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Intriguingly, there is even an enigma that can be further traced in terms of the idea of the dystopian. In the sense, compared with the utopian, the dystopian is equally not likely differentiable. Since good and the utopian are not able to be located as from the image of “Heaven,” then to some extent, the dystopian, which by
definition stems from the opposite nature of the utopian as a certain dimension of bad, should be also a serious mystery. The alleged dystopian idea seems not likely (or not appropriately) able to be chained with the “Paradise.” Signs, for its equivocality, clearly subvert and even dismantle the fixation of the plane between good/bad,
utopian/dystopian. In this regard, though “Paradise” does little beneficence for its lack of some “Superior Grace,” the question of how or whether this “Paradise” can be thus found dystopian seems also an unanswerable mystery. The delicate elusiveness between “Heaven” and “Paradise,” in the end, seems merely to leave a certain state of what Baudrillard constantly identifies as hyper-reality in which survives only a signifier-signifier structure among the referential, with no referents.
III. A Particular Slant on the “Light”: Signs of Meanings in Vagueness
In Dickinson’s meticulous reflections on both “Paradise” and “Heaven,” there indeed dominates the concern about the equivocality of signs, which actually
questions the abundance/vagueness in meaning. Readers who tend to read in
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consonance with Jean Baudrillard’s notion of simulacra and simulation would hardly deny that there is always uncertainty in meaning when signs proceed massively.
Indeed, with the manner of simulation, signs are never just devices which only serve to dominate the way how certain life-experiences are perceived. Of most importance, they even allow meaning to perform a certain degree of multiplicity which, in the sense, culminates in a certain dilemma between abundance and vagueness. Emily Dickinson, as widely known for her keen sense of language, in fact devotes much of her writing to the awareness of the abundance/vagueness in meaning, and also pinpoints the fluidity of meaning especially in view of the (self-)simulating signs.
The indeterminacy of meaning is best explained, among others, by one of her most famous poems “There’s a certain Slant of light,” (J 320):
There’s a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes –
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us – We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
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Where the Meanings, are –
None may teach it – Any –
’Tis the Seal Despair – An imperial affliction Sent us of the Air –
When it comes, the Landscape listens – Shadows – hold their breath –
When It goes, ’tis like the Distance On the look of Death –
As the first stanza indicates, it is the phrase “a certain Slant of light” that clearly exemplifies a certain degree of vagueness in meaning and even demonstrates some practice of semantic distortion. Clearly the phrase is an obvious semantic mystery, and its pivotal opaqueness lies in the exquisite double meaning of the word “certain”:
“being exact with no doubt” and “referring to an indefinite thing.” With the
connotative doubleness of the word “certain,” which oscillates between “exactness”
and “indefiniteness,” the phrase “a certain Slant of light” in fact provokes a radical twofoldness of the meaning(s) it bears. Rather than being understood plainly as “an
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unspecific streak of light,” this literal combination of “certain” and “Slant” in fact alternatively also hints at another crucial scale of paradox and contradiction when the word “certain” as “being exact” comes to duel against the “slant” as “being oblique.”
It is seen that a sense of exactness and certainty that the word “certain” indicates apparently contradicts the obliquely distorted manner that the word “slant” actually deciphers. In this manner, the phrase “a certain Slant of light” is by no means as easy and simple as it literally shows. Of most importance, it clearly postulates a flexibility for which meaning is in fact perceptively diverse, multiple, and even vague in an elusive manner.
