Emily Dickinson, to Tear the Veil
Vera Patia
Though I than He – may longer live
He longer must – than I –
For I have but the power to kill,
Without – the power to die –
E. D.
What is the gaze for feminine jouissance? To the extent that “the gaze as the lining of the specular image, which either makes it hold together or, on the contrary, depersonalises it, marks it, even tears it apart,”[1] according to Daniel Roy’s presentation of the theme, a woman (so-called) may gain the experience of another jouissance beyond phallic jouissance, of which she may not speak, or may not be able to explain anything. It is an experience not determined by signifiers. It is located beyond symbolic interpretation – a condition that connotes the real aspect of the speaking being.
Emily Dickinson is a famed poet, among the greatest in American literature, and as is quite often the case with artists, she was not given much credit during her life, but only after her death. Her oeuvre includes more than 1700 poems, and the Dame from Amherst, due to her personal life also, is typically characterized as a mysterious and unique personality.
Her poems convey a haunting private life, one marked by extremes of deprivation and refined ecstasies. At the same time, her rich abundance — her great range of feeling, her supple expressiveness — testifies to an intrinsic poetic genius. […] She freely ignored the usual rules of versification and even of grammar, and in the intellectual content of her work she likewise proved exceptionally bold and original. Her verse is distinguished by its epigrammatic compression, haunting personal voice, enigmatic brilliance, and lack of high polish.[2]
Subjects such as nature, death, god, love, immortality and self-identity were at the centre of her interests. Emily Dickinson lived most of her life secluded in her room, typically avoiding the gaze altogether, although she continued a correspondence with some friends. Her seclusion, her choice to hide from the gaze, was another way to avoid being seen, in a way that the speaking body could not tolerate; a speaking body whose veil is torn, faced with a jouissance outside the symbolic, having no dignity or self. Her art accompanied her experience of what it is to have a body in a world without access to the masquerade.
Can art operate such that it treats an other jouissance in terms of the real via a symbolic reworking? Emily Dickinson obtained immortality, giving meaning to an unlimited jouissance, to a bodily experience that marked her personal life. It is for this reason that her masterpieces reflect her talent, creativity, and her relation to the symbolic world. Could it be that poetry is the locus that testifies to a symbolic existence for her? Or that it was another way to turn ugliness into beauty?
References
[1] Roy, D., NLS 2024 Congress, “Clinic of the Gaze,” Presentation of the Theme: https://www.amp-nls.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ARGUMENT-ENG.-CONGRES-NLS-2024.pdf