“The woman in the white dress”: for many, this is the definition with whom the enigmatic person of Emily Dickinson went down in history.
A poet and especially a lone genius, Emily Dickinson saw only ten of her poems published during her lifetime, besides anonymously and probably without her consent. Most of Dickinson poems were, in fact, discovered by her sister Lavinia following her death. Dickinson used to divide her poems into what were later called “fascicles”, which she carefully bound by herself with twine.
Dickinson’s decisions in the literary field can also echo the main contrast that characterized her life: to the solitude sought to write and find time for introspection, was linked the vast social network composed of family members, friends, intellectuals of her time, that surrounded Dickinson since her earliest childhood.
As consequence, although Dickinson led a rather solitary life, she wrote many letters, more than a thousand. It’s thanks to these epistolary exchanges that today we know and understand better the work of the poet, especially because through the letters seh shared with her closest friends and family members many of her poems. From Dickinson’s letters and poems emerges an unexpected mingle of wit, sardonic intelligence and sentiment. Irreverence and sentiment can be considered the key words of Dickinson’s poetic art. An often stinging and subtle humor stays with a nuance of different feelings, which can be discovered by analyzing the figures of speech used by the author, in particular anaphores, metaphors and caesuras. This division between humor and sentiment can be traced, in part, to the sociocultural context in which Dickinson was born and lived.
“I’m Nobody! Who are you?” is short poem, however a deep and dense meaning lies behind the careful choice of words and the way they interact with each other. The fact that technically speaking, concerning the style and form, it’s probably a iambic tetramic or iambic trimeter, become less important : nothing specific and no certain definition, because nothing too defined can enter in Dickinson’s style. It’s precisely for this reason that her work has marked a turning point in the poetic lyricism.
Dickinson’s poem is a praise to the anonymity, which she contrasts with low-quality fame, the one shown to a larger public and which corresponds to “ tell your name the livelong day/to an admiring bog!” (lines 7-8). A divulged anonymity, in fact, corresponds to the very loss of sense of anonymity; Dickinson refers to this possible loss through the verb “advertise”, which in this case means “spread the voice”.
Dickinson addresses through this poem to the community of Nobodies in the world. The people of this community don’t make noise like all the other Somebodies, which instead always crave for attention and admiration. The term “dreary” in line 5 doesn’t refer to the Nobodies, who are generally calm and introverted, but emphasizes the inability of the Somebodies to cultivate their inner qualities and to find personal value that doesn’t depend on general approval. Dickinson wants to communicate that it’s okay to be reserved, humble and solitary; being “someone” would leave no room for any kind of privacy. It’s therefore a poem that a the same time questions the need for attention and admiration and praise, and also “normalizes”, the concepts of anonymity and isolation.
This poem is an ode to individual reflection, to the calm that brings balance in our thoughts. The poem opens on an oxymoron : those who speak say they are Nobody. The choice to capitalise the N emphasizes the oxymoron and subverts even more the social norm, because those who speak, want to imply that Nobody is their name. In this sense, the identity of the first voice corresponds to the absence of a name or, more generally, to the absence of identity socially speaking. Immediately after the oxymoron, on the first line, an exclamation point can be found, representing a caesura.
The beginning of the poem is a parody, typical of Dickinson’s writing: in order to seek the attention they need, the Somebodies stage performances, scenes such as the one at the beginning, where there is an introduction and an obstentation of themself. But, in this case, the parody lies in the fact that the above performance is used to declare to be Nobody, to praise anonymity. In the English language, the word Nobody denots an absence, but here it annonces the presence of someone.
On the second line, two caesuras occur (caesuras are really common in Dickinson’s poems), showing hesition in the question made and also emphasizing the wonder of the main character Nobody in finding another Nobody, in a world where everyone wants to be Somebody. The word “too” in line 2 shows precisely the hesitation and the wonder and it’s a crucial word because it corresponds to the central paradox of this poem: a community of people seeking anonymity. Dickinson didn’t achieve fame during herlife time, as many other artists who later went down in history; but she wanted to prove that even people who don’t achieve fame can lead happy lives as well and, above all, can make a contribution to the world. In this regard, the anaphores recurring in lines 5,6 and 7,8 help create the sense of boredom and fatigue that comes from being someone.
It’s difficult, or at least not obvious, that the Nobody Dickinson talks about in this poem meet, however they manage to tacitly form a strong community. What the non-identity, protagonist of the the poem, wants to communicate is that it’s more than acceptable to be Nobody: the poem wants to celebrate this hidden community.
We have therefore seen how this poem embrace and highlights the main characteristics of Dickinson’s pen: it’s a short poem, sardonic and has humor. We might even find a reference to the modern world, dominated by social media, fame and money. In addition to being one of Dickinson’s most famous poem, it also has a powerful complaint against a lifestyle that turns out to be superficial and inconclusive.