As the poem later narrates in the second stanza, the air of vagueness becomes even extreme while the meaning of the “Meanings” is in fact nuancedly manifested with its significant plural form. Here, the plurality of “Meanings” in fact indicates not any state of fixation which may claim only the Oneness or a certain absoluteness, but a certain degree of multiplicity which harbours a good degree of diversity. Clearly, such diversity implied with the word “Meanings,” at the point, celebrates a prosper scale of individuality, which in a way is determined by the differences among the
“we.” It is particularly an aftermath that results from this “internal difference,” which to some extent is occult and not a “scar” able to be found on any corporeal bodies, but yet perceptible only in a divine, “Heavenly” sense. As the poem importantly unfolds,
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it is the “Slant of light” that genuinely determines this decent spectrum of individual differences. The “Slant of light,” as suggested, is rather celestially mighty; it
seemingly not only possesses as a certain degree of overwhelming power but also performs it in the manner of oppression that sees no resistance. Indeed, rather than a gentler light, the texture of this “light” does embody a certain desperate power, whose invincible authority functions as an unquestionable, absolute “Seal,” and with such a tyranny, the “light” further its intensity to determinately afflict anyone submissive to it. Perhaps, in this regard, the so-called “scar” is never simply just a mark which proves the stroke of “light.” More critically, it even insinuates a rather radical deed of sacrifice as Jesus’s crucifixion that devotes to a higher absoluteness. In this sense, the designation of meaning at the point seems hardly blissful, but actually just to reflect absoluteness.
Perhaps this is why Helen Vendler in her reading of this poem tends to regard the “Slant of light” as not just only a presentation of truth, but also a harsher truth with extreme “Despair” (“320” 126-27). And also, perhaps it is usually a reason why the poem in the first time of reading appears to narrate with so insecure a tone, for the production (or bestowment) of meaning, as written inside, seems so miserable.
However, apart from the voices possibly attributed, this poem seems also to unfold a more critical aspect of reading that observes a display of signs meanwhile around
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such an unblissful “Slant of light.”
Arguably, the poem for sure gives an intensive landscape of signs that prevail for directing certain meanings, and signs in the poem are indeed worth a note for an intensity of domination not only over meanings but over other signs. As its last stanza suggests, this poem mildly witness a particular sign-navigated state of reality and critically examines the fluidity and the artificial malleability of meanings, which is actually comprised by signs. Just as Jean Baudrillard has made it clear, meaning is definitely made inferior to signs/signifiers which in fact is more artificial and malleable (2). Indeed, through the poem, it is clear that the “Slant of light” is
definitely a sign which not only all meanings but other signs such as “Landscape” and
“Shadow” submit to. The absoluteness of the “Slant of light” in fact renders those other signs into signifiers of submission and directs them in the oscillating manner of coming and going. In the sense, with the drama of the “light” waving between the motions coming and going, it is unfolded that the submission that is conducted by some “signifiers” is even indeed not a consistency. All the deeds that suggest the submissiveness is only taken when the absolute authority arrives. The “Landscape”
only listens when the “Slant of light” comes; and so do “Shadows.” Only do
“Shadows” hold their breath. When there is a “Distance” made as if showing a view of “Death,” there seems also a certain silence brought to the fore and seemingly
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rendering any overpowering highest invalid.
It is seemingly intriguingly that this coming-going intensity can also indicate somehow a further mode of intensity between when/what is valid and invalid. Such a valid-invalid tension lying between the absence and presence of the “Slant of light,”
to some extent, is seemingly indicating just a rather reduced state of reality which is only based on signs. Everything is thus examined under not meanings itself but signs of meaning that gives valid-invalid credits to be motivated. However, to some extent, though the “Slant of light” poem in its last stanza tends to critique back and perhaps allows for more opportunities to seek for new way out of the sign-culture reality, there seems still hardly a lighted path that leads for an exodus. In the end there is still a sign-structure of vagueness, which serves the semiotic with invalid differentiation between binary oppositions, and which is hardly eliminated but surrounds any individuals. Weirdly as it is, this state of the sign-reality seems to some extent also attributed to an excess of desires which reversely feed not only fantasies and dream but more widely a certain dreamscape, more real than the real.
Just as another Dickinson poem “Within that little Hive” (J 1607) may at the moment lastly conclude, there is indeed little way out from a state where “Dream”
and “Reality” are both rendered as signs and even become little differentiable from each other.
