Dark Romanticism In Edgar Allan Poe And Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was an exceptional writer through the mid-late 1800’s. She never published any of her writings and it wasn’t until after her death that they were even discovered. The complexity of understanding her poems is made prevalent because of the fact that she, the author, cannot expound on what her writing meant. This causes others to have to speculate and decide for themselves the meaning of any of her poems. There are several ways that people can interpret Emily Dickinson’s poems; readers often give their opinion on which of her poems present human understanding as something boundless and unlimited or something small and limited, and people always speculate Dickinson’s view of the individual self.

Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne were American writers who are said to belong to the Dark Romanticism. This literary subgenre of Romanticism is featured by the representation of individuals as prone to sin and self-destruction. It does not deal with man as innate perfect creatures who are devine and full of wisdom. Moreover, it sees nature not as divine, but sinister. The natural word is dark, decaying and mysterious. In my opinion, The Masque of the Red Death and Young Goodman Brown are great examples of Dark Romanticism.

The Belle of Amherst, The Woman in White, or The Most Paradoxical of Poets…who can say which pseudonym is most becoming of the late great Emily Dickinson. By virtue of the multitudinous biographical literary works, moreover the wondrous intimacy of Dickinson’s poetry, one could surmise that as readers we comprehend her entirely: yet the most prevalent experience borne from reading Emily’s work, especially if her poems are read successively, is that we come away feeling as though we know nothing at all. Like no author before her and very few after her, Emily Dickinson divulges her hearts hidden secrets while recording what is inexorably one of the most conscientious explorations of the human consciousness ever attempted. Dickinson is known posthumously for her unusual use of form and syntax, but it was her pervasive themes of immortality, death, and madness in her poems that would canonize her as an indelible American character.

Many themes can be interpreted by reading the poem “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died” but two themes seem to stick out. Mortality and family. Family is a big part of a deathbed scene. Dickinson uses the theme mortality in the poem to explore all kinds of thing about death. She thinks about how it feels, happens, what we expect

Emily Dickinson concentrates many of her poems on the theme of death, predominantly her own. These “poems about death confront its grim reality with honesty, humor, curiosity, and above all a refusal to be comforted (“Emily Dickinson 1830-1886” 1659). While this was not an out of the ordinary topic during the American Romantic era, Dickinson seemed near obsessive in her focus. Additionally, Dickinson seems questionable in her thoughts on religion, another theme popular during the American Romantic era. Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for death” and “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” both explicitly examine the concept of death, the afterlife, and the author’s obsession with the melancholy.

In opposition to “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, Dickinson published her work of “I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I Died”. In this particular piece of literature, the author disbeliefs in an afterlife. In this poem, a woman is lying on bed with her family surrounding her, waiting for the woman to pass away. The woman, however, is anxiously waiting for “…the kings”, meaning an omnipotent being. Finally when the woman dies, her eyes or windows, as referred in the poem, “could not see to see “. When the woman passes away, she couldn’t see any angels or gods as she expected would be there, but instead, she is fluttered into nothingness. She isn’t traveling to an afterlife as she had expected to unlike in the poem of “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”. The woman finds out that death is a simple end to everything.

Emily Dickinson is a passionate poet and a major figure in American Literature. Her poems tell a great deal about her lifestyle. By her early twenties, she seldom leaves her home and begins to live a life of seclusion. Dickinson’s unique style in writing poetry makes her one of America’s greatest poets. She writes about the subject of death in many of her poems. She is drawn to the mystery of the afterlife. Dickinson expresses her concern on immortality and whether the soul survives death in the poems “Because I could not stop for death-,” “Just lost, when I was saved!,” and “I heard, as if I had no Ear.”

Edgar Allan Poe was one of the best writers and most peculiar to ever walk the Earth. He used more of a darker element than most of the writers of his time and before his time. He incorporated Dark Romanticism into a lot of what he did. He was even known as a Dark Romantic writer. Edgar Allan Poe’s rough childhood was a major influence on his writing, which lead to him becoming a Dark Romantic writer and incorporating Dark Romanticism in his work “The Tell-Tale Heart”, and his writing has influenced pop culture today and many authors after he died.

For example, in “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died,” she uses words such as “The stillness in the room” and “I heard a fly buzz” help to give the reader some insight on what is happening as she is dying. The description makes the audience feel as though there is actually a fly buzzing in the room, and helps to also enhance the senses of sight and sound because it makes the reader feel like they can actually hear a fly buzzing. The fly is set to represent death is it is flying around her because she is dying. Additionally, the image of a dead body appears because when somebody dies and their body decomposes, flies come around it. This symbolizes that Emily Dickinson is already dead as she is writing the poem.

