ΣΑΝ ΣΗΜΕΡΑ. ΕΜΙΛΥ ΝΤΙΚΙΝΣΟΝ

Emily Dickinson (10/10/1830 – 15/5/1886)
Ποιήτρια, ΗΠΑ

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The Lesbian Belle of Amherst

by Janet Mason (about.com)
In "Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson" (from Paris Press), the editors, Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith, point out that over the course of their lifelong friendship and love affair, Emily sent countless numbers of letters, poems and a form of writing that Emily came to call the letter poem. And on many of these letters, placed for Susan to see when she unfolded them, Emily had written her careful instructions:
"Open me carefully."
Emily Dickinson lived at the end of the Victorian-era in New England from 1830 to 1886. After her death, any mention of Susan was carefully removed from her poetry and this essential body of correspondence was neglected. Still, even with this erasure of Susan's name, which Emily had written at the top of so many of her poems, it is obvious that they are essentially Lesbian love poems.
Consider, for example, the piece that begins with the line "Her breast is fit for pearls..."
"Susan, / Her breast is fit for pearls, / But I was not a "Diver"-- / Her brow is fit for thrones / But I have not a crest, / Her heart is fit for home-- / I--a Sparrow--build there / Sweet of twigs and twine / My perennial nest. / ---Emily"
In Victorian New England, Emily Dickinson certainly could not mention her most intimate body parts. But she did a pretty good job of using the birds and bees as metaphor: "These days of heaven bring you nearer and nearer, and every bird that sings, and every bud that blooms, does but remind me more of that garden unseen, awaiting the hand that tills it. Dear Susie, when you come, how many boundless blossoms among the silent beds!"
To separate Emily Dickinson from her Lesbian passions is a cruel and unnecessary act. Not only does it do a disservice to Emily's poetic genius, but it also deprives her readers of a deeper comprehension of Emily and therefore of a deeper understanding of themselves. That's what literature, at its best, does. It leads us home.
It really doesn't matter if Emily Dickinson ever made love with a woman. (Although my guess is that she did and most likely did so rather skillfully.) What matters is that she experienced deep rending passion, that must at times, under the circumstances, have been painful.
A Lesbian reading of Emily Dickinson places her firmly in the center of her own page. When I think back on my visit to her house, I can see her clearly now, sitting down at her desk after her daily chores were done, as she smoothes the white folds of her skirt and picks up her quilled pen. As she writes, her cheeks are ablaze with longing and desire, that essential Lesbian desire.