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Within that little Hive Such Hints of Honey lay As made Reality a Dream And Dreams, Reality –
Critically, with their desires and an attempt to actualise them, any dreaming others are seemingly led to such an enclosure of “that little Hive” where dreams and fantasies are now fertilised as preceding everything. As the poem indicates, it is not “Honey”
itself that can really be harvested. Instead, it is the “Hints” of this supposed “Honey”
that lures one’s desire and radicalises what is desired as something deliciously worthy of a pursuit. It is thus perceived that “the little Hive” is rather deceptive; it presents a particular dimension which makes dreams and fantasies so promising and tasty, and desire so likely to be fulfilled. It is noted that the sweetness of “Hive” in fact pretends a likeliness of the good, where one dreams for the emptiness and yet is distanced from the “more authentic” bliss of “Honey.”
IV. Conclusion
Indeed, through her poetry, Emily Dickinson keenly presents a particular facet of landscape in which dreams and fantasies dominate effectively. Within such a dreamscape, a sense of vagueness seems to overwhelmingly possess one’s perception
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in the sense that any sharp boundaries between any binary oppositions hardly survive.
Divisions between good and not-good, in the sense, also turn ambivalent. In this regard, what conventionally defines the border between the utopian and the dystopian, at the moment, is just an enigma, and left in severe doubt. Any intentions of
clarification are seemingly just deferred and deterred in such an environment of opaqueness, and only dreams and fantasies—the signs that actualise desires—take the form of supremacy and enchantment. Not only do dreams and fantasies govern the desires of an individual in the dreamscape that seems “utopian,” but alluringly dream/fantasies nourish one’s desires and facilitate one’s ruthless pursuit of what is desired.
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Chapter Five
Conclusion
Throughout intensive discussions on the issues of dream/fantasy and signs/simulacra, this thesis eventually unfolds a rather Baudrillardian landscape of reading and understanding dreams in several Emily Dickinson’s poems. It strives to open up a certain critical aspect that dreams can actually be (re)conceptualised as empty fantasies which not only embody desires but also allow signs to actualise the desired.
It is seen that, the destiny of a dreamer who is dreaming about the so-called ideal is never to obtain or approach anything dreamt, but just to be fixed under massive signs of what is desired. The dangerousness of dream and dreaming, at the point, lies just in the manner that signs actually not only precede what is desired but, in the scale of hyper-reality, also further enclose one under a territory of the semiotic.
As Dickinson’s poem “We dream – it is good we are dreaming –” (J 531) unravels,
“an Age – and Name – / And perhaps a phrase in Egyptian –” are indeed signs that can powerfully indicate and embody one’s desires, allowing him/her to fulfil certain dreams. However, in the manner of actualising desire, signs are also something risky and which one should be careful of; for, as the poem unfolds, those signs also serve to
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“Cool us to Shafts of Granite –.” In this regard, it is clear that signs of what is desired is never delightful, but to some extent deceptive, leading to a certain predicament of whoever desires to dream. As another Dickinson poem J 475 tends to visualise, it is the “Doom” that encloses any others in a certain doorless “House” and makes them merely submit to the sign of authority, e.g., the sign of “God.”
Based on the unfolding of the essence of dream as pure fantasy about the ideal, where a Baudrillardian consideration of simulacra and simulation is thus brightened as a critical framework of interpretation, the thesis also sheds light on much more profundity in other Dickinson poems. In the thesis, a couple of her social poems also leave room for the intricacies of this observation of dream, as the potency of such simulacral fantasies over human society is further allowed for. Just as her poems narrate, it is in the plague of the fantasies of the ideal that human society is reduced to be a semiotic kingdom in which a phenomenon of resurrection in a system of signs is found inevitable. Language, norms, codes, social protocols, and even identity, as noted by Dickinson with the plights of her seashore visitor and (Leo)pard parallel, are all unfolded as a cluster of devices that serve to (re-)encode an individual as a form particularly appertaining to the orders of de-individualisation and homogeneity.
