迪金森 为美而死 赏析
“IDied for Beauty”:
Emily Dickinson’sAesthetic Sensibility
Akemi Matsumoto*
Abstract :The purpose of this paper is to examine Emily Dickinson’stheory of beauty, which is regarded as a seminal theme among English and American poets. This abstract term in Dickinson’spoems, however, is so inexplicable and inscrutable, because it often ap-pears in the poems of compact and elliptical styles. As for Dickinson, her aesthetic sensibil-ity is not always connected with natural phenomena, such as scenes of sunset, flowers, and something sublime attaching to nature. Her area of beauty extends into negative aspects, for example, agony, loss of confidence, and death. All of this amounts to saying that her enig-matic beauty is her making of poetry ; the ultimate beauty through her aesthetic sensibility is transformed into her great number of poems, noted for her selected gem-like words.
Key words :Beauty, Truth, Poetry
INTRODUCTION
In 1862Emily Dickinson wrote a letter to T. W. Higginson, which would cause a heated contro-versy among critics in the future :
I could not stop for that My Business is Circumference An ignorance, not of Cus-toms, but if caught with the Dawn or the Sunset see me Myself the only Kangaroo among the Beauty, Sir, if you please, it af-flicts me, and I thought that instruction would take it away. 1)
The passage quoted above is very interesting but almost impenetrable, because it involves keys to solving various kinds of problems, such as how to interpret Dickinson’sperplexing poems and how to understand her ideas concerning the theory of po-etry. It is hard for readers to understand Dickin-son’sdiscourse ; likewise, “theonly Kangaroo
*Facultyof Health Sciences for Welfare, Kansai Uni-versity of Welfare Sciences, Lecturer
among the Beauty”is such an impressive phrase that Karl Keller borrowed the phrase for the title of his book. 2)
Dickinson composed poems including the word “Beauty”in a laconic style, but we notice that she employed this abstract term in connection with various themes. Therefore, the critical question is that we should study each related poem as a poetic text in detail in order to investigate characteristics of her aesthetic sensibility. Perhaps it is right to say at the outset that Dickinson’ssignificant way of thinking as a poet is immanent in the word “Beauty.”In this paper, I would like to focus at-tention on Dickinson’stheory of “Beauty,”consid-ering that her “Beauty”can be indirectly con-nected with both sublime and dark, negative as-pects, such as death and affliction mentioned in the letter quoted earlier.
As for “Beauty,”Ralph Waldo Emerson, the prominent transcendentalist in the nineteenth cen-tury, explained his idea of “Beauty”in his well-known essay, Nature. Across the Atlantic, English Romantic poets regarded “Beauty”as one of es-
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sential subject matters for writing poems, as I will examine later. Here we need to consider Dickin-son’sunusual characteristics of “Beauty,”because there has been little study to prove various aspects of this word. Then I would like to discuss how “Beauty”can be a universally acknowledged theme for poets of all ages and countries.
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We will start our discussion by considering Dickinson’sgeneral definition of “Beauty.”Let us begin with Poem 1515:
Estranged from Beauty none can be For Beauty is Infinity And power to be finite ceased
Before Identity was creased (Fr-1515)3) This short poem explains that a person cannot es-cape from “Beauty,”but this abstract word is un-substantial and is not defined concretely :“Beautyis Infinity .”In other words, it is solemn and ex-ists endlessly with great composure, so everyone can see it any time and everywhere. However, it is impossible for even a poet to identify with “Beauty,”because it has vague and indefinite fac-tors.
The following text displays the uncertainty of “Beauty”:
Beauty be not caused It Is Chase it, and it ceases Chase it not, and it abides Overtake the Creases
In the Meadow when the Wind Runs his fingers thro’it Deity will see to it
That You never do it (Fr-654)
There is no special reason why “Beauty”exists, but people have a hard time in pursuing what it re-ally is. When a person reaches it, it escapes imme-diately ; yet it stays still unless he or she chases it (“Chaseit not, and it abides ”).
In the second half of the text, we understand that a person tries to make the obscurity of “Beauty”more concrete by employing the meta-phor of “theWind.”We do not care about the in-visible “Wind”as a natural phenomenon until we feel the wind blowing or see the grasses rustling in “theWind.”Similarly, we suddenly encounter the moment of “Beauty”and then attempt to investi-gate the cause of it, but we do it in vain, as if “Deity”refused to explain the cause and made “Beauty”even more mysterious. In consequence, we may never approach “Beauty”during our life-time.