In contrast to the dreamy tone of the earlier poem, ‘How many times these low feet staggered’ has a distinctly more realistic and macabre tone to it. The mention of ‘flies’ gives us the image of decomposing meat as though the corpse were rotting which helps establish the more realistic side of what physically happens when a person dies, i.e their bodies rot. However the flies also clarify how monotonous the dead woman’s life and the tone of the poem is, as flies are known to continuously bang themselves against a window in their attempt to get out though them in what is obviously a futile effort which might have been what this woman’s life was like. The mention of the window also helps to create the idea that her death is the window of freedom she needed to finally escape such a droll life, emphasising the macabre tone by making death seem better than life.

Born on December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts (“A Timeline”), Emily Dickinson is a classic, female American poet most people are familiar with nowadays. However, if her name or works are unknown to some, they are missing out on poetry with a unique style and the ability to touch readers’ hearts by addressing themes about human nature. Since she was a keen observer of Amherst life, nature, and human passion (Byers and Bourgoin 541), it was easy for her to write about said themes. Besides that, Emily Dickinson’s use of themes such as death and mourning in her poetry is highly influenced by her own life experiences. Due to this, her poems become deeper and genuine, making it easier for readers to connect with her poetry.

Emily Dickinson was an American poet living during the 1800’s. She published 1800 poemsalso, funny enough. She wrote about what intrigued her, and used lots of imagery to do it.Specifically, Emily wrote mostly about God, death and immortality, and assertion of self. She,herself, died a young death at 55.Death is one of Emily’s most prominent and standing themes. Sometimes she describesdeath as menacing and evil like, the next death is gentle. In “Because I could not stop for Death–,“ she embodies death. She also presents the act of dying as quite simply just the realization ofimmortality. In “Some – Work for Immortality –,” death is nothing but the moment where thedead person can basically cash in their check of good behavior for eternal rewarding.Dickinson

Emily Dickinson did not give titles to her poetry, they are numbered. This is the first part of her poems that commands attention. At first it is not known what a particular poem is about, it needs to be read. A good portion of Dickinson’s work is centered on death. Everyone knows that death is unavoidable. Once something lives, it must die. There is only one real guarantee in life and that is death. Generally, death is feared due to the lack of knowledge or certainty of what happens when it occurs. Heaven, hell, purgatory, nothingness, reincarnation or any other explanation gives comfort or even anxiety in death. Even with the strongest beliefs death is still uncertain. Some of Emily Dickinson’s poems are solely about death and the emotions that fallow it. She creates a very vivid image with her words. Certainly on a level that anyone who has experienced death can understand. Three of her poems in “The Poems of Emily Dickinson” edited by R. W. Franklin, do this nicely. Both of these poems explain the emotions and what needs to be done after a death.

Emily Dickinson uses the connections between the soul, the spiritual, the afterlife, and death to reveal how the pain of the human experience can cause isolation. In “The Soul Selects her Own Society” and “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark”, we see the struggle of the speakers to find their place by exploiting their faults and showing the miserable aspects of their experience. In contrast, the poems, “This World is not Conclusion” and “After great pain a formal feeling comes” establish how death causes pain to those still living, however, it alleviates the pain of the human experience from those who are dying. Both cause isolation in the physical sense for the living and a spiritual sense for the dead. Dickinson uses personification, similes, and allusions in addition to the demonization of the human experience to reveal a mysterious yet optimistic attitude towards death as it causes and alleviates pain.

Emily Dickinson is a well-known name in literature not only among connoisseurs of poetry, but also to the novice reader. She is most commonly known for her macabre and spooky poems about death or an experience of dying. However, the number of poems Emily wrote about nature and her spirituality far outnumber the mysterious and eerie. During Emily’s lifetime, a new way of thinking swept across the eastern United States. Transcendentalism was a budding philosophical idea popularized in the late 1830’s. The core beliefs of this movement were the focus on the oneness with the self, nature, and God. From these set beliefs, it becomes easy to see Emily Dickinson in a new light. No longer does she appear the dark and dreary loner that she is famous for personifying. Conversely, she transforms into a being that was far more in tune with nature and her true self. Emily Dickinson’s poetry gives a direct reference to transcendentalism by exploring the relationships between nature, spirituality, and the true self.