艾米莉·狄金森的自然：生態批評的解讀

李 玲

（中南大學）

1. Introduction

Though among other critics, Lawrence Buell mentions her Robin in his work on eco-criticism and Rachel Stein her eco-feminism, much can be gained from more attention to her ecological consciousness, the subject of this article. Buell writes, “Booth updates romantic nature lyric, in which I-it poems about birds feature prominently: Keats’s nightingale, Shelley’s skylark, Bryant’s waterfowl,Dickinson’s robin. What especially differentiates the modern texts is their refusal to imagine nature existing for human benefit or yielding a moral for human consumption.” Lawrence Buell, (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995), 205.Stein reveals her eco-feminist standpoint when she writes,“Dickinson’s poetry links nineteenth-century white women’s secondary social status and domestic confinement to Puritan and Transcendentalist views of nature’s subservience to the will of God and man.” Rachel Stein, ’ (Va. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997), 11.And there is Christine Gerhardt who discusses Dickinson’s pro-ecological aspect based on the influences of the courses Dickinson had in school and the essays on journals and magazines she read. Christine Gerhardt, “Often Seen — but seldom felt’: Emily Dickinson’s Reluctant Ecology of Place,” . Vol.XV, 1 (2006): 76–78.

In one of Dickinson’s poems, “If I can stop one Heart form breaking / I shall not live in Vain / If I can ease one Life the Aching / Or cool one pain // Or help one fainting Robin / Unto his Nest again / I shall not live in vain,” (J919, F982) Reference to Emily Dickinson’s letters is according to Emily Dickinson, 3Vols, Eds. Thomas H. Johnson, and Theodora Ward (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1958). While about the poems, both Emily Dickinson, (3 Vols), Ed. Thomas H.Johnson (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977), and Ralph William Franklin, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999) are referred to,and abbreviated as “J ” and “F” for each to show the differences in numbering. In quoting the poems, R.W. Franklin’s is applied.the speaker perceives the well-being of other creatures to be closely connected with her ideal in life. If one understands “one Heart,” “one Life,” and “one Pain”referring only to human beings, one could sense a condescending tone or care. At that moment, the speaker turns to “one fainting Robin” as an afterthought. Although there may exist a seeming hierarchy, one would also perceive that the speaker may actually place a broken-hearted human being and a fainting robin more or less on the same level by opening a possibility of including the robin in the “one Heart,” “one Life,” and “one Pain” in the same environmental system, our eco-system.

What’s more, the fact that Dickinson transcends and gives integral consideration to these aspects of life could inspire our care for nature as an eco-ethical issue. If Dickinson once declared her poetry to be her “letter to the world” (J441, F519),we can assume that this poem delivers her message to the world, including human beings and nonhuman creatures, which reveals her eco-consciousness about the interconnectedness among all creatures in the whole eco-system. Dickinson’s ecological consciousness can be taken as a kind of pastoralism evolving into a spirituality of nature. Thus Dickinson’s ecological consciousness can be analyzed from three aspects: 1) her pastoralism; 2) her sense of place reflected from her physical garden and her “Garden in her Brain”; and 3) her idea of interconnectedness revealed in her “Circumference.”

2. Dickinson’s Pastoralism

Pastoralism can be considered as a kind of nostalgic associations or longing, or description that has a pastoral-like nature where human beings live peacefully and harmoniously with other creatures in the environment.

Although none of these previous scholars, including Leo Marx, include Dickinson among the list of pastoral writers, Dickinson in her home gardens remains like a Virgilian shepherd poet who “seeks a resolution of the conflict between the opposed worlds of nature and art.” Leo Marx, (New York:Oxford University Press, 2004), 22.Dickinson’s pastoralism can be similar to“complex pastoralism,” “post-pastoralism,” and “new pastoralism,” which shows her skeptical and ambiguous attitude towards nature and the relationship between nature and human beings. Dickinson’s pastoralism can be reflected from her garden,a miniature middle landscape and her singing rather than her praying.