Jack L. Capps points out that “Her‘Beauty be not caused It Is ’recalls ‘ThenBeauty is its own excuse for being,’from Emerson’s‘Rho-dora,’one of the poems he marked.”4) Surely Dickinson was much influenced by Emerson’spo-ems or essays, but Emerson’stheory of “Beauty”seems to be different from Dickinson’s.For exam-ple, Emerson tells eloquently about his aesthetic theory, as can be seen in the following quotation :
The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musi-cian, the architect, seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point, and each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty which stimulates him to produce. Thus is Art a nature passed through the alembic of man. Thus in art does Nature work through the will of a man filled with the beauty of her first works. (Nature ) 5)
The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and
Akemi Matsumoto “IDied for Beauty”
stands on the centre. For the world is not painted or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful ; and God has not made some beau-tiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. (“ThePoet”)6)
For Emerson, the poet can represent beauty and embody it by a form of art, that is to say, poetry. As is seen in Nature, his beauty is entirely con-nected with nature, so the poet feels an impulse to express nature in front of the poet. As for Dickin-son’s“beauty,”however, it is more ambiguous and less energetic than Emerson’sidea, because his “poet”always confidently “standson the centre,”while Dickinson’sis more passive.
Unlike Emerson’s“Beauty,”Dickinson’sis unique and unconventional to a certain extent ; her “Beauty”is not only an object of affection but also that of affliction :
Beauty crowds me till I die Beauty mercy have on me But if I expire today
Let it be in sight of thee (Fr-1687)According to the persona “I,”“Beauty”is so ex-quisite that it overwhelms the persona. In other words, “Beauty”is eternal and immortal, com-pared to a human being, so the persona suffers from the anguish of an impossibility to define the sublimity of “Beauty.”Thus the persona does nothing but entreat “Beauty”not to leave the spot even if the persona dies.
In case of Poem 1687, a similar example will spring to mind, namely a tanka (aJapanese poem of 31syllables) of Saigyo His well-known tanka
7) is also the poet’s
nifies her favorite flowers, but beautiful things in-cluding flowers or a fine scenery stimulate her to write,
although
poets
are
overwhelmed
by
“Beauty,”as the great painters in the final stanza of Poem 327are paralyzed with the grandeur of the sunset. 8)
After all, Dickinson describes the definition of “Beauty”in an elliptical manner as follows :
The Definition of Beauty is That Definition is none Of Heaven, easing Analysis,
Since Heaven and He are One. (Fr-797B) The persona can neither analyze “Heaven”nor rec-ognize what the definition of “Beauty”is :“TheDefinition of Beauty is /That Definition is none .”That is why “Beauty”is as divine and enig-matic as “Heaven,”and “Beauty”is, as it were, equivalent to “Heaven,”both equally unknowable. Unlike Emerson, Dickinson does not concretely elucidate the nature of “Beauty,”but her definition of “Beauty,”which seems to be ambiguous, ironi-cally adapts her felicitous remark. To put this in greater detail, her sketchy explanation is closest to the nature of “Beauty”; the closer a person pur-sues true “Beauty,”the farther away it escapes. Excellent “Beauty”is beyond description even for a poet, so Dickinson chooses to express “Beauty”as simply and directly as possible.
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In Section , I have considered Dickinson’sgeneral definition of “Beauty”by selecting four texts. In this section, I will now develop the con-sideration of her “Beauty”a little further and shift her definition of “Beauty”from the ambiguity of “Beauty”to the negative aspects of it.
The persona of Poem 1496complains of a pain in the mind :
keen desire to expire in sight of beautiful flowers in early spring. Dickinson’s“Beauty”possibly sig-
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So gay a Flower Bereaves the mind As if it were a Woe
Is Beauty an Affliction then?
Tradition ought to know (Fr-1496)A vivid and beautiful flower touches the persona’smind, so the persona takes its sentiments about a flower as “aWoe.”Without hesitation, the persona wonders to itself :“IsBeauty an Affliction then?”We should ironically recognize that beauti-ful things give us not only greatest pleasure but also a pain or “anAffliction.”
This text displays a contradictory feeling, which is in contrast to Poem 1687in the previous sec-tion, because the persona of Poem 1496declares strongly that “Beauty”is the cause of “anAfflic-tion.”In this text, the concrete object of “Beauty”is taken as a beautiful flower ; when the persona sees plants around the house that bloom almost every day, it is instinctively struck with awe. The negative point of view in the text possibly resem-bles Dickinson’sstrange metaphor in the letter cited at the beginning of Introduction :“Theonly Kangaroo among the Beauty.”So Dickinson might have acknowledged that she did not match won-derful nature as well as a “Kangaroo.”Thus there is something in true “Beauty”that keeps people at a distance.
