BOOKS
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writer as subject is whether the revelation of the
life
is going to do very much
toward revealing the work .
In the case of Richard B. Sewall, whose
The Ltfe Of Emily Dickinson
has received the National Book Award in biography for last year, the answer
would
seem
to
be
a reluctant no .
It
is difficult to understand exactly what
Sewall intended to do with this writer whose life is nothing so much as a
testimony to the density of her poetry. The weight of art is the
sole
justifica–
tion of the
life.
But how bring into being experiences which are ultimately
only
in the mind's
eye?
This was Sewall's problem. .And no matter how
vibrantly the felt experience existed in Emily Dickinson's poetry, one cannot
write the
life
of an individual for whom experience itself is metaphorical.
It
is almost as if there had existed no breathing creature named Emily
Dickinson but, rather, a world she inhabited . One learns a great deal about
that world in these two well-documented volumes. Professor Sewall's
determination, his unwavering commitment to his subject, is evident from
the very first page. But what we are finally left with is a truth of his own
choosing : "Certainly no major poet ever lived so private an existence, with
no circle, no coterie, almost no sustaining professional gossip." It is the
life,
not the poetry, that fails him. For the
life
that is captured in these two
volumes is so internalized, so private, that biographical revelation and
speculation succeed only in making Emily Dickinson even more un–
obtainable than she is. Only the most dedicated reader of her poetry is going
to be able to struggle through this
Ltfe.
On the one hand, Emily Dickinson
lived with an intensity rarely matched in literature; on the other, she cannot
really be said to have
lived
at all . And for biography, there has to
be
a
life .
It
is not merely that Emily Dickinson closed a door on the outside world .
Jane Austen can
be
said to have done that, too. But Jane Austen's life is at
least powerfully provincial; Emily Dickinson's life is so internalized as to
make the idea of biography at war with itself.
One cannot criticize Professor Sewall's efforts . He has gotten as deep
into his subject as any biographer could have done .
It
could
be
said that
he has created a great work of scholarship. But there is a difference between
great scholarship and biography . Professor Sewall knows why Emily's
life
is elusive, and there is little he can do about that. Mter reading these two
volumes, with their multitude of notes and thorough documentation, the
reader is more aware of the biographer's ambition than of his
success.
Not that Emily Dickinson eludes him. What there is, he captures for his
own. But page after page forces the reader to recognize that the life is really
beyond biography ...She lives increasingly in her own chosen country, where
she was
free ."
It
is Emily's determination to hide from view that makes the
first volume of this biography so much more interesting than the second.
