There is much criticism about the
nature of Emily Dickinson’s concept of mysticism. In the strictest sense of the
term Emily Dickinson can not be called as a mystic poet as there is no or
little direct and clear presentation of mystic theme in her poetry that we find
in Blake’s poetry. She has not shown her distinctive attitude to the quest of
union with the Divine. But in the liberal sense of the term, she is reflected
to God, soul, death, immortality etc. Her mystic view is reflected in her
apprehensions of the divine presence in nature, eternity of life, immortality
of soul and in her belief in the link between soul and God.
There are some poems in
which we can get the testimony of her mystic attitude. In “I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed”, we find a gradual development of
attitude towards the divinity. She uses the symbols of wine that has never been
brewed in order to achieve the stature of an immensely big celestial being to
whom even the sun is a lamp-post. Her mystic mood is vividly revealed in the
following lines:
“I shall but drink the more!
Till Seraphs swing their snowy
hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!”
In the treatment of Nature, Emily Dickinson’s attitude
is mystic to some extent. In her poem “My Cocoon tightens, colors tease”, we
find a clue of her mystic mind. Here we can see a beautiful poetic treatment of
a chrysalis just before bursting open its cocoon and taking the shape of a
butterfly. Several critics take its subject to be immortality where the
chrysalis is the symbol of soul which struggles to come out from the cocoon of
death to the open meadows and the sky of immortality. But the most
accepted interpretation, the poem symbolizes the struggle for the gradual
spiritual growth to be mingled with the universe or the Divine.
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