In the following text, “Beauty”is expressed as another world :
As imperceptibly as Grief The Summer lapsed away Too imperceptible at last To seem like Perfidy A Quietness distilled As Twilight long begun, Or Nature spending with herself Sequestered Afternoon
The Dusk drew earlier in The Morning foreign shone A courteous, yet harrowing Grace, As Guest, that would be gone And thus, without a Wing Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape Into the Beautiful (Fr-935E)
The text depicts late summer, which is personified as a passing “Guest.”Summer is Dickinson’sfa-vorite season, but this text is filled with compli-cated feelings, such as “Asimperceptibly,”“Per-fidy,”and “harrowingGrace.”Summer is such a beautiful season that it brings a spiritual elevation to people, although they do not notice clearly a subtle change from summer to autumn. In the text, however, the persona is bitter about “Summer”go-ing away, as the words “imperceptibly”and “im-perceptible”show, and yet the persona regards ironically this natural phenomenon as “Perfidy,”that is, betrayal.
On and after line five, seasonal changes are viv-idly described :for instance, “TheDusk drew ear-lier in /The Morning foreign shown .”The last part of the text displays how the personified “Summer”leaves like a polite “Guest,”but, on the contrary, this graceful manner of “Summer”grieves the minds of people. The simile “AsGuest”makes the final days of “Summer”more visual and realistic. At last, “Summer”has passed without using “aWing”or “aKeel”and escaped silently into “theBeautiful.”“Summer”is just identified with “theBeautiful”; however, what “theBeautiful”should be is not clarified even af-ter the final narration.
Added to this, “theBeautiful”is placed where a person cannot reach it ; as a result, Dickinson feels a sense of renunciation just like the persona on account of the unavoidable cycle of seasons.
Akemi Matsumoto “IDied for Beauty”
According to Anderson, this cycle of seasons here indirectly refers to one’scycle from birth to death, 9) although this interpretation is a little strained ; however, this text transforms the end of “Summer”into a beautiful form of art, namely, a fine poem filled with skilful metaphors or simi-les. 10)
The next text signifies the relation between “beauty”and the poet :
To tell the Beauty would decrease To state the spell demean There is a syllableless Sea Of which it is the sign My will endeavors for it’sword And fails, but entertains A Rapture as of Legacies Of introspective mines (Fr-1689)
The persona describes the inability to “tellthe Beauty”and to “statethe spell.”It is very hard even for the poet to find appropriate words to con-vey the true “Beauty”and to explain the magic or the enchanting things. The persona “endeavors”to represent “theBeauty”but “fails”; this circum-stance is “thesign”of “asyllableless Sea,”which means “asilent word reflecting a spiritual si-lence.”11) As the word “but”in the sixth line shows, the repeated failures turn to the state of “Rapture.”In other words, aesthetic experience brings “Legacies”to the mind of the persona, as the adjective “introspective”suggests the act of thinking or meditating that poets nourish in writing their poems. The final word “mines,”which is a very significant metaphor for Dickinson, hints at the place filled with poetic imagination or themes before composing a poem. What is more, the meaning of this word is equivalent to immortality, one of Dickinson’svital key words, as the phrase “areduceless Mine”(Fr-1091)serves as a strong
piece of evidence. Therefore, even if the inability to express the aesthetic experience is a disappoint-ing fact, “asyllableless Sea”enriches the poet’sintellectual and aesthetic work, that is, creative ac-tivity making full use of “introspectivemines.”As the texts examined so far exemplify, “Beauty”is beyond description and beyond the bounds of imagination. Even if the formidable “Beauty”attracts Dickinson, she feels agony or af-fliction, because “Beauty”sometimes gives Dick-inson a severe trial in order to cultivate eyes to make sure of the truth, and in order to become a true poet.
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As in texts discussed previously, Dickinson’saesthetic sensibility involves the ability to judge coolly, because she does not make any detailed comment on “Beauty”:“TheDefinition of Beauty is /That Definition is none .”It remains very difficult for readers or critics to define precisely what Dickinson’stheory of “Beauty”is. In Section , I would like to focus on a well-known poem and examine her strong skepticism about the tradi-tional aesthetic idea. The following text exempli-fies her stance :
I died for Beauty but was scarce Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain In an adjoining Room
He questioned softly “WhyI failed”?“ForBeauty”,I replied
“AndI for Truth Themself are One We Bretheren, are”,He said And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night We talked between the Rooms
Until the Moss had reached our lips
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And covered up Our names (Fr-448)The persona “I”dies for an incredible factor, that is, “forBeauty”; death “forBeauty,”then, is the ultimate motivation for Dickinson. Shortly after the persona is buried in “theTomb,”the persona notices its neighbor, “Onewho died for Truth,”in “anadjoining Room.”
