Dickinson's treatment of the theme of love - Emily Dickinson as a love poet
Give your ideas about Emily Dickinson as a love poet. or What ideas about Dickinson as a poet of love do you find from a study of her poetry? or Discuss Dickinson's treatment of the theme of love. Or, How has Dickinson treated love in her poems? Illustrate your answer.
Answe: Dickinson was a poet of love to a degree c e comparable to any poet of love in English literature, or for that matter, of world literature. She had deep personal experiences of love and it gave rise to the ecstasy of her lyric poems. Her poems display an overwhelming passion which moves towards a climactic meeting of the lovers only to collapse into a disappointing separation. She has handled even the tensions of physical attractions rather too frankly in some poems, which in others she longingly surveys. Her disappointment in love provided the framework for intense psychological analysis which gradually brought about her spiritual consolation Her passions were sublimated into feelings of religious triumph, and some of her poems bear testimony to this fact.
There are three principal motifs in Dickinson's love poems. Firstly, the anticipation of the lover's future visit and possible marriage; secondly, the climactic meeting of the lovers and their resulting separation, and finally, the sublimation of the human passion in a celestial marriage as she becomes the Bride of Christ.
Some of Dickinson's early poems contain her most sentimental passion of love. "Come Slowly-Eden", Dare you see a Soul at White Heat?" and "A Bee His Burnished Carriage are some of such poems.
Many of her poems are concerned with the actual meeting of the lovers They emphasize her sense of loyalty and dread of change, and increasingly consider the spiritual aspects of love, rather than its human importance. "Again-his voice is at the Door" is an example of such a poem.
Some of her poems deal with the misery of separation. "I Got So I could Take His Name" catches the terrible misery that separation causes, depicting the soul's bleak efforts to discover some measure of religious consolation
The most artistic love-poems of Dickinson are those that deal with brides and marriages. The human love in this cycle of poems remains shadowy, and the vision of the lovers' heavenly marriage changes to an actual celestial union with God. Here she dramatically merges the sacred and profane aspects of human passion, and transforms her desire for human marriage into a Bride-of-Christ VISION
We find a blending of spiritual love and human passion in another cycle of poems. "Title Divine is Mine" blends spiritual love and human passion, developing the ritual of an actual marriage without the human bridegroom It is done with so much intensity that one can almost feel the human passion being transformed into divine love.
Dickinson considered the subject of love from a philosophical point of view, though her love poetry had its source in her own experience of passion. She glorified love to such a degree that it was almost equated with God.
Dickinson as a love poet is unique in respect of the varied aspects of love. She has dwelt upon the physical aspects of love, as well as the spiritual, the mundane as well as the divine. She has treated the domestic aspect of love in her poems of bride and bridegroom, wife and husband. and the sublimation of the physical passion of love into a divine credence.
