's poetry originates from the unique perspective and way she observes the world and communicates with her self. With poetry as the medium, Dickinson enters deep inside herself and harmonizes the many opposing elements in her self. The various forms of self-denial in Dickinson's poems activate the vitality of these elements to the full, achieving effective communication between these opposing elements and thus assuring the woman poet's artistic creativity and making the poet's self through the form of self-denial.