In America, pastoralism goes along with agrarianism, both sharing the concept of “the middle landscape” between wilderness and civilization. Some scholars view the garden as the master symbol of pastoral and hold the idea that the garden is “the[middle] landscape of reconciliation, a mild, agricultural, semi-primitive terrain.”First, Dickinson’s garden is more a pastoral than an agricultural one, in which she develops her ecological relationship with nature, in terms of various flowers, plants and insects. Like American farmers laboring in the fields and on farms, Dickinson tends her flowers and plants like a “shepherd” poet in her family gardens and her conservatory which her father gave her. Her garden is similar to what Marx calls“a miniature middle landscape.” Leo Marx, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 138In fact, this idea of a garden as the rural “middle landscape” is foundational for American pastoralism, especially for people of certain social position in the nineteenth century, which is just the case of Emily Dickinson.Dickinson’s garden is far away from any material profit or economic gains. She just engaged with her family gardens, attending all the plants, picking up flowers as gifts to her relatives, friends, and neighbors to congratulate, to console whenever it is possible. Her gardens gave her amusement and joy, and she simply enjoyed doing all these without any consideration of financial profits.

Though Marx does not include Dickinson among his list of pastoral writers,Dickinson in her home gardens remains like a Virgilian shepherd poet who “seeks a resolution of the conflict between the opposed worlds of nature and art.”Although Dickinson shows her awareness of this tension, she makes a comparison between nature and art and suggests that they are not in opposition in her now wellknown remark, “Nature is a haunted House — but Art — a House that tries to be haunted.” Emily Dickinson, (3 Vols), Eds. Thomas H. Johnson, and Theodora Ward (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1958), Vol.2, 554.Here, in a very idiosyncratic way, Dickinson reveals her understanding of the interrelatedness between nature and art by envisioning both as a house.Moreover, she shows her appreciation of nature as a reservoir for art by arguing that art tries to imitate nature, to turn to nature, to depict nature, which is the core of nature writing. Residing in her garden as a shepherdess, Dickinson shows that the garden is not only a pleasure, but also a place of interrelatedness between nature and herself, where she can subvert traditional boundaries between nature and art.

For Dickinson, singing is essential to existence, just as the singing of shepherds.In one of her letters, she wrote, “I had terror — since September — I could tell no one — and so I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground — because I am afraid.” She declares in her poems: “I shall keep singing!” and “Bind me — I still can sing —.”Some scholar rightly notes that “for Dickinson, ‘singing’ is as necessary as breathing and no amount of constriction can prevent her from doing so.” Caroline L. Cooley, ’ (NC Jefferson:McFarland, 2003), 49.Dickinson not only identifies herself with songbirds, she also believes that singing is her major calling in life. In a letter to the Hollands, Dickinson describes how the bird flew away and at the same time reveals her business of singing: “One sob in the throat, one flutter of bosom — ‘My business is to sing’ — and away she[the bird] rose! How do I know but cherubim?” Emily Dickinson: (vol.2), 413.

Dickinson’s business is to sing. Singing is also her way of comforting her fellow human beings, which can be seen in many of her letters and poems or letterpoems. “Good-night. Let Emily sing for you because she cannot pray”and “I,myself, in my smaller way, sang off charnel steps”are all examples of this.What’s more, Dickinson often compares singing to writing poetry just as many poets do in similar way. Like the songbird, Dickinson sings when nobody hears by composing poems that she often thinks as hymns, as in one of her letters: “I have promised three Hymns to a charity” Emily Dickinson, (3 Vols), Eds. Thomas H. Johnson, and Theodora Ward (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1958), Vol.3, 680.and “Brother has visited, and the night is falling, so I must close with a little hymn.” Emily Dickinson: (vol.2), 493, also cited from Emily Dickinson: J, 995; F, 1014.While most of the people around her would pray when they felt fearful and needed help, Dickinson resorted to her spirituality of nature rather than prescribed rituals of the church. She sings and worships God in her own words while others pray according to the established rules.Her love and concerning of nature, fellow human beings and nonhuman kind result in her egalitarian spirituality of nature, in which God, nature, and human beings are interrelated in a loving harmony in her ideal way, which constitutes the core of her simple ecological perspective on nature. In fact, many scholars have come to note the pervasive music and song elements in Dickinson’s poems and letters, though this is not the main consideration in this article.

3. Dickinson’s Sense of the Place

Sense of place is one often and very much concerned term in eco-criticism. An ecological sense of “place” includes both physical and spiritual/mental, or literary/imaginary places as what have often been described in literary works. An ecological sense of “place” makes it possible for people to depict their own places and feelings or to create an ideal environment in their or expectations, as can be read from time to time in literary works. And a sense of “place” would have “spirit of place” as what was stated by some of the scholars as Gary Snyder, Lawrence Buell, D.H. Lawrence,Wendell Berry and Adrienne Rich.

