A Quiet Passion - How Dickinson Fights and Retreats

A Quiet Passion - How Dickinson Fights and Retreats
Laijon Liu 20170716

A Quiet Passion is a great film. of course Emily Dickinson is my hero (not Heroine) she must be pleased to be equal, that shows how a talented poet(not poetess) deal with her life and society in 19th century. If she were a man, she would accomplish so much more, but what's for a woman is the marriage grave that time. They are educated, for a purpose to serve their future husbands, and brainwashed by men's religious system that only a few unknowingly unwashed :), so she finds herself another grave, that second floor bedroom she picks, it's quiet small world, or her own castle, but in her space she shares bed alone, or writes or muses at her own hours choosing, morning three 'o clock that quiet dark waiting hours to dawn, would she imagine what's in store for her another 50 years if she could live long? she imagined the heaven, the sea, and questioned the Hope, the time eternal to the field of gazing grains of the sunset, that Death comes with his scythe for the autumn reap .... but would she cheer or despise the young girl's hands that lit the candle at both ends? Let that non-existent fire warm her cold body.

In Winter in my Room
I came upon a Worm --
Pink, lank and warm --
But as he was a worm
And worms presume
Not quite with him at home --
Secured him by a string
To something neighboring
And went along.

A Trifle afterward
A thing occurred
I'd not believe it if I heard
But state with creeping blood --
A snake with mottles rare
Surveyed my chamber floor
In feature as the worm before
But ringed with power --

The very string with which
I tied him -- too
When he was mean and new
That string was there --

I shrank -- "How fair you are"!
Propitiation's claw --
"Afraid," he hissed
"Of me"?
"No cordiality" --
He fathomed me --
Then to a Rhythm Slim
Secreted in his Form
As Patterns swim
Projected him.

That time I flew
Both eyes his way
Lest he pursue
Nor ever ceased to run
Till in a distant Town
Towns on from mine
I set me down
This was a dream. 

Her poems are difficult. but her voice always troubles readers, playful natural nursery rhyme like beats, moderate, self-controlled, polite, ladylike-protesting, a world of images, yet she could never receive that crumb of Hope.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

And her same period, many people love Walt Whitman, but he is a man, he could go many places and do many thing fit, so they are great poets, but their environment put them in very different world, Walt sings of myself, of us, of America that he experiences as a white man that time; poor Emily's song shows another scope like hearing a funeral dirge daily and tick tuck hourly:

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -

Many American compare the two greats, I like both, but I love Emily more. and this film captures her feeling a lot, and her thoughts too. She is a Great Poet, her thoughts are her true melody.