The episode of conformity and docility, as Dickinson’s poetry recognises it, is such a critical facet that none should just simplify it as demonstrating the practical
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scale of similitude through the given binary orders determinant of, e.g., what is madness and sanity. Of most importance, it testifies to the emptiness which gives birth to the sign of orders based on certain dreaming and fantasies. It also indicates a void of desire concealed behind the ruthless pursuit of what is ideal in a social domain where the reliance on the social givens and on their power of social division is made absolute. The revelation of the conflicting drama between “Assent” and “Demur,” as the poet puts it in the poetry, is clearly one of the examples that account for such a violent show of absoluteness, and the consecutive tyranny of social labelling, which is later poeticised as a “Chain,” is discernibly a sign that signals the triumph of a
majority, whose interest and desires in such a sign-determined matrix are highly prioritised and in particular given precedence over all the other matters.
Certainly, with her sensitivity to social order and social relations, Emily Dickinson indeed writes poems that sharply question the sweetness of the dream of similitude. Her poems such as “Much Madness is the divinest Sense –” (J 435) not only interrogate the arrival of a milieu where exists the circulation of some desires for homogeneity. In a way, as read together with the (Leo)pard poem (J 492), the poems also serve to disclose the fact that, for pursuing such a dream state, little can one elude from his or her end of being assimilated as part of the semiotic in society. It is the (near-)extinction of individuality bred by the social eagerness for homogenisation that
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figures prominently in much of her writing. Arguably, harbouring suspicions against certain authority lurking in society, Dickinson’s poetics eloquently puts emphasis on the predicament of the social individual, whose identity and distinctiveness are both seriously disregarded and devalued. With the castrated (Leo)pard closely read, her poems indeed leave her readers in an ultimate awareness of the turmoil of the individual over his or her “spurned” identity. As a result of the compulsion and its culminating deference, it is a desired society rather than an actual one that is surely brought into play, ironically becoming even preeminent for its semiotic enchantment.
It is less uncertain that there seems in the end nowhere in actuality that can be found dislodged from the charm of the semiotic.
Lastly, the thesis locates the significance of dream in the ultimate constellation of what is therefore seen as “dreamscape,” and investigate not only paradoxical ambiguity between the utopian/dystopian but also vagueness that always stands in meaning. Indeed, through her poetry such as “‘Heaven’ has different Signs – to me –”
(J 575), it is seen that Dickinson’s poems map out an impressive landscape where one can see dreams and fantasies supersedes any other things. Clearly, in this dreamscape, vagueness dominates one’s perception, and any boundaries between any binary oppositions have already hardly survive; divisions between good and not-good, and the utopian and the dystopian, in the sense, are also hard to sharply tell. In this regard,
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meaning is just left in severe doubt. As the poem “There’s certain Slant of light” (J 258) ultimately reminds, meaning remains in an environment of opaqueness and fluidity, and is designated or conducted by the authority which is given by signs such as the problematic “Slant of light.”
With this respect, only dreams and fantasies actualise desires semiotically and perform supreme and enchanting. It is signs that regulate how and what an individual can desire in the dreamscape that seems “utopian.” As the last poem “Within the little Hive” suggest, it is never “Honey” that entices one to the “Hive”; but instead, it is the
“Hive” itself as “Hint of Honey” that indeed nourish one’s desires and makes one eager for what is desired.
Through the careful exploration of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, the thesis might display its possible academic contributions at least in three aspects: a study of Dickinson’s poetry in the subject of dreams, a postmodernist reading of Dickinson, and the deep concern about the utopian/dystopian construction of human society. As
Through the careful exploration of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, the thesis might display its possible academic contributions at least in three aspects: a study of Dickinson’s poetry in the subject of dreams, a postmodernist reading of Dickinson, and the deep concern about the utopian/dystopian construction of human society. As