Defamiliarizing Faith: Emily Dickinson’s Use of Hymns, Scripture, and Prayer

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Notes

¹ As Manheim points out, during Dickinson’s life, Massachusetts underwent several spiritual revivals, and it was a sign of conformity to embrace Christianity and be an active member of the church. She watched as friends, family, and almost everyone she knew turned to renew or accept for the first time a faith she felt unable to embrace. Manheim also notes the “rhetoric of revivalism” used by Dickinson to speak in code to those close to her (377).

² See Victoria Morgan’s chapter on “Making the Sublime Ridiculous: Emily Dickinson and Isaac Watts in Dissent” from Emily Dickinson and Hymn Culture as well as “Rhetoric or Not: Hymnal Tropes in Emily Dickinson and Isaac Watts” by Shira Wolosky, and a short discussion on the tendency to assume that Dickinson is responding to Watts in her work in Positive as Sound by Judy Jo Small (41–42).

³ Victoria Morgan in particular notes that Watts changed worship which favored metrical psalms, writing rhyming hymns, which were more accessible because they were “easy to remember and recite” (84). Dickinson adapts the hymn form in her poetry, and in this way, both are “dissenters.” Referring also to work by B. L. Manning, Morgan goes on to note that Watts’ use of hymn form as mode of dissent may be interpreted as working to “undermine the traditional religious sublime” (84), just as Dickinson has been said to “undermine” traditional Christian beliefs.

⁴ Consider Bible verses which discuss salvation arriving on wings, as in Isaiah 40.31, or wings signaling comfort and protection, as in Psalm 57.1, 61.4, 63.7, or 91.4 (The Holy Bible). One might also consider Genesis 8.11 when the dove returns to Noah with an olive branch, which signals hope for a new beginning after being delivered safely from the flood, as well as peace with God.

⁵ Dickinson has a complex relationship with prayer, and treats the subject differently than other, more devotional poets have by rarely if ever offering assurances about its ease and effectiveness. George Herbert is perhaps one of the most well-known poets to write on prayer. He often equated it with communion, calling prayer “the Church’s banquet” in “Prayer [I].” This kind of poetry would have clearly been meant to encourage and uplift other believers. In “Prayer [II],” Herbert again demonstrates the undeniable, easy access believers have to God, and which earth has to heaven. Before sin, Herbert’s narrator asserts, moving from the one place to the other was so easy that “A fervent sigh might well have blown/Our innocent earth to heaven.” With Christ’s sacrifice, this ease of transition, like going “from one room t’another,” is restored.

⁶ Elsewhere Dickinson explores the unheard knock, where no salvation is had. While some verses claim that all one needs to do is ask, seek, or knock to be granted salvation, other verses claim that entering heaven is difficult. Dickinson explores the unheard knock, the inaccessibility of heaven and salvation, by introducing complications. One might not be able to find the right door to access this simple salvation. “I know not which thy chamber is – /I’m knocking – everywhere – ” (Fr 377). In such poems, the speaker is left in a desperate limbo, waiting for a response amidst an apocalyptic landscape.

⁷ More research needs to be done to explore when this hymn was first included in hymnals, which hymnals added it, and whether these hymnals were in circulation in Amherst during Dickinson’s lifetime.

⁸ In Matt. 27. 45–6 and Mark 15:34, Christ asks “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” This translates to “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and expresses Christ’s sense of being abandoned by God as he was being crucified.