An Analysis of "This is my letter to the world" by Emily Dickinson
This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,--
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!
Professor Qin presented this poem to us in our first class of American Poetry. Well, like other poems of this genius poetess, this one is difficult to be fully understood. After you read it again and again and again you get some obscure ideas, and even for this you feel delighted. However, if the poetry has no metaphors or symbols, just as straightforward as daily conversation, it is no poetry.
Let’s first come to the first two lines. Here the “letter” perhaps means this poem, or the author’s poetry in general; I prefer the latter. As to the word letter, you know, we often say a man/woman of letters. Dickinson wants to express her ideas and feeling to the outer world through her poems, but the world does not understand her (as indicated by the second line).
The third and fourth lines, as I take it, describe the content of her “letter”. Her verse is enlightened by Nature. And, “The art itself is Nature”(, says Shakespeare in his Winter’s Tale). People are clear that the themes of Dickinson’s poems are about her inner world, her original ideas about life, nature, death, love, etc., which makes a perfect contrast with those of Whitman’s poems mostly about the events of society. Thus, the poetess confess that her theme is tender; nonetheless we should remember that it is tender but with majesty. Is not the philosophy of death, love and life in general as majestic as the historic events of politics and economics?
Her contemporaries do not understand her, so the author rests her hope on people of future generations, the hands of whom she cannot see. Finally, she requests her readers of later centuries to judge her tenderly.
Emily Dickinson is one of the favorite poets of critics and common readers in the 20th century, and we believe she will be in following centuries. She was born too earlier. So unfortunate! However, she could be content if she knew her popularity today.
Notice that this short poem contains many long vowels, so the rhythm is slow and the tone calm. She is telling her feeling tenderly and calmly, though people around do not understand