For Dickinson, in some way, her life and works show her sense of “place.” She was keenly aware of her “place” — her bedroom, a vantage place for her to observe and imagine the outside world, her garden, a limitless well of her inspiration, her homeland Amherst, as “paradise” and “Eden,”and more generally and broadly,New England because “I see New Englandly,”and she wisely knew the significant role of place in human beings’ perception of the world. Her “place” is like what Emerson stated, “Every spirit builds itself a house, and beyond its house a world,and beyond its world a heaven,” Ralph Waldo Emerson, , Ed. Joel Porte (New York: Library of America,1983), 44.which has both physical and spiritual features.

Poetry to her is a house full of “Possibility” where “[she] dwell[s] in,” “A fairer House than Prose —” with “More numerous of Windows — / Superior — for Doors —.” In this “house,” she spreads “wide with [her] narrow Hands / To gather Paradise —” as it is “the fairest” of “Visitors” to occupy.

Thus Dickinson’s “place” covers both physical and spiritual aspects, in the form of the woodland garden and the “Garden in the Brain,”which have been intermingled or overlapped and presented in her life, and her creation. The architecture and contents of Dickinson’s planted garden can be taken as a kind of analogue to those hundreds of poems and poetic letters about many kinds of flowers,plants and insects that compose the landscape of her art. Her real garden serves as an index to Dickinson’s conception of “that garden

unseen,

” Emily Dickinson, (3 Vols), Eds. Thomas H. Johnson, and Theodora Ward (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1958), Vol.1, 680.while the inner plot she called the soul was waiting to be cultivated and improved. These two can’t be taken separately as Dickinson is both a gardener and a poet, or a garden-poet.

In Emily Dickinson’s life time, nature was most enjoyed and celebrated in American history. Dickinson’s sense of “place” can be judged from her connection to her family gardens. Her sense of place of the family garden as a distinct place depends on her loving, on habituated familiarity with its phenomena. For Dickinson, growing flowers and writing poems about flowers are equated. A commonly accepted belief in American women in the nineteenth-century is that gardening could promote knowledge, piety, and good health besides gentility and good manners. Judith Farr with (and) Louise Carter, (Cambridge,Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2004), 18.

As in “There is another sky,” The above lines concluded a letter, written on October 17, 1851, to her brother Austin (Emily Dickinson: ［vol.1］, 149). Dickinson makes no division, and the text does not appear as verse in the letter. The line arrangement and capitalization of first letters in the lines are arbitrarily established by the editor, Thomas H. Johnson (see Emily Dickinson: J, 2). There is no such a poem in Franklin’s version.Dickinson always sees their ancestral home as an Eden and refuge, and in the letter she bids Austin return from afar. But this poemlike part of the letter describes “a brighter garden” of “unfading flowers” to which frost has never come. Such a garden could never exist in reality, except in metaphor or in an imaginative world. “My garden” is the garden of herself: her imagination,her love, each of which, as she says, will outlast time. From this perspective,“garden” in the letter or poem can be understood as both her physical garden and the one in her imagination, the “garden in the brain.”

There are descriptions of her garden in Dickinson’s letters and poems. “I was reared in the garden.” She grievs her father’s sudden death in a letter to her niece,“Father does not live with us now — he lives in a new house. Thought it was built in an hour it is better than this. He hasn’t any garden because he moved after gardens were made, so we take him the best flowers, and if we only knew he knew, perhaps we could stop crying.” Emily Dickinson: (vol.2), 526.Here the garden is both physical and metaphysical, which is of characteristics of Dickinson.

Dickinson’s love of flowers can be seen everywhere in her life and works.Dickinson has very good knowledge about horticulture, gardening and flowers,which can be seen from her detailed description about many kinds of flowers,such as rose, lily, dandelion, violet, both common flowers and wildflowers in “The Dandelion’s pallied Tube.”

As Dickinson calls her poems “Blossoms of the Brain,”her gardens and conservatory, the liveliest miniature of realities, can be taken as a fundamental source of narrative, philosophy, and metaphor in her art. Her external garden is matched by what she calls “the Garden in the Brain.”By combining flowers in her physical gardens with her imagination in “Garden in the Brain,” Dickinson shows her concern about the interrelatedness between nature and art, human beings and nonhuman creature, thus indicating her sense of place as both a gardener and an artist, or just gardener-poet.

