Religious Sensibility in Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson has always been an enigma not only for her readers but also for her critics. As a great poet and remarkably sensitive artist she was fascinatingly concern with the existential and metaphysical issues of life. One of the most recurring themes in Emily Dickinson’s poetry is the religious theme treated by her in an unusual way. Religion appealed to her as one of the deepest and most serious aspect of human life. Indeed it might be argued that the larger part of her poetry was distinctly religious. The religious terms such as God, Eternity, Immortality, Heaven, Infinity and the absolute are at times used by her almost interchangeably. Her quest for God was identical with her battle for personal integrity. Her vision of the Divine had to be her own. Dickinson’s major poetic method in dealing with religious subjects reflects the tension in her mind between belief and disbelief. There is a strange paradox in her life. She did not accept “the faith of the fathers” but at the same time she repudiated the religious doctrines of time but curiously enough. She cherished a religion of her own. In hundreds of beautiful expressions and poetical images, she dramatizes the presence of God and inevitable process of decay and death. There is a striking contrast between impermanence and permanence the impermanence of material world and permanence of God and his planning. She looks at God from several angles. She looks upon God as a kinsman. She calls “Jupiter my father” and “papa above”. In several of her verses, we find an essentially religious view of death. Death puts an end to this life but inducts man to another life, eternal and everlasting. To her, Death was the great gift of God to man, and she never failed to thank God for this boon. The immortality of human soul is actualized only through the process of death. Of all religious beliefs immortality is instinctively most attractive to her. Eternity lies behind her, immortality before, as sunset and sunrise, or the west and the east. About Paradise existence she says, as I have quoted in the second chapter. “Of Paradise’ existence: All we know Is the uncertain certainty But its vicinity infer By it’s Bisecting Messenger”. The study has been made systematically divided into an introduction that largely deals with the poet’s life. Her vision, of Heaven Hell and God, Her vview on Christ, Church and Religious Institutions. Her intimations of immortality, and her perceptions of the phenomenon of Death. The conclusion summarizes the results and her art and technique.