I
felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
Emily Dickenson (1830-1886)
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American poet
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Lived in isolation, developed
a penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to meet anyone
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Dickenson was a prolific
poet, only 10/1800 poems were published during her lifetime
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The poems published were
edited to fit conventional poetic rules.
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Many of her poems deal with
themes of death and immortality
Structure and syntax
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The extensive use of dashes
and unconventional capitalization in Dickenson’s manuscripts and the
idiosyncratic vocabulary and imagery.
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Dickenson avoids pentameter,
opting more generally for trimeter and tetrameter
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Twentieth century scholars
are deeply interested by Dickenson’s highly individual use of punctuation and
lineation
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Dickenson’s poetry frequently
uses humour, puns, irony and satire.
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Some of the poems are
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Flowers and gardens
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The master poems
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Gospel poems
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The Undiscovered continent
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Like Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman, she experimented with expression
in order to free it from conventional restraints
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Like Charlotte Bronte and
Elizabeth Browning, she crafted new type of persona for the first person
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Dickenson created her writing
in elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized.
Poem
I measure
every grief I meet
The Savior
must have been a docile Gentleman
A Man may
make a remark
I tie my
Hat- I crease my shawl
Safe in
their Alabaster Chambers
One sister
have I in our house
Knows how to
forget
Besides the
Autumn poets sing
I am Nobody!
Who are you
I taste a
liquor never brewed
The soul
selects her society
I heard a
fly buzz
Because I
could not stop for death
Hope is the
thing with feathers
Come slowly-
Eden
XLV
Two
butterflies went out at noon
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 -
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I Felt a Funeral in my Brain (1896)
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The exact year of composition
of the poem is not known.
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It explores the working of
the human mind under stress and attempts to replicate the stages of mental
breakdown through the ovrall metaphor of a funeral.
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The common rituals of a
funeral are used by Dickenson to mark the stages of speaker’s mental collapse until
she faces a destruction that no words can articulate
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As the metaphorical funeral
begins and progresses, the speaker’s mind grows numb until her final remark
stops in mid- sentence.
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The poem is a staple in
Dickenson’s canon and reflects her ability to replicate human consciousness in
a controlled poetic form
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The poem uses concrete
language and imagery to explore abstract issues
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An individual being assaulted
by an idea that threatens to destroy all of his/her dearly held assumptions or
a mind’s inability to cope with the pressures placed upon it from the outside
world.
Theme
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Aberration of the mind, the
gradual breakup of rational powers and the final onset of madness.
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Dickenson has concretized the
experience of a sick mind obsessed with its approaching disintegration.
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The use of funeral as a
metaphor stands for the death of rationality.
Analysis
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The speaker imagines that a
funeral is taking place inside her brain and she can feel the mourners pacing
to and forth
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The mourners sit down and the
funeral service begins. Unfortunately this service seems more like a
performance of stomp than a religious gathering. The drum like beating of the
service makes her think her mind is going dump
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The mourners lift the casket
and walk across her soul(they are wearing heavy lead boots which is
unthoughtful of them)
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At the end of the service,
she feels as if a church bells were ringing inside her head. She imagines her
mind as the entire universe.
Hymn like poem in quatrains
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Dickenson’s poems are
frequently compared to church hymns. Church hymns are often written in rhyming
quatrains with regular rhythm.
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Rhyme scheme : ABCB
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Meter: Iambic
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One of the most common meter
in hymns is eight syllable line followed by six syllable line.
Symbols
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Funeral
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Mind- Body-Soul
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Sound
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Weight
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Versions of reality
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Suffering
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Religion