ON BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH

Abstract: Death and eternity¹ are the major themes in most of Emily Dickinson’s  poems.“ Because I could not stop for death ”is one of her classic poems.  Through the analysis, this essay clarifies infinite conceptions by the 
dialectical relationship between reality and imagination, the known and 
the unknown. And it tells what’s eternity in Dickson’s eyes. 

Keywords: death, eternity, finite, infinite 

Introduction  
    Emily Dickinson（1830-1886）, the American best-known female poet ，was 
one of the foremost authors in American literature. Emily Dickinson ’s 
poems, as well as Walt Whitman’s, were considered as a part of "American 
renaissance"; they were regarded as pioneers of imagism. Both of them rejected 
custom and received wisdom and experimented with poetic² style. She however 
differs from Whitman in a variety of ways. For one thing, Whitman seems 
to keep his eye on society at large; Dickinson explores the inner life 
of the individual. Whereas Whitman is "national" in his outlook, Dickinson 
is "regional" 

    Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10,1830. 
She lived almost her entire life in the same town (much of it in the same 
house), traveled infrequently, never married, and in her last years never 
left the grounds of her family. So she was called "vestal of Amherst". 
And yet despite this narrow -- some might say -- pathologically constricted-outward 
experience, she was an extremely intelligent, highly sensitive, and deeply 
passionate³ person who throughout her adult life wrote poems (add up to 
around 2000 ) that were startlingly original in both content and technique, 
poems that would profoundly influence several generations of American poets 
and that would win her a secure position as one of the greatest poets that 
America has ever produced. 

   Dickinson’s simply constructed yet intensely felt, acutely intellectual 
writings take as their subject issues vital to humanity: the agonies and 
ecstasies⁴ of love, sexuality, the unfathomable nature of death, the horrors 
of war, God and religious belief, the importance of humor, and musings 
on the significance of literature, music, and art. 

    Emily Dickinson enjoys the King James Version of the Bible, as well 
as authors such as English WRTERS William Shakespeare, John Milton, Charles 
Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, and Thomas Carlyle. 
Dickinson’s early style shows the strong influence of William Shakespeare, 
Barrett Browning, Scottish poet Robert Browning, and English poets John 
Keats and George Herbert. And Dickinson read Emerson appreciatively, who 
became a pervasive⁵ and, in a sense, formative influence over her. As George 
F. Whicher notes, "Her sole function was to test the Transcendentalist 
ethic⁶ in its application to the inner life". 

1“death” in Emily Dickinson’s poets 

    For as long as history has been recorded and probably for much longer, 
man has always been different idea of his own death. Even those of us who 
have accepted death graciously, have at least in some way, --- feared, 
dreaded⁷, or attempted to delay its arrival. We have personified death-- 
as an evildoer dressed in all black, its presence swoops⁸ down upon us and 
chokes the life from us as though it were some street murder with malicious 
intent. But in reality, we know that death is not the chaotic⁹ grim reaper 
of fairy tales and mythology¹⁰. Rather than being a cruel and unfair prankster 
of evil, death is an unavoidable and natural part of life itself. 

    Death and immorality¹¹ is the major theme in the largest portion of Emily 
Dickinson’s poetry. Her preoccupation with these subjects amounted to an 
obsession¹² so that about one third of her poems dwell on them. Dickinson’s 
many friends died before her, and the fact that death seemed to occur often 
in the Amherst of the time added to her gloomy meditation¹³. Dickinson’s 
is not sheer depiction¹⁴ of death, but an emphatic¹⁵ one of relations between 
life and death, death and love, death and eternity. Death is a must-be-crossed 
bridge. She did not fear it, because the arrival in another world is only 
through the grave and the forgiveness from God is the only way to eternity.