Many comments have been made over the past few decades about the idea of ​​eternity in Emily Dickinson's poetry. Below are several examples: Emily Dickinson's Poetry (1975) by Robert Weisbuch, Dickinson: Strategies of Limitation (1985) by Jane Donahue Eberwein, Emily Dickinson's Fascicles: Method and Meaning (1995) by Dorothy Huff Oberhaus, and Nimble Believing: Dickinson and by James McIntosh. the unknown (2000). However, opinions vary as to how Dickinson explored the question regarding eternity; much ink has still been spent on the issue. This article, therefore, provides another discussion of the idea of ​​eternity depicted in Dickinson's poetry. I will discuss the issue by considering how his poems describe the process by which the poet finally comes to faith in eternity, overcoming the feud between Christianity and scientific knowledge and that between romanticism and existentialism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay As a start, let's take a close look at one of the poems in which Dickinson gives a detailed account of a deathbed scene: The last night She livedIt was an ordinary nightExcept Death-this to usMade Nature differentWe noticed the smallest things -Things overlooked beforeWith this great light on our Minds-In italics as it were. The fault is that others might exist while she must end altogether There arose a jealousy for her so almost infinite-- (P-1100) Dickinson is presumed to have written this verse around 1886. In May of that year, Laura Dickey , the wife of Frank W. of Michigan, died at the parental home in Amherst. Although no record exists showing that Dickinson was with the woman at the time of her death, the event may have inspired the poet to write this poem. Whatever the source of incentive, in this story she defines a profound moment of death and its impact on the living, whereby she expresses her faith and doubts in the afterlife. Although it is a "common night" when the woman dies, the speaker says, there is something unnatural in the air, because what people usually ignore or avoid is emphasized ("italicized") by the death ("great light"). The moment of death is a "Compound Vision" (P-906) for Dickinson. While on the one hand the dying person steps forward towards the presence of God, on the other the living enter and exit vigorously from "her last room". Meanwhile, two different emotions - "a guilt" and "a jealousy" - overtake the speaker: she is full of anger against the absurdity of death that kidnaps the lonely woman towards the "unknown country" (L-752); at the same time, she is envious of the woman's fate as now the dying woman can experience the great adventure and see the world beyond death. So far, the speaker observes dying from a Christian point of view: jealousy for the woman represents a belief in Heaven and eternal life affirmed in the Bible. He wants to share with the deceased the opportunity to get a glimpse of the afterlife that is intangible to the living. However, only the woman lying on the bed can overcome the limit of this world. The speaker cannot solve the riddle of death. Here anti-religious knowledge begins to raise its head in the speaker, in the poet. Writing to TW Higginson, Dickinson states that "My business is the Circumference-" (L-268); and according to Eberwein's interpretation, "circumference, for Emily Dickinson, is death" (164). Thus, the inability to find the meaning of death indicates lack of success in one's affairs. As long as it adheres to the Christian idea, death remains a mystery. Therefore the poet looks away from Christianity in order to complete her task, which gives the poem a suddennessalteration of tone:He mentioned and forgot—Then lightly, like a Reed bent to the water, struggled just—agreed, and died—and we—placed the hair—and drew the head upright—and then a terrible amusement was faith to regulate- (P-1100) The woman, on the brink of death, tries to utter a word, in vain. She merely struggles feebly against "a reaper whose name is Death" (L-185) as if she were a helpless reed resisting the current that tries to sweep her away. In a famous poem, “I heard the buzz of a fly when I died” (P-465), a fly ruins the crucial moment of the speaker's death with its buzz. But no obstacle like the fly appears on the woman's deathbed; instead he surrenders to death with great ease, leaving only his body behind. What the participants, including the speaker, need to do now is fix her hair, fix her head, and "regulate" their religious faith. Christians are trained to look for signs of salvation at the point of death to look for evidence that angels are coming down to take a newcomer to Heaven. Yet we are unable to discern any providential signal in the woman's submission to death. As a result, they are agitated and a scientific vision begins to conquer their minds. These bewildered people need, for the moment, "tremendous recreation" to recover an unshakable faith. The last two stanzas express, in this way, Dickinson's loss of faith in Christianity and her idea of ​​the afterlife. Apparently he observes dying within the limits permitted by scientific knowledge: death, here, is a mere vanishing point and there is no revelation in it. In the period in which Dickinson lived, the railroad, the telephone, the steamship, electricity - all these products of modern science and technology were introduced to the inhabitants of New England. And those inventions not only made their lives easier, but drew them into materialism; as a result, science began to replace the formulated Christian faith. Furthermore, as Cynthia Griffin Wolff points out, "Dickinson received more instruction in current mathematics and science than the average American schoolchild receives today" (342). It is likely that his attachment to science was much stronger than our speculations. Distracted from belief in Omnipotence, Dickinson came to believe only what had proof; as a natural result, the commitment to scientific knowledge was opposed to religious learning about death and the afterlife. And as for these two stanzas, the abstract description of the afterlife in Scripture is considered unworthy: it does not reveal the true nature of death, the afterlife, and