Out of Africa 351going” champions the exhilaration to be had when
the soul makes a journey from the “headlands” (a
pun on the mind, meaning “the land of the mind”),
deep into the intoxicating uncertainties of the
sea further within. In the soul’s depths, this poem
suggests, one might find “deep Eternity”; spiritual
progression, Dickinson hypothesizes, comes from
intense exploration of the inner world. In “I saw no
Way—the Heavens were stitched,” it is the internal
world, as opposed to the external religious sphere,
that ensures transcendence. At the point when the
observable “Heavens” (a pun on the church) offer
no route through to the enquiring subject, closing
their columns to her (a metaphor for the columns
of a church building), the subject experiences a
remarkable change of fortune: The earth defies logic
and reverses its hemispheres, enabling the subject to
touch the universe; the world within (the earth of
the poem) contains tremendous force.
Dickinson’s explorations of the spirit are often
metaphysical rather than religious in tone, and they
tend to emphasize a rational, scientific approach.
Many of her first lines are grandly assertive, articu-
lating definitions and conclusions about the nature
of humanity and one’s place in the universe as if pre-
senting scientific theory (“After great pain, a formal
feeling comes”; “This World is not a conclusion”;
“It was not Death, for I stood up”). At times, Dick-
inson draws on Darwinian theory to comprehend
what happens to the spirit after death, positing in
“This World is not a conclusion” that in death we
evolve into a new kind of “species.” Matters of the
human spirit and the universe are often discussed in
measurable terms drawn from geometry, particularly
their “circumference” and “diameter,” suggesting a
desire to chart the spirit with exacting precision, but
also the sense that spirituality is perhaps best con-
ceived as essentially circular in quality—the meta-
phoric message being that the beginnings and the
ends of the spirit are elusive and perhaps can never
be found. Scientific assessment of the width, depth,
and weight of psychological processes is undertaken
in “The Brain—is wider than the sky,” but again
there is a mystical quality to such speculation:
Although the brain is said to be wider and deeper
than the sky and sea in its capacities, it is, after all,
“just the weight of God”—in other words, the brain
(or spirit) is in perfect balance with God (religious
or otherwise) and equally as boundless.
Hesitation to commit to a specific spiritual
path is palpable in Dickinson’s idiosyncratic inde-
cisive use of the line; the heavy use of dashes and
incomplete phrasings suggests that the thoughts
and assertions conveyed are provisional and open to
revision, mimicking the processes of endless rumi-
nation made by Dickinson’s speakers. Her Calvinist
heritage is satirized in poems such as “Safe in their
Alabaster Chambers,” which criticizes the apparent
hypocrisy of the Puritan elite who preach the virtues
of austerity and restraint while requiring their tombs
to be luxuriously crafted from satin and marble.
God’s existence and the idea of a Christian after-
life are treated with some skepticism in this poem,
where the only life that continues is that of the
sweeping march of earthly events. In “Those—dying
then,” the place for Christian souls on the right
hand side of God is said to have vanished; God’s
right hand has been amputated, declares the speaker.
But though skeptical of Christian belief, there is an
emphasis on the importance of spiritual belief, how-
ever flawed—better to follow the deceptive light of a
will o’ the wisp (ignis fatuus, which literally translates
as “foolish fire”), counsels the poem, than no light
(illume) at all.
Sarah BarnsleyDINESEN, ISAK (Karen Blixen) Out
of Africa (1937)
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen, 1885–
1962) has three major themes—nature, commodi-
fication/commercialization, and responsibil-
ity—and the presence of these three themes inform
Dinesen’s memoir of her time as a coffee-farm
owner in British East Africa (now Kenya). In Out
of Africa, Dinesen examines the impact of nature on
the author and her use of the land, commercialism
on the land and the people, and the responsibility
of the colonial immigrants to the native Africans.
Throughout her memoir, she describes the difficul-
ties she encounters in trying to keep a coffee farm
going in a country where she is an immigrant. Yet
she balances these descriptions with depictions of
the country and its people. It is in these descriptions