There is “The Flower must not blame the Bee —,”in which “bee” is a frequently used image for the male in Dickinson’s poems. Thus sexuality as theme of this kind of poems is frequently represented in the Dickinson classic poems in the“sweet” intercourse between bee and flower by such a personified way, taking bee and flower as human beings.

Just as the world of flowers represents the world of men and women, so certain flowers represents specific qualities or endeavors, functions, or careers in Dickinson’s work. Dickinson’s first gentian poem is “Gentian weaves her fringes”in around 1858, and followed by “Distrustful of the Gentian,”which may have something “to do with the book and bookmaking”; that “the sequence of [Dickinson’s] gentian poems” shows “her relationship to writing and writing practices ... changed over time,” from the desire to publish to her ultimate refusal of the “Auction” of her mind.This persuasive argument is further proved and clarified by Dickinson’s poem “God made a little Gentian”that “images a public vindication of her delayed vocation,”of her poetry itself is credible as Dickinson continuously associates herself with her flowers and their careers with her own.

Dickinson’s garden, her solitary life, was “sown” “in Frosts” while the north was on every side of it.Like the gentian’s, “Frosts were [Dickinson’s] condition.”In 1871, long after she had written hundreds of successful poems, she begged Higginson to give her instruction, “Dear friend, I trust you as you ask — If I exceed permission, excuse the bleak simplicity that knew no tutor but the North. Would you but guide.” Emily Dickinson, (vol.2), 491.This continuous identification of her genius and personification with the North and what she conceived of as northern characteristics or virtues, with the Roman Antony, with Amherst, with those who “see — New Englandly —”, rather than with the alluring but quixotic south. Farr wonders whether this association with the North may have been inspired by the Bible Judith Farr with (and) Louise Carter, (Cambridge,Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2004), 187–88.. The south might represent sensual pleasures to Dickinson, but the bitter north produced the creative spark that made her great among poets. Her art was empowered by various kinds of social and emotional deprivation, and she admits this in striking appeal to seasonal garden imagery that served her as basic trope. To be the rose that blooms in the June of weddings, with all they signified of seasonal happiness and triumph articulated in “Ourselves were wed one summer — dear —,”would have been wrong for her. Though she toyed with the idea of herself as rose — “A Beeze — a’caper in the trees — / And I’m a Rose!”— Emily Dickinson was too realistic to embrace it as a true self-image

Perhaps it is for this reason, that neither the poem nor the letters of Dickinson,this highly aesthetic garden-poet, contain an extended treatment of the rose.Other less gorgeous, less opulent flowers, such as the gentian or tulip or harebell,provoke her curiosity and an admiration that results in ingenious narrative and analysis. She regards the rose as a classic emblem of love and of the fragility of all things beautiful, but it does not move her, she simply praises rose of its traditional character. “Ah Little Rose — how easy / For such as thee to die,”she cries in one of her laments for small creatures such as bees and flowers; “When Roses cease to bloom,” she says, imagining her own and others’ deaths; he “was grateful for the Roses / in life’s diverse bouquet,” she remarks of a “humble Tourist rose” who went to heaven as if he were riding in a balloon.In one of the “Master” letters,rapture causes her prose to slip into a couplet beginning “No Rose, yet felt myself a ‘bloom, / No Bird — yet rode in Ether,” using the classic symbol of a woman who was become beautiful because of love. Emily Dickinson: (vol.2), 375.It is not rose, but daisy, which“wouldn’t disappoint,” as “it were comfort forever,” that really touches Dickinson,arouses her desire to love, to create and to shed her observation to nature. This also shows Dickinson’s sense of place, as she prefers to being “nobody” instead of “somebody”in a patriarchal society, sharing housework, writing poetry and letters, and tending her gardens as a garden-poet.

In one of her letters to Susan Gilbert, Dickinson shows her loneliness and anxiety about the future. “I write from the Land of Violets, and from the Land of Spring, and it would ill become me to carry you nought but sorrows.” Emily Dickinson: (vol.1), 195.At the end of this letter are these lines: “that was Heaven — this is but Earth, yet Earth so like to heaven, ...” which show her meditation about earth and heaven, and both are one in her mind. Here her interrelatedness can be seen clearly, at least, earth and heaven are one, and her intimate relation to earth, nature reveals that earth, human beings and heaven, or God are just like the trinity, one with three aspects but closely interconnected.

