Just lost, when I was saved! by Emily Dickinson
"Just lost, when I was saved!" by Emily Dickinson is a contemplative poem written between 1860 and 1862, later published posthumously. The work reflects Dickinson's unique perspective on death and resurrection, blending personal experience with universal themes. The poem's opening lines convey a profound juxtaposition of loss and salvation, suggesting a moment of clarity or awakening that often accompanies near-death experiences. Dickinson employs an insightful, humanistic tone, reminiscent of literary figures like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Herman Melville, who also grapple with mortality.
In this poem, the narrator expresses a desire to engage with the mysteries of existence, echoing Saint Paul's reflections on the unseen beauty of life after death. The imagery present in the poem emphasizes the struggle against the inevitability of eternity, depicting it as both predatory and transformative. Through the act of poetic expression, the narrator seeks to overcome this struggle and return to life, driven by a compelling need to share her insights. Ultimately, the poem encapsulates the cyclical nature of death and rebirth, framing the poet's journey as both a personal and mythic experience, grounded in the desire to push the boundaries of language and understanding.
Just lost, when I was saved! by Emily Dickinson
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1891 (as “Called Back”)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
Dickinson wrote this poem between 1860 and 1862, if one accepts the Johnson chronology. Her sister included it among the small selection of poems published after the poet’s death. It appears that the title “Called Back” was appended based on a note the poet had written to her cousins on the day before her death. Perhaps she was inspired by the sudden conviction she was recovering that affects many terminally ill people, or (equally likely) she did not want her cousins to worry. In any event, she wrote, “Little cousins,—Called Back. Emily.”
Dickinson’s poems often focus on a proleptic view of the death experience; that is, they anticipate death yet present a living narrator to interpret the nearly experienced event. Not surprisingly, they are usually devoid of any overt Christian imagery; yet, there does appear, in this instance, the image of the “Reporter” who has stood before the apocalyptic “Seal.” The narrator’s wish to remain next time, to see “the things . . . By Ear unheard,/ Unscrutinized by Eye—” corresponds to Saint Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 2.9. The speaker, however, is far more like Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner or Herman Melville’s Ishmael, the narrator of Moby Dick (1851). All three have looked upon death and lived.
It is impossible not to sense the enlightened, humanistic tone of the poem’s first two lines: “Just lost, when I was saved!/ Just felt the world go by!” The third line, which repeats the initial word of the first two and adds “girt,” implies that meeting “Eternity” is akin to a struggle or a hero’s encounter with an opponent. Eternity is predatory, and the paratactic arrangement of lines 1-3 emphasizes its insistent claim on the speaker. Even so, the “breath” of line 4 allows her to overcome its influence and to “feel,” so that she can “tell” what she has seen. Poetry, whose words one feels as much as hears, thus provides the strength for the poet to return. The desire to be a “pale Reporter”—that is, to be a poet interpreting universal experience in an insightful way—is too great for her to succumb to death, at least this time.
Nevertheless, Hercules’ cry of Plus ultra (still further), shouted when he had erected Gibraltar and Ceuta at the edge of the world, has meaning for the poet, too. She desires to take language further than it has ever been, even though she faces the likelihood of destruction, or a poem without transcendent meaning. The death and rebirth which the poem describe thus resemble a fixed part of a mythic hero’s experience, even as they correspond to the humanist insight of a poet who has gone beyond merely dabbling in verse and become a true poet.
Bibliography
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