Category talk:Writings of Emily Dickinson

Historical note

Some of the downloaded pictures are of cardboard file folders purporting to be of atheistic lines of Emily Dickinson, such as the one exclaiming that there probably is no God, so relax and enjoy yourselves. It should be noted, the view that Emily was an atheist is not officially endorsed by Wikimedia. Further, this view runs counter to all scholarship on Dickinson, which holds that she was a reclusive mystic poet. Her poems are all about our relationship to God. Someone went to a lot of trouble to concoct these "files." The user might well ask who and why. The view is far from mainstream, which WP prefers. Dickinson is portrayed as a wild hedonist. She was anything but. The user would do well to read ANY biography of Dickinson (bring your handkerchief). The half lines cited are grossly out of context. The poems can only be understand in terms of mystic and personal faith. For example, Emily wrote "I heard a fly buzz when I died ..." If we were to follow the method of these downloaded files we would have to presume that, after being resurrected here on earth Emily decided to recount her death experiences, an absurd interpretation, just as absurd as these "files." Dickinson was no doubt using a mild sarcasm in that line. She well knew that no one really relaxes and enjoys themselves. Not long before her death at 40, when she had been diagnosed with a fatal disease, she wrote briefly to her neices, "called home." Are those the words of an atheist or an agnostic?Botteville (talk) 14:20, 5 November 2012 (UTC)