Emily Dickinson: Theme of Religion

of the most influential American poets, Emily Dickinson, is also considered to be a religious poet. She is an heiress of the New England Puritan Spirit and her verse is deeply imbued with it. hat is more, her poetic sub!ect matter deals with classic religious themes" such as death, redemption, immortality. #er vocabulary also bears the stamp of her Puritan heritage$ she often paraphrases the %ible, uses the terms of the established theology" salvation, redemption, sacrament, lord, heaven, paradise, soul, despair, bliss. hat also influenced her perspective of religion and &od was one man. 't was (everend )harles adsworth whom she met in Philadelphia in*+,, who changed her views of religion. She met him when he was forty years old, happily married and totally involved in pastorate. Dickinson was twenty three years old and wrote about loneliness. She started to write to him constantly and begged him to come again to Amherst. hen he moved to San -rancisco, she felt completely abandoned and deserted. 'n that period she turned to her poetry seriously and wrote her best works. %oth poems and letters show her in emotional battle, trying to persuade her mind to rule over her heart, and she could no longer look to religion for comfort in her distress. She had not !oined the church. in fact she had stopped attending church services, e/cept very occasionally. hat is also significant to say is that Dickinson referred to her father, &od and her lovers 0especially adsworth1 as her 23asters4. 5he fact that she saw them as her 3asters could be understood in a sense that she found them bigger than her in various ways, with enormous strength, power. At the same time she admired and feared them which made her feel really and deeply connected to them. 6n the other hand, due to the fact that she felt crucified between the things she was e/pected to fulfill and things she wanted and believed in, the only person she could identify herself with was the 7esus himself. 5he reason for that can be found in the fact that there is no one in the entire history who is a greater sufferer than him and no one who felt more abandoned from the entire human nature. Emily Dickinson was always interested in the relationship between 3an and &od. She felt obliged to define as precisely as she could her own relationship with &od purely for her own sanity. 2She did not claim to fully understand #im, or even to have perennial faith in all #is ways, her poetry bears a continuing strain of doubt but she certainly did not fear #im. 'n the poem titled 2-aith is a fine invention4 mirrors the period when she was a student at Amherst Academy and there influenced by Edward #itchcock. 'n this poem the creator 2ridicules faith, both by putting it in 8uotation marks, and by defining it as 9invention9, which is 8uite a cruel mockery of faith especially in her days but at the same time it gives us a picture how open minded she was and that she herself despite all the evidence against her being an atheist, she had faith and she did believe in &od but what she despised was the religious conventions which were forced upon all. *

Emily Dickinson wanted to see with her own eyes, faith, &od, religion the people everything, and maybe that was one of her biggest problem which made her time spent on earth sometimes unbearable. 5he sheer fact that she wanted to interpret life on her own way made her irritatingly conspicuous. 'n her work titled 2Some keep the Sabbath going to )hurch4 she declares her independence from church"centered religious worship. 5he poem is built on a series of comical substitutions of nature:s delights for the essence of church ritual. 't can be clearly interpreted that she is not denying &od or religion or for that matter the importance of rituals like going to services or keeping the Sabbath that is why she created her own, lucid ceremony where she is convinced that she hears &od:s word more clearly than in church. Emily also compares, if not directly, her own home to the church building which gives us an assumption that her home is like a church so she is in no need to go to an actual church. #er home is a church not in the narrow sense that it looks like one but it is a place where she feels safe, safer actually than in a church. 6ne can also refer to this poem as a poem of nature, since she praises all the elements of nature over the conventional church customs and beside this she also e/changes the church surroundings with those of the nature giving more recognition to the latter. 6n the other in 26f &od we ask one favor, that we may be forgiven4 she asks forgiveness from #im. Emily Dickinson did not appreciate all the conventions and religious rules as ' have previously noted. She did not believe in the )alvinist doctrine of innate sin, in a vindictive &od. 5he sheer notion that a human being is born with a sin and cannot get rid of it through one9s life was absolutely repugnant to her. She asks herself what did she do wrong and gives an immediate answer which is that maybe &od knows. People don9t know what they did wrong to be punished that is why the poet with this poem, demands an e/planation and an immediate forgiveness, since one cannot correct his or her mistakes without knowing what they are or for that matter what they were. 't is obvious that the poetry of Emily Dickinson should be approached with a great deal of broadmindedness if such a thing e/ists at all. 'n the time of this great poet, acceptance of her art was very rare and brought a great deal of confusion among readers. hat ' appreciate in her works is that she dealt with love, religion, acceptance, lust, passion which are all very comple/ issues concerning life, but she managed to introduce these elements in a very simple but elaborate manner. 'n her most famous poem on 2how to write,4 Dickinson advised$ 5ell all the truths but tell it slant, Success in )ircuit lies. and this should be followed by the contemporary artist as well.