Dickinson’s sense of place and her respectful and enjoyable attention to natural places constitutes an important environmental gesture because it recognizes nature as a domain of its own that has value apart from its economic, recreational, or poetic benefits at a time when pressure on American landscapes from civilization became increasingly intense. More specifically, her poetic meditation on flowers, plants and insects in her gardens intersect with the key aspects of her time’s growing green sensibilities, and her vision of connectedness and interdependence.

4. Dickinson’s Interrelatedness in her “Circumference”

The core among various ecological perspectives is the concept of “interrelatedness” or “interconnectedness,” which constitutes the basis of eco-holism. Or in another way, ecology’s most fundamental principle states that everything is connected. The notion of “interrelatedness” or “interconnectedness” is a belief that “everything in creation is related or connected.” and “it is ecology’s most fundamental principle”. It can also be described in terms of a “web of life” as all of nature is joined together like a huge, multi-dimensional net in which any break or tear, regardless of how innocuous or significant it may seem, weakens the entire ecological fabric of life. So everything in the environment is interrelated with each other, which is just like a huge eco-community, or in Dickinson’s word“circumference” According to part, there are 13 items for the meanings of the word “Circumference.” It means literally as “circuit, circular motion, journal in a circular”;“Zone, area, boundary, restriction, cycles of nature”; “the life beyond, the all-encompassing circle of existence”; “influence, sphere of action”; “arcs, diameters, intersections, and repetitions of circle from a finite point”; and “comprehension, understanding, amazement, hidden core, center of being, different way of perceiving,” etc. There are also some figurative meanings of it, as “wandering”; “mortality”;“metaphorical extensions, connections that go beyond words, polysemy, semantic connotations that go beyond the core meaning of a word”; “experience, outlook”; “greater understanding, elevated awareness,” etc. “Circumference” is one of the words in Dickinson’s work that has aroused various interpretations. According to Harold Bloom, “‘Circumference’ is her [Dickinson’s] trope for the Sublime, as consciousness and as a achievement of performance ... for Emerson it was no part of us, or only another challenge to be overcome by the Central, by the Self-Reliant Man.” (Harold Bloom, [New York, NY: Infobase Publishing, 2005], 5) which clearly tells both the difference and similarities between Emerson’s circumference and that of Dickinson’s. And what’s more, Wolosky makes a series of illustrations of this term, and holds the idea that “‘Circumference’ has been largely interpreted as ultimately transcending boundaries into infinity. It can be Dickinson’s strategies of limitation, but ultimately in order to explode beyond them. Or it can be seen as an emblem of the absolute self more infinite than infinity. Yet many of Dickinson’s images of ‘Circumference’ are highly equivocal. Rather than affirming the transcendence of boundaries, they also question that possibility. Circumference marks an edge between boundlessness and boundary, but one that also points into the world of limitation.” (Shira Wolosky, “Truth and Lie in Emily Dickinson and Friedrich Nietzsche,” ,Eds. Jed Deppman, Marianne Noble and Gary Lee Stonum [New York, NY: Cambridge University Press,2013], 148). Porter took Dickinson’s “Circumference” as her historical context when he searched for Dickinson’s themes (Porter, David “Searching for Dickinson’s Themes” Eds. Gudrun Grabher, et al. [Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998], 192). Weisbuch states that “Circumference” is both the mind’s capacities and an admission of its limits as Dickinson associates it with the utmost of mind or at least the attempt to enlarge its bounds. It contains but will not stop for subjects (Weisbuch, “Prisming Dickinson; or,Gathering Paradise by Letting Go” , Eds. Gudrun Grabher, et al. [Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusettes Press, 1998], 198). Curran mentions “Circumference” when the word “project” is eleborated on in one of Dickinson’s poem (“On that specific Pillow,” J, 1533, F, 1554),thinking “Circumference” and “project” mean similar as the latter extends and stretches beyond edges,which draws our attention to the parameters that allow subjects to form (Curran 3–4). Zhang Longxi has argued in relation to Dickinson’s notion of “Circumference” when Dickinson’s “Oriental Circuit” (“This quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies” [Emily Dickinson, J, 813; F 1090]) betrays that Dickinson might have certain knowledge about the Oriental thinking even though the idea of “circularity” does exist in both East and Western culture (Zhang 73–76). Mitchell and Stuart hold the idea that it would be nice to believe that “‘Circumference’ means something more than a sphere of influence measured over time, but something involving geographical and cultural extent and interactions as well” in “The Poets light but lamps — /... Each Age a Lens/Disseminating their/Circumference —” (Emily Dickinson, J, 883; F, 930)(, Eds. Mitchell, Domhnall, and Maria Stuart, [London:Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009], 4–5). In some way, “Circuit” is a word which pertains to “Circumference,”as in Dickinson’s poem “My little Circuit would have shamed/This new Circumference — have blamed —/The homelier time behind” (“I should have been too glad, I see,” quoted from Emily Dickinson, J,313; F ,283). Judith Farr claims that in Dickinson’s writing “‘Circumference’ generally means either poetry itself or the significance of all that exists, on earth and in heaven. She marries it here to awe: the respectful fear or veneration that should be chief dweller in God’s universe” when she explains what the expression “Circumference thou Bride of Awe” (Emily Dickinson, J, 1620; F, 1636) implies (Judith Farr, [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992], 319). For Josef Raab,“Since the center itself cannot be grasped, Dickinson focuses on its circumference, which expresses the eternity surrounding the center as well as the unfulfilled desire of reaching that center. Through circumference Dickinson partakes in a large variety of relationship and connections: ‘Ages coil within/The minute Circumference/Of a single Brain —’” (J, 967; F, 833) (Joseph Raab, [Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1998], 284–286). Circumference is thus internal and as well as external, it is at work inside the imagination (“Brain”) as well as outside it. In a word, “Circumference” can be seen dialectically, which not only reveals the typical Dickinsonian both/and conception, it is also a word with inclusive meanings, referring to the world that reaches infinitely both outside and inside America, both the East and the West. From the perspective of ecology, the central idea of Circumference can be taken as the interrelatedness among all creatures in the environment,although each has its own identity and features..

