Volcanic Activity

I’ve been writing about Dickinson’s poem “I have never seen ‘Volcanoes,’” a poem about the “smouldering anguish” under the surface one’s expression while the “Features keep their place.”

Was this poem somehow autobiographical, and if so, what was going on in Dickinson’s life at the time the poem was written?

Yesterday, I mentioned that this was the time period in which Dicknson wrote her three “Master” letters, communications addressed to some unknown person referred to only as “Master.”  In one of the letters, she compared herself to a wounded bird – and she also wrote about volcanoes: 

“Vesuvious dont talk - Etna - dont - [Thy] one of them - said a syllable - a thousand years ago, and Pompeii heard it, and hid forever - She could'nt look the world in the face, afterward - I suppose - Bashfull Pompeii! ‘Tell you of the want’ - you know what a leech is, dont you - and [remember that] Daisy's arm is small - 

and you have felt the horizon  hav'nt you - and did the sea - never come so close as to make you dance?”

Also, the volcano poem was written at the very time when Dickinson was beginning to withdraw from social life.  @DavidKMresists (on Counter Social) noted that “for many people, and I know some of them very well, interacting with others face to face is stressful and exhausting. This might have been a factor.”  Very much so.  (I’m very much an introvert and often prefer solitude.)

Other Dickinson scholars have also pointed to new evidence reported since the late 1990s of the poet’s feelings for (and the “smouldering anguish” associated with) the love of her sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson.  

 “Letters from Emily to Susan and drafts of letters from Austin indicate that Susan is the object of passionate attachment for both brother and sister.” (Hart and Smith 1998).

If interested in reading more about this, check out “Open Me Carefully” by Martha Nell Smith and Ellen Louise Hart.  I found Chapter One online, HERE.

Any one of these things – the passion within the “Master” letter, the poet’s tendency toward reclusiveness, ahd/or the “smouldering anguish” associated with her feelings toward her sister-in-law – or some combination of all three – could have brought on such internal volcanic activity.