eternity. So, can "We" including the poet truly adapt one's faith during "a time of terrible leisure"? The answer would be "Yes" and "No", as Dickinson simply states that the "free time" is arranged after the woman's death. Some may overcome their skepticism; others may abandon the solemn Christian vision at that moment. And in the case of Dickinson herself, it can be said that she continued to be both a skeptic and believer in Christianity. The poetess with a materialistic outlook needed "free time" to reconsider Christian thought when witnessing death; nevertheless he understood satisfactorily that scientific knowledge was after all not sufficient as a clue to answering the fundamental question of life and death. Dickinson's search for eternity, in other words, oscillated between orthodox Christian and scientific views of the world after death. Now he will shift the emphasis from the clash between Christianity and scientific thought to that between romanticism and existentialism. The analysis of Poem 191 provides a good starting point: The Heavens do notthey can keep their secret! They tell it to the Hills - The Hills tell it only to the Orchards - And they - to the Daffodils! A bird - by chance - going in that direction - Soft listens to everything - If I had to bribe the little bird - Who knows but she wouldn't say it? "The Heavens", that is, the kingdom of heaven, reveal the secret of God and the angels to the "Hills"; the undulating country, in "ilFrutteti"; the fruit trees, the "Daffodils". “A Bird” eavesdrops on their whispered talk, and if the speaker offers a bribe to the “Little Bird,” “she” will presumably tell her about it too. one way, the gist of these lines is extremely simple; it is clear that the poet has no doubts about the potential of the interlocution between nature and human beings, the critic Hoxie Neale Fairchild exhorts:[ as the attempt to reach, retain or justify that emotional experience which is produced by an imaginative interfusion of real and ideal, natural and supernatural, finite and infinite, man and God. (206) The attempt to discover the infinite within finite being, taking care of the anchor for human life: this is what comes called Romance. Thus, it is obvious that Dickinson was a Romantic poet. She conceived nature as a representative of God in the rooms above she was convinced she could listen to the Divinity; directly from the action of nature. However, her intellect did not allow her to be satisfied with the romantic vision of nature: she could not be completely carried away by a romantic vision. Accordingly, he caused his speaker to address God, to borrow Sewall's phrase, "with some sobriety" (714): So keep your secret, Father! I would not, if I could, know what the Sapphire Fellows do, in your fashionable new world! (P-191) This concluding coda of the poem shows that the speaker does not wish to be informed of what "the Sapphire Fellows" do in the Holy City even though the "Father" voluntarily lets him know. There was no conciliation, in the poet's philosophy, between the finite and the infinite. Therefore he dissociated his interlocutor from Romanticism when he was about to know, through natural phenomena, all the answers to the questions about eternity. And what now caught the poet's attention was an existential idea regarding eternity. The existentialist movement spread widely in European countries after World War II; it was long after Dickinson's death that he entered the American literary world. But the philosophical movement actually originated in the nineteenth century, when Soren Kierkegaard used the term “Exist-preserve,” meaning “the condition of existence” or “an existential relation.” As Kenneth Stocks surmises, "it already existed in consciousness in Emily Dickinson's time" (52). In his volume The Deadly Illness, Kierkegaard observes that "God and man are two qualities separated by an infinite qualitative difference" (126), which is considered the fundamental doctrine of existentialism. Unlike Romanticism, it states that there is no friendly agreement between limited and unlimited being: the human being and the Supreme Being are not two portions on an equivalent plane but two elements in two dimensions. To summarize, existentialism is a school of philosophy that recognizes the finiteness of human beings. When we examine Dickinson's works in accordance with this definition, we can easily come across poems that illustrate her existential realizations. For example he sings: To be alive-is Power-Existence-in itself-Without further function-[no verse break]Omnipotence-Enough-To be alive-and Will!'It is as capable as God-The Creator-of Ourselves- be-that-such be Finitude! (P-677) “Being alive” denotes, the poet observes, the “Power,” “Existence,” or “Omnipotence” of human beings. Even if they are simply alive, the very ability to live is enoughomnipotent. Furthermore, when they retain the "Will", they can possess divine competence: they are able to accomplish anything as God created them. However, after all, their "Existence" is over. However gifted they are, they are condemned to "finiteness". Therefore their “Existence” is distinguished from that of God; and only "Finiteness" becomes their dominant character, or "Omnipotence". Obviously Dickinson endorses the heterogeneity between divinity and the nature of human beings in this poem, which makes us aware of the fact that she was involved in existential thinking even unintentionally. In fact, Dickinson's idea was entirely similar to Kierkegaard's. The following poem serves as proof of this point: Conscious I am in my chamber, of a formless friend - He does not attest by posture - nor confirm - by word - [. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ]Presence-is His furthest license-Neither Him towards Mennor I Placed towards Him-For Accent-Loss Probity-[. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ]Not even if he visits the Other-Abode-or No-I know-But instinct esteems himImmortality- (P-679)In the introduction to The Deadly Illness, Kierkegaard insists:Christianly understood, [. . .] death is by no means the last of all; in fact, it is only a minor event within what is all, an eternal life, and, Christianly understood, there is infinitely much more hope in death than in life [. . .]