Dickinson’s work echoes her understanding of nature’s intricate relationships and turns them into poetic language by ways of seeing and relating to nature. For her, “Heaven and He [humankind] are One.”This idea of “interrelatedness”helps to explain Dickinson’s “both/and” attitude toward nature and culture. Her term “circumference” can be considered as another word for interrelatedness and is similar to what ecologists call the “web of life.” Dickinson’s ecological consciousness of interrelatedness in her nature woks concerning circumference can be taken as another aspect of her ecological consciousness.

Dickinson is a poet who often experiments with new possibilities in her poems,and her playing with the term “circumference” is a very good example. Dickinson’s first announcement about her business of circumference appears in one of her letters to Higginson, asking for his instruction as “My Business is Circumference.”One can infer from this that her “business of Circumference” has something to do with her desire to get rid of her ignorance and breakthrough the limitations, similar to the poem “Time feels so vast that were it not,”revealing her realization that God and Eternity would help her to overcome such limitations. The poems show Dickinson’s vision of God and circumference, as the circumference is used as an in-between state between time (her finitude) and eternity. Since this liminal state may preoccupy her to the detriment of eternity, “this circumference” implies limitations or boundaries.The speaker is saying “this Circumference” of human limitations does not occupy our finity because of eternity. But there is her fear that “this Circumference” may have the possibility to separate her from God. In order to prevent this, she wants to keep God side by side with this circumference.

Eberwein notes Dickinson’s interaction with both the center and the circumference: “By narrowing her circle Dickinson positioned herself in constant direct contact with both center and circumference in a spot that would inevitably be pierced over and over by God’s painful but liberating diameters.” Jane D. Eberwein, (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985), 272.It is true that Dickinson is in contact with both center and circumference. What’s more, the center and circumference are also interrelated.

While center and circumference coexist, Dickinson believes, circumference is on the outside with respect to the center as in one of her letters “The Bible dealt with the center, not with the Circumference.” Emily Dickinson: (vol.3), 850.As is generally known to Dickinson readers, she is skeptical about the Bible, so it is reasonable to interpret that this remark may imply such a meaning that Dickinson prefers the circumference to the center and that her business of circumference is different from that of the Bible.Thomas H. Johnson explains Dickinson’s statement as such: “In context, she means that the Bible laid down precepts or it prophesied or was insistent upon particular values ... the term ‘circumference’ meant a projection of her imagination into all relationships of man, nature, and spirit.As opposed to the biblical center,Dickinson’s “business” of circumference impels her to experiment with imagination to find an ecological interconnectedness of God, nature, and humankind.

