Romantic poet Emily Dickinson

Romantic poet Emily Dickinson 

I am quoting from Cliffs Notes on the "19th-century" romantic American poet Emily Dickinson (EMILY DICKINSON: SELECTED POEMS, Mordecai Marcus, Ph.D., Department of English, University of Nebraska, Reprint by Kalyani Publishers, New Delhi - Ludhiana; Indian Reprint 1991; ISBN 81-7096-609-4; in paperback; 102 pages; Rs. 12):

Little is known of Emily Dickinson's earliest years. Her intense letters to friends and classmates show a variety of tones, especially in her reluctance to embrace Christ. Dickinson suffered the early deaths of many acquaintances and dear friends. During this period, she was fond of, or attached to, two older men, LEONARD Humphrey and Benjamin Franklin Newton. She did not yield to continued pressures to give up the secular world for Christ [Peter] and the church. 

A clear picture of Dickinson's mother is difficult to formulate. She seems to have been dignified, conventional, reasonably intelligent, and probably subservient to her husband. She suffered periods of poor health, probably of emotional origin. 

Among the many candidates advanced as [Emily] Dickinson's secret love, two men have been singled out as being most likely: the Reverend Charles Wadsworth [Wadsworth sounds like Wordsworth] and Samuel Bowles. Charles Wadsworth was a successful orthodox preacher. [Emily] Dickinson probably heard him preach in Philadelphia in 1855. [Emily] Dickinson wrote of him in various endearing terms, calling him "dearest earthly friend." Happily married and the father of several children, Wadsworth must have been completely unaware of any romantic attachment which [Emily] Dickinson may have felt for him. Samuel Bowles is a more likely candidate for the person addressed in Dickinson's so-called Master letters. Bowles numbered many women among his friends, much to his wife's pain. Emily Dickinson sent him many poems, including "Title divine - is mine!" [poem 1072]; this one was accompanied with a note, which may imply that in her imagination he was her husband. Possibly Dickinson worshipped in her imagination a composite of these two men or a version of someone else who cannot be identified. Her increasing reclusiveness and her continually wearing white dresses may be chiefly related to the idea that in spirit she was married to someone. The figure of an unattainable lover [N.B. An Unattainable Lover] looms large in her poems, but it is probably A MISTAKE TO THINK that a FRUSTRATED LOVE was THE CHIEF CAUSE of her becoming a poet ... one must grant that her writing served as an emotional catharsis and as a healing therapy for her, which contributes to its appeal.

The other important relationship of Emily Dickinson's later years was her reciprocated love for Judge Otis P. Lord. [Emily] Dickinson's letters to him are fervent with bashful love. He seems to have proposed, and she seems to have refused in the name of her persisting sense that fulfillment would have overwhelmed her. Lord's death seems to have shocked Dickinson into a rapid physical decline. According to some writers, he appears in a few of her late poems.

[Emily Dickinson's surname Dickinson seems connected to Dickens, and her first name Emily reminds Me of novelist Emily Bronte and her stormy novel WUTHERING HEIGHTS.] 

A biography full of imaginary names. I feel sure that "Emily Dickinson" is a pen name used by a talented MODERN female poet. The sonnets and longer poems of "Shakespeare" also seem to Me to be 20th-century works by a talented female writer who is now perhaps a 21st-century reincarnation of "William Shakespeare", a top female writer CHAMELEON with many s. clones. 

For a comparable example of FICTITIOUS story-telling, read "THE OPEN WINDOW", a short story by Saki [H.H. Munro - H.H. for Her Highness?]. 

Kishalay Sinha [G]