Status Updates From Letters of Emily Dickinson

Reading ED is like being confronted with Ingenuity itself… I make myself slow to fully appreciate her ability to render incomplete all the incompleteness subjectivity Bestows. I can’t decide if I’m obsessed or merely attuned to ED’s particulars.

“Cousin Pliny says he ‘might stay around a month, visiting old acquaintances – if it were’nt for his business.’
Fortunate for us indeed, that his business feels the need of him, or I think he would never go. He is kind of a compound of [names of three men], so you will easily guess how much we enjoy his society.“

“. . . I think of the grave very often, and how much it has got of mine, and whether I can ever stop it from carrying off what I love; that makes me sometimes speak of it, when I dont intend.”

“Bye and bye, we’ll be all gone, Jennie, does it seem as if we would? The other day I tried to think how I should look with my eyes shut, and a little white gown on, and a snow-drop on my breast; and I fancied I heard the neighbors stealing in so softly, to look down in my face – so fast asleep – so still – Oh Jennie, will you and I really become like this?”

“Who loves you most, and loves you best, and thinks of you when others rest? T’is Emilie —“

“. . . in thinking of those I love, my reason is all gone from me, and I do fear sometimes that I must make a hospital for the hopelessly insane, and chain me up there such times, so I won’t injure you.”

“Vinnie thinks me quite savage, and frequently suggests the propriety of having me transported to some barbarous country, where I may meet with those of a similar nature, and allow her to spend her days – that is, such small remainder as my inhumanity spares – in comparative ease and quietness! She thinks ancient martyrs is very trifling indeed and would welcome the stake and preference to the sunrise . . .”

“I can think of nothing funnier than for intelligent beings to bid the world good night, and go out with their candles, and there’s nothing that I enjoy more than rousing these selfsame beings and witnessing their discomfiture at the bare idea of morning, when they’re so sleepy yet!”