Dickinson’s “both-and” stance and ambiguous aspect can be seen from her understanding about the center and circumference. On the one hand, she sees the contrast/antithesis between center and circumference, one the other hand, her familiarity with Euclid’s definition of the circle shows that she is also aware of the independence between them.

If one combines these definitions, one can infer a definition about a circle as the region of points on a single plane with equal distance from a center. In this way, the concepts of center and circumference are logically and closely linked: since each of them needs the other to be a circle, they are very effective symbols of interrelatedness. When Dickinson compares the Bible’s business of center to her “business” of circumference, she indicates that we need both center and circumference. As she notes that circumference is overshadowed by center,Dickinson wants to restore a balance between the two by making neglected circumference her business.

What’s more, Dickinson improves Euclid’s circle by envisioning a radiating circumference and suggests that we intersect other beings by expanding our circumferences. Just as she is against the fixed dogmas of the Church, Dickinson revises the fixed definition of Euclid’s circle. In contrast to the two-dimensional and fixed circle, Dickinson imagines a circle and sometimes a three-dimensional sphere with an encompassing circumference. Dickinson thinks that God as “the center of centers” “Center,” the entry in , Eds. Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, trans. John Buchanan-Brown (New York: Penguin, 1996), 173, defines as “the center of centers can be none other than God.”is related to all His creation by the inclusion of the centers of all beings within His limitless circumference. All of His creatures, then, are interrelated by interacting circumferences.

Robert Gillespie mentions that “unlike the circumference of circle or sphere[her conception of circumference] is a limitless expansion away, a radiation in all directions, with her at the center.” Robert Gillespie, “A Circumference of Emily Dickinson,” 46.2(1973): 255.This statement is similar to Emerson’s “over soul”as sign of his anthropocentrism in

Nature

, but Dickinson’s circumference is somewhat different. On the one hand, she wants to expand her circumference to embrace other beings, believing that every being has its own circumference and center. On the other hand, this center allows it to have its own identity, whereas its circumference enables it to connect to others. So it can be concluded that Dickinson’s circumference is more inclusive, which can be referred to both center and the probability to link with the outside. This is also true to Dickinson’s life,her bedroom is her center where she keeps reading and writing, seemingly isolated from the outside world, but virtually keeps in close connection with it by her frequent correspondence with friends, relatives, and her constant reading of a lot of magazines and newspapers. This reclusion provides her both her center and her unique way of interrelatedness beyond the center, her circumference, which includes her center and the potentiality to go beyond it so as to carry out her business, her circumference.

In the 4-line short poem “Circumference thou Bride of Awe / Possessing thou shalt be/Possessed by every hallowed knight/That dares to cover thee,”Dickinson portrays the God-humankind relationship as interconnected by intersecting circumference. As Circumference is the bride of God, human beings are to possess God by possessing circumference, and circumference, in turn, possesses human beings. The marriage metaphor used in this poem signals and emphasizes the intimate interconnectedness of God (center) and circumference, and circumference and human beings. By the mediation of the circumference and, by implication,Dickinson’s business of circumference, the alienation between God and humankind will be overcome. This victory is often represented as a return of the bridegroom Christ to the promised garden. This poem also sheds light on our understanding of Dickinson’s sense of the relationship among God, humankind, and circumference.As Elizabeth Lawson suggests, one can interpret “Awe” as a personified reference to the God at the center, to which any circumferential life is “wed” in the sense that it is wholly fixed in its relation to that center. Jane D. Eberwein, (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985), 34–35.So in this poem, circumference is the bride of God the Center. The idea of possessing and being possessed conveys the depth of interrelatedness of center, circumference and “every hallowed Knight,” and,by extension, humankind.

