Without the Power to Die: Dickinson's Longevity

Abstract

Abstract:This essay recovers Emily Dickinson's lifelong fascination with longevity, defined as a state somewhere between mortality and immortality. In works like "Because I could not stop for Death" and "My life had stood—a Loaded Gun," Dickinson experiments with durations of existence that fall somewhere between the ambit of her own generation and the outer reaches of eternity, a realm that neither science nor religion had equipped her to explore. By measuring the life that Dickinson's poems envision for themselves and their creator, we may learn to discuss with greater nuance the ways that art lives and dies.