Last summer I posted info about a long out of print and uniquely intimate portrait of Emily Dickinson written by her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, “Emily Dickinson Face to Face.” Originally published in 1932, McNally issued a reprint this past year.
In her memoir, Bianchi recalled what it was like when she became aware of her aunt’s reclusiveness. She said, “I cannot tell when I first became aware that she had elected her own way of life. To us she had always been as fixed in her orbit as any other star. We had been born into her life. It never seemed to us that it should have been any other than it was.”
Earlier this month I read MacGregor Jenkins’ biography of the poet, “Emily Dickinson, Friend and Neighbor.” Jenkins had been a friend of Martha “Maddie” Dickinson growing up, and in his youth, they and their friends enjoyed playing and being in the orbit of “Miss Emily.”
Check out the passage below from Jenkins’ book that begins, “She withdrew from the world because I was the only thing a person, constituted as she was, could have done.”
In her memoir, Bianchi recalled what it was like when she became aware of her aunt’s reclusiveness. She said, “I cannot tell when I first became aware that she had elected her own way of life. To us she had always been as fixed in her orbit as any other star. We had been born into her life. It never seemed to us that it should have been any other than it was.”
Earlier this month I read MacGregor Jenkins’ biography of the poet, “Emily Dickinson, Friend and Neighbor.” Jenkins had been a friend of Martha “Maddie” Dickinson growing up, and in his youth, they and their friends enjoyed playing and being in the orbit of “Miss Emily.”
Check out the passage below from Jenkins’ book that begins, “She withdrew from the world because I was the only thing a person, constituted as she was, could have done.”
All of this called to mind Dickinson’s poem “There is a solitude of space” where she speaks of “That polar privacy” she favored.
More on this poem tomorrow.
RSS Feed