For Dickinson, gardens are not only luminal God, nature, and human beings intersect and interact one another. Her gardens are the middle landscape between nature and art, wilderness and civilization. Since her gardens are both physical and imaginary, they demonstrate Dickinson’s concept of circumference as an inbetween state, both physical and spiritual. In “and Place was where the Presence was / Circumference between,”circumference more likely means physical space. Through closely watching the birth, death, and rebirth of the members of her garden community, the blossom and withering of flowers, Dickinson is allowed to experience the invisible world of God. When she meets the flowers, bees, little birds in her gardens, Dickinson’s circumference intersects with theirs in the physical world. Her gardens are also her secure footing from which to aspire to the invisible heavenly garden. Her physical gardens and her spiritual gardens intersect with each other in her works and her imagination. The poet’s “business of Circumference” is to embrace and encompass the earth and heaven through her poetry, based on her actual garden. In this sense, her garden is not only a middle landscape but also a circumference that overlaps earth and heaven and encompasses God, nature, and humankind.

Like her gardens, her poetry is for Dickinson a scene of circumference.Following her logic of “circumference,” her words have their centers and circumferences. If we understand her idiosyncratic dashes as flattened arcs separated by words and dashes, our circumferences intersect those of the words when we read her poems. When the words are bees and other natural beings, for example,one encounters them by overlapping our circumferences with theirs. That’s why Judith Farr also identifies Dickinson’s business of circumference as writing poetry:“Circumference was her Emersonian term for poetry, the sum of meaning. Her real business, she claimed, was writing poetry.” Judith Farr, ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice Hall, 1996), 10.While Emerson focuses on progressionism by his image of expanding concentric circles, as what is shown in his essay “Circles,” Ralph Waldo Emerson, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday &Company, Inc. 1968), 212–222.it seems that Dickinson is more interested in the state of interrelatedness than expansion itself. For her, circumference expands outward because of love for other beings. Besides taking circumference as her business, she considers to love and to sing as her business as well just as what she writes in one of her letters: “My business is to love, my business is to sing.” Emily Dickinson: (vol.1), 413.Dickinson put love and poetry at the same level in the “To pile like Thunder to its close.”

There are such lines in her letter, “I hope that nothing makes you afraid.Give my Heart to each, and my slim Circumference to her who often shared it —.” Dickinson, Emily: (vol.3), 690.Here circumference may mean love and care which can comfort people and encourage them go through difficulties and fear. With love, there are no boundaries.

“Circumference,” which literarily refers to the realm opposite to the center,has acquired multiple meanings in Dickinson’s works. Although some observes her meanings of the term are not always consistent, this article would argue that the most significant of her use of this word shows her ecological concept of“interrelatedness.” While the center gives individual entities their distinctiveness,the circumference allows them to intersect and thus to relate directly or indirectly with one another. On the whole, in her poems including the “circumference,” Dickinson’s experiment in finding the nature of circumference can be seen. She uses the term in many ways, which indicates her persistent effort in finding a proper way to express her ideas and her concern about the relationship between man and nature. As with many of her words and expressions that have an open and undetermined meaning, the exact meanings of the term remain a puzzle waiting for the readers to collect and complete. Although there is no theory regarding Dickinson’s meaning of circumference, one can collect her experiments with the word in her poems and letters.

5. Conclusion

As a transitional figure in American literary history, Emily Dickinson inherits the traditional American Puritanism and has been definitely influenced by pastoralism in its romantic version. Dickinson’s ecological consciousness is based on her pastoralism, taking her garden as her “miniature landscape” and human and nonhuman creatures as one in the whole eco-system. Although throughout her life, Dickinson sometimes reveals her opinion about the separation, isolation, or estrangement between man and nature, more importantly and in more cases she shows her thoughts about the integral environment, which indicates an ecological consciousness in her relationship with nature, taking human beings and nature equal members and their interrelationship in the whole eco-community. This coexistence and seemingly contradictory ideas in Dickinson reveal her limitations and, in some way, exemplifies one of her obvious characteristics — her choice of embracing both sides of things which lie her ambiguity and indeterminacy, as she holds such a stance to faith, taking it as “the spiritual seesaw.” Casey Russell Hayes, “The Spiritual Seesaw: Emily Dickinson and the Paradox of Belief,” (2005), 1.This “both/and” stance, rather than an“either/or” position, from another aspect, indicates the possibility of Dickinson’s consideration of taking all the creatures in nature as indispensible elements and her inclusive attitude towards faith and doubts as well as nature and culture. This is also an example that reveals the mixed, or multiple influences of classical, Puritan,Transcendental and late-romantic conventions and doctrines on Dickinson.

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