by Caitlin Filep

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

Emily Dickinson

It is nearly impossible to encounter Emily Dickinson without being immersed in the natural world that she dearly loved. This poem, though it may not seem so at first, is a prime example of the way that Dickinson saw nature—here, “Lightning”—as central to her “slant”-ed poetic project, which is characterized by vivid metaphors and highly original uses of language. Through my thesis, I intend to argue that her poems “Tell all the truth but tell it slant—” and “Flowers—Well—if anybody” reveal that her unique use of metaphorical language is inextricable from the structure of the natural world, and that this relationship between nature and language enables poetry to communicate truths.

This relationship between nature and language enables poetry to communicate truths. 

Many postmodern Dickinson scholars argue that she does not subscribe to an idea of objective truth at all, but rather that she maps her subjective world onto nature. Upon a more cautious reading of her verses, however, this viewpoint quickly grows dubious. “Flowers–Well–if anybody,” with its praise for the superior aesthetics of the daisies and butterflies, demonstrates that Dickinson reveres the natural world as greater than her own poetic talents. I plan to expand on the humbling, ecstatic experience which man undergoes at the hands of nature, present in both the poems I have selected, to vindicate Dickinson from a postmodern reading and to ground her poetic methods in the same natural world she honors so highly. 

Nature and man depend on one another, and language proves inextricable from this interdependent relationship.

Another key perspective which will support my argument comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson, a contemporary of Dickinson whom she mentioned in her letters and whose work she no doubt read in detail. Most pertinent to my research is his theory of natural signs, which emphasizes the intertwined meaning of man, nature, and human language. In his conception, “Words are signs of natural facts” and “Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts” (Emerson, “Nature”). Even more apt for my discussion of Dickinson, Emerson calls man “an analogist” who “studies relations in all objects,” much like a poet does (“Nature”). Because the analogist cannot exist without his analogies, nature and man depend on one another, and language proves inextricable from this interdependent relationship. Dickinson brings this theory to bear by weaving external nature with internal feelings and subjective experiences. Her poetry, and especially her use of metaphor, relies on the inherent analogistic structure in the natural world to convey truths about it and show what words can accomplish. Because the poems which reveal the most about her poetics revolve around metaphors of the natural world, I hope to analyze what nature reveals about the truth-telling contained in Dickinson’s unique and excellent work.

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Caitlin Filep is a senior studying English and Greek.