The conversation between the persona and “He”in the central stanza is shocking, because “He”asks the persona in a strange way, “WhyI failed.”The word “fail”possibly purports death, but the persona answers that the death was “forBeauty”and in turn hears of a surprising idea from its neighbor :“AndI for Truth Themself are One /We Bretheren, are.”“Themself,”which contains both “Beauty”and “Truth,”is grammati-cally unusual. The aim of this word is to intensify a sense of unity between the two, because “ self”stands for the singular form of a reflexive pronoun. Besides, “He”declares that “WeBre-theren, are.”For the two, the word “Bretheren”is like the same race or family, and, furthermore, “Beauty”and “Truth”are identified or classified as being in the same category here.
In the final stanza, this identification turns into the word “Kinsmen,”and these two persons con-tinue talking “betweenthe Rooms.”The last two lines, however, make a grotesque impression on readers :“Untilthe Moss had reached our lips .”This “Moss”invades the tombs until it reaches their “names.”The “Moss,”which is the symbol of nature here, has its weird vital force and does not perish, in contrast to “Beauty”and “Truth.”Therefore the sublimity of “Beauty”and the firm-ness of “Truth”cannot survive in the face of se-vere nature. To borrow Joan Kirkby’scomment, the “Moss”“signalsthe dissolution of the sym-bolic order as well as the decay of the body.”12) Viewed in this light, the persona narrates the ironi-
cal situation of “Beauty”and “Truth”but leaves the final outcome unclear and ambiguous. There is another text that describes one phase of the cruelty of nature :
The Frost of Death was on the Pane “Secureyour Flower”said he. Like Sailors fighting with a Leak We fought Mortality
Our passive Flower we held to Sea To mountain to the Sun Yet even on his Scarlet shelf To crawl the Frost begun
(Fr-1130C, stanzas 1−2)
“TheFrost”is clearly a metaphor of “Death,”and manages to work its way on a beautiful and “pas-sive Flower,”which indirectly stands for life. Life cannot overcome its enemy, the “Frost,”which is identified with “Death,”and so the shadow of “Death”keeps edging forward toward a person. Here the text compares evanescent life (“Mortal-ity”)to a “Flower”in the same way as the “Frost”is identical with “Death.”In this way, Dickinson’s“Frost”like “Moss”in Poem 448breaks into the world of “Beauty”; her severe way of thinking sometimes challenges the tradition of aesthetics from an ironical point of view.
As for another interpretation, Poem 448is writ-ten on the basis of works by English poets ; in particular, it is said that Dickinson loved reading Elizabeth Barret Browning’s“AVision of Poets”and John Keats’“Odeon a Grecian Urn.”13) Now I would like to refer to the important poem by Keats, whom Dickinson mentioned as one of her favorite poets or writers. 14) Keats’“Beauty”and “Truth”are expressed best in the final two lines of the last stanza when he writes the following :
Akemi Matsumoto “IDied for Beauty”
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! With brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed ; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity :Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
‘Beautyis truth, truth beauty, that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’
(“Odeon a Grecian Urn,”stanza ) 15)
The closing two lines are the most important as-sertion in the poem ; “Beauty”is the same as “truth”and vice versa. People do not know the ex-act reason while alive except that “Beautyis truth,”so even a poet like Keats concludes that “thatis all /Ye know on earth.”In other words, it is futile to attempt a clearer explanation.
Other English Romantic poets, for example, George Gordon Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, are much interested in Beauty and deal with it in their poems. Byron describes a woman, “She,”as visible in the following :“Shewalks in Beauty, like the night /Of cloudless climes and starry skies.”16) Also, Shelley, who wrote the poem titled “Hymnto Intellectual Beauty,”explains his theory of poetry in A Defense of Poetry as follows :
Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world ; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the in-terlunations of life, and veiling them in lan-guage or in form sends them forth among mankind bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide abide. . . .
