WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.890 align:middle line:84% But we've already done the heavy lifting 00:00:01.890 --> 00:00:05.280 align:middle line:84% of understanding how her poems work, how they dance, 00:00:05.280 --> 00:00:08.140 align:middle line:84% and how utterly intense they are. 00:00:08.140 --> 00:00:11.460 align:middle line:84% So here I just want to invoke her sense that the infinite is 00:00:11.460 --> 00:00:16.320 align:middle line:84% both blessed, and perhaps, beyond her own possibility. 00:00:16.320 --> 00:00:18.600 align:middle line:84% Dickinson, in part, left Mount Holyoke 00:00:18.600 --> 00:00:21.630 align:middle line:84% because it was a place of intense pressure 00:00:21.630 --> 00:00:24.990 align:middle line:84% to be a Christian, which meant in her terms, 00:00:24.990 --> 00:00:29.310 align:middle line:84% having an ecstatic experience, an experience of being saved, 00:00:29.310 --> 00:00:32.189 align:middle line:84% of being touched by God or Christ. 00:00:32.189 --> 00:00:34.350 align:middle line:84% And while she seems to have been a believer, 00:00:34.350 --> 00:00:38.400 align:middle line:84% she never had that experience, and she resented 00:00:38.400 --> 00:00:40.830 align:middle line:90% being supposed to have one. 00:00:40.830 --> 00:00:43.800 align:middle line:84% In her own family, there was such pressure on her, 00:00:43.800 --> 00:00:47.700 align:middle line:84% and certainly her era witnessed a Christian reinvigoration 00:00:47.700 --> 00:00:50.630 align:middle line:90% that was difficult to resist. 00:00:50.630 --> 00:00:53.210 align:middle line:84% I don't know that I'd say that she entirely resisted, 00:00:53.210 --> 00:00:56.750 align:middle line:84% but she was true to her own feelings, her own experience, 00:00:56.750 --> 00:01:00.050 align:middle line:84% and not the least interested in falsifying them. 00:01:00.050 --> 00:01:01.850 align:middle line:84% While many might declare themselves 00:01:01.850 --> 00:01:05.209 align:middle line:84% to be born again, probably far less 00:01:05.209 --> 00:01:08.570 align:middle line:84% actually had such a touched by God experience, 00:01:08.570 --> 00:01:12.180 align:middle line:84% and many were doing the socially correct thing. 00:01:12.180 --> 00:01:15.930 align:middle line:84% Dickinson was not socially correct, was not 00:01:15.930 --> 00:01:21.610 align:middle line:84% touched by grace, though she was often gracious. 00:01:21.610 --> 00:01:25.960 align:middle line:84% I had thought a little bit after I wrote this that maybe she 00:01:25.960 --> 00:01:28.090 align:middle line:84% was touched by grace so often she just 00:01:28.090 --> 00:01:29.560 align:middle line:90% didn't find it special. 00:01:29.560 --> 00:01:32.560 align:middle line:84% But I have to think about that one a little more. 00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:35.290 align:middle line:84% Mentally, she considered heaven out of experience 00:01:35.290 --> 00:01:37.000 align:middle line:84% because it is so glorious it would 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:41.290 align:middle line:84% require the dissolution of the mind to sense its wonders. 00:01:41.290 --> 00:01:44.520 align:middle line:90% 00:01:44.520 --> 00:01:46.830 align:middle line:90% Heaven is so far-- 00:01:46.830 --> 00:01:48.480 align:middle line:90% I'm not going to jump there yet. 00:01:48.480 --> 00:01:53.130 align:middle line:84% "Heaven is so far of the mind," this is poem 370, 00:01:53.130 --> 00:01:57.930 align:middle line:84% "that were the mind dissolved, the site of it by architect 00:01:57.930 --> 00:02:01.680 align:middle line:90% could not again be proved. 00:02:01.680 --> 00:02:06.420 align:middle line:84% Heaven is so far of the mind, that were the mind dissolved, 00:02:06.420 --> 00:02:11.820 align:middle line:84% the site of it by architect could not again be proved." 00:02:11.820 --> 00:02:15.480 align:middle line:84% She appreciates its wonder, its vastness, 00:02:15.480 --> 00:02:18.300 align:middle line:84% but senses a distance from it, though she believes it 00:02:18.300 --> 00:02:21.960 align:middle line:90% should be no further than here. 00:02:21.960 --> 00:02:24.350 align:middle line:90% But where is here?