Separation has a specific aspect in Emily Dickinson’s life and poetry. Dickinson had lived a distinctive life; she pursues separated life as only dwelling in her house. But she, while dwelling in her house, is not just cutting off from the world, but rather coming into the world of her own. She often writes rhymes ungrammatically, awkwardly and faultily in her poems, which makes us hardly comprehend her intention in them. We may have a better view of her life and poetry when we turn to Emmanuel Levinas’s concept of separation and dwelling. According to Levinas, separation is accomplished through the dwelling and the separated self enjoys absolute independence. For Dickinson, the happiness of enjoyment affirms the ‘I’ at home with itself. In her poems she often shows us how willingly she returns to her inner experience of withdrawal, habitation, and enjoyment. For her dwelling is the condition on which she can dwell and enjoy life itself and belong to the true ‘I’. Dwelling is a recollection, a coming to oneself. She also gives us a vivid illustration of how separation in the strictest sense is solitude, how enjoyment is isolation itself, and how only in enjoyment the true ‘I’ can be crystallized. Enjoyment is a withdrawal into and dwelling in herself. It is in living rather than in contemplating that Dickinson finds the ecstasy. For her, the mere sense of loving is joy enough; the love of life does not love being, but loves the happiness of being.
인용문헌