Poetry turns all things to loveliness :it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most de-formed. . . . 17)
For Shelley, the imagination cultivated through the aesthetic sensibility of a poet constitutes poetry by selected words, and poetry makes the most beauti-ful things in the world immortal. That is to say, beauty transformed into poetry will live forever. Having examined a few aesthetic theories of the English Romantic poets, I will return to Dickin-son’stheory of “Beauty.”Dickinson also believes that “Beauty”gets stronger and more sophisticated in the form of poetry ; however, she always un-derstands the complications about “Beauty,”be-cause it is the supreme ideal that poets pursue for writing poems, and “Beauty”does not allow them to reveal what the cause of it is. Additionally, she recognizes that “Beauty,”or joy of the world, is truth in the world, even if natural beauty is in-volved in death, as I have considered the “Moss”in Poem 448, as it were, the symbol of an en-croaching, obliterating nature.
CONCLUSION
Throughout the course of this paper I have at-tempted to demonstrate aspects of Dickinson’saes-thetic theory through her poems, as well as quota-tions from Emerson’sessays or the works of Eng-lish Romantic poets. We find that Dickinson’sthe-ory of “Beauty”is complicated and ambiguous ; on the whole her definition of “Beauty”is simple, but she does not develop her idea in detail. As is seen in Section , “Beauty”impresses us so strongly that we are at a loss for words and cannot explain what “Beauty”is. Therefore, Dickinson ul-timately wishes to pass away near “Beauty,”be-cause she comprehends that “Beauty”is the su-preme theme in the world.
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Emerson, Shelley, and Keats tend to deliver im-passioned speeches arguing their aesthetic theory ; however, they deal with “Beauty”itself rather than clarify some characteristics of this word, as does Dickinson. One of the marked features of Dickin-son’saesthetic theory is that some of her poems concerning “Beauty”have immeasurable factors, as I have studied in regard to Poem 448. Natural phenomena, which seem to be good representatives of solemn beauty, sometimes are transformed into great menaces to people ; as a result, authentic “Beauty”is beyond description and imagination even for Dickinson. On these grounds I have come to the conclusion that Dickinson was a poet who made every effort to seek her ultimate “Beauty”in her lifetime through writing poems, in the face of dangers and death.
Notes
Thomas H. Johnson and Theodora Ward, eds., The Letters of Emily Dickinson, by Emily Dickinson (Cambridge:The Belknap P of Harvard UP, 1958) 412, No. 268.
Karl Keller, The Only Kangaroo among the Beauty :Emily Dickinson and America (Baltimore:The Johns Hopkins UP, 1979). In this book, Keller examines the study of the interrelation between Emily Dickinson and other American poets or writ-ers, such as Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, and Ralf Waldo Emerson, and so on.
R. W. Franklin, ed., The Poems of Emily Dickin-son, 3vols. by Emily Dickinson (Cambridge:The Belknap P of Harvard UP, 1998) 1324, No. 1515. The poems in this edition will hereafter be referred to as Fr-1515, at the end of the quotations.
Jack L. Capps, Emily Dickinson’sReading, 1836−1886(Cambridge:Harvard UP, 1966) 116. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature :Addresses and Lectures, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson, vol. 1(NewYork :AMS P, 1968) 24.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “ThePoet,”The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed., Edward Waldo Emerson, vol. 3(NewYork :AMS P, 1968) 7.
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The last stanza of Poem 327is as follows :
These are the Visions flitted Guido Titian never told
Domenichino dropped his pencil Paralyzed, with Gold (Fr-327,stanza 6) Charles Roberts Anderson, Emily Dickinson’sPo-etry :Stairway of Surprise (Westport:Greenwood P, 1960) 150. Anderson 150.
Shira Wolosky, Emily Dickinson :A Voice of War (NewHaven :Yale UP, 1984) 166.
Joan Kirkby, Women Writers :Emily Dickinson (London:Macmillan, 1991) 104.
Helen McNeil, Emily Dickinson (London:Vi-rago P, 1986) 161−162.
Letters, No. 261. According to this letter, Dickin-son cites the names of Mr. and Mrs. Browning as some of her other favorite poets.
John Barnard, ed., John Keats :The Complete Poems, by John Keats (Harmondsworth:Penguin Books, 1973) 345−346.
Frank D. McConnell, ed., Byron’sPoetry, by George Gordon, Lord Byron (NewYork :W. W. Norton, 1978) 11.
Timothy Webb, ed., Poems and Prose :Percy Bysshe Shelley, by Percy Bysshe Shelley (Vermont:Everyman, 1995) 275. Works Cited
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Budick, E. Miller. Emily Dickinson and the Life of Language :A Study in Symbolic Poetics. Baton Rouge :Louisiana State UP, 1985.
Capps, Jack L. Emily Dickinson’sReading, 1836−1886. Cambridge :Harvard UP, 1966.
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Akemi Matsumoto “IDied for Beauty”
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