. (7) Kierkegaard apparently limits himself to summarizing a representative Christian theology. However the point to note is that he takes the Christian faith one step further. His exploration of human existence finds that a human being cannot automatically be given eternal life after his bodily extinction; according to its premises it is necessary, for the inheritance of eternal life, to consciously assume internal eternity. The following quote will make his vision clearer. He prescribes human existence in a simple way: man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relationship that relates to itself or is the relationship of the relationship to itself in the relationship; the self is not the relationship but is the relation of the relationship to itself. (13) The true way of existing, his argument suggests, is that the self always relates to itself. In connection with this point we have the explanation that "the ego is the conscious synthesis of the infinite and the finite that relates to itself" (29). Although a human being is only allowed to live for a limited time, his existence includes the "infinite" or the eternal within it. To put it another way, human existence is twofold. And what is immediately evident in these passages is that the human being must relate his own self to the duality of existence. Only when aware of his duplicity can a human being receive eternity. Returning to poem 679, it is clear that the poet was as philosophical as Kierkegaard. In the opening lines, the speaker confesses that he is "conscious" of a guest visiting his "Chamber." It is invisible and silent; yet he can perceive it since “his furthest license” is “Presence”. As long as it is present, the host is also allowed to exist; as long as she maintains the "license", she can be present. And they relate to each other with "Probity" so that they can achieve coexistence. The correlation between the speaker and the “formless friend” is, in this sense, rather friendly. And through the strong mutual relationship, he is able to understand his true nature in the final paragraph: his "Instinct" feels that he is "Immortality". Wolff insists that "Eternity" is "a term coldly indifferent to the existence of both humanity and God" and that "Immortality" is connected with "the infinite life of an integral consciousness, human or divine" (293); and try to clarify thedifference between the two terms. But the Oxford English Dictionary defines "Immortality" as "absolute eternity, having neither beginning nor end" and treats the two words as synonyms; we would rather agree with this definition here. So the speaker in this verse is aware of the eternal in his "Presence". Judging from the above, it is quite satisfying that Dickinson has penetrated, in these lines, as much into the duality of human existence as Kierkegaard did in his writings. Aware of the “formless friend” in her “Chamber”, that is, in herself, she began to try to reveal her friend's true character; she ultimately valued it as eternal in the same sense used by Kierkegaard. It may be that such a discovery of the infinite aspect of human existence caused Dickinson to fully acquire the intrinsic conception of eternity. In one of his poems we are told: Error is in esteemEternity is thereWe say as of a StationWhile he is so nearJoins me on my PathShares the abode with meI have no friend who persists as well as this Eternity (P-1684) Dickinson enunciated that eternity was already lurking in existence before a human being was "called back" (L-1046). To return to Kierkegaard's statement, the human being "cannot throw away the eternal once and for all, nothing is impossible anymore [...]" (17); Dickinson also sensed the persistence of the friend called eternity. Without the hyphen, a symbol of his uncertainty, this poem thus represents his conquest of the noumenon of eternity. The poet transformed, from an existentialist point of view, her pure nostalgia for eternity into an authentic belief in it. “I dwell in Possibility- / A fairer House than Prose-” (P-657) Dickinson sings softly. The villa that embraced "Possibilities" was, of course, poetry. This article clarified how she endowed the empty house with an abstraction, with eternity. Eternity is, for all human beings, one of the most intriguing topics; countless writers choose it as a theme for their works. We can say that there is nothing new in his poems compared to it. However, Dickinson's uniqueness in exploration is her inquiring mind influenced by four different ideas: Christianity, scientific knowledge, romanticism, and existentialism. Although these ideas perplexed her from time to time, they tickled her immeasurably; magnetized on all sides, she strove to ascertain which thought was the most reliable for reaching the center of eternity. And existentialism has finally proven to be a reliable theory. Dickinson once writes, “Finite to fail, but infinite to Venture” (P-847), by which he tries to prove that we cannot overcome our limits unless we test our possibilities. This active attitude towards life explains well Dickinson's long search for a glimpse of eternity. As we have observed, neither Christian ideology, nor scientific knowledge, nor romanticism were so attractive as to maintain the poet's zeal for them, and existentialism offered some answers to his questions about eternity. But it is true that every time she was absorbed by every idea: she tried to chase eternity, through the texts, believing that every thought should have the possibility of providing her with guidance in her investigation. From this point of view, his search for eternity was exactly a "feat". He actually lived in the house decorated with "Possibility". And when he sought eternity in the extraordinary house, the "Enterprise" made the poet perceive "The torrents of eternity / Do but flood-" (P-1380), in which we can see his conclusive success in securing eternity in life here and now. Works Cited Dickinson, Emily. The poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. 3 vols. Cambridge: Belknap-Harvard UP, 1951.---. The, 1975.