Echo Of Ancient Times

In the American poetic circle, Emily distinguishes herself by her unique language style, unconventional poetic form, remarkable simplicity and profoundly rich images. Her poetry is considered to be not only quite excellent in America but really eminent in the entire English literature. In her poetic world and her personal letters, readers can sense her philosophical meditation over life, death and immortality. Her limited space of private world could never limit her imagination and creativity out of which many impressive images emerged. The issues she concerns most are just the cornerstone of Jung's theory– the collective unconscious, which is said to be the ultimate drive for any artistic creation. Besides, the sexual identification of the persona in the poetry, or we'd rather say the poet's psychological gender, that attracts many critics' attentions is also one of the major subjects Jung studies in his psychoanalytic theory. Through a close examination of Dickinson's poetry and some of her personal letters, a number of primeval archetypes in Jung's theoretical system stand out, ranging from the motifs of life as a journey, life as a purgatory and life as a carnival to such symbolic figures as the good woman (Mary as the persona), evil woman (Aphrodite as shadow) as well as wise and malicious man (animus in Jungian terms). These images form the bottom stratum of the pyramid of archetypes in Emily Dickinson's poetry. The next stratum upward is the circle image and dialectics, and on top of it lays the mysterious Chinese yin-yang symbol. This proves that psychological experiences of human beings can also pass down collectively in the form of inheritance just like biological features. But there is a major difference, that is, psychological legacy can hardly be pinned down, for it is part of our collective unconscious.