Crime and Punishment The most important things to read on this are ...

What does Rimbaud <strong>most</strong> dislike in contemporary bourgeois culture? (Beauty, women, talk
of degeneration &emdash; cp. the criminal, who was thought of then as criminal because he
was degenerate; the homosexual <strong>and</strong> the colonial other, or subject.)
How would you compare Rimbaud's critique of his age with Nietzsche's?
What is new in Rimbaud's poetry? How would you begin <strong>to</strong> compare it with Emily
Dickinson's?
Emily Dickinson
Born, 1830 at Amherst, Massachusetts; the oldest <strong>and</strong> <strong>most</strong> traditional part for settlement in
America, called "New Engl<strong>and</strong>." Most wrapped up in the past, <strong>and</strong> in Christianity, <strong>most</strong>
remote from black culture.
In 1855, the family moved <strong>to</strong> the house that she lived in till her death in 1886. Her brother,
Austin, married Susan Gilbert in 1856. <strong>The</strong> wife was ED's <strong>most</strong> valued female friend, <strong>and</strong> the
emotional intensity has often prompted discussion of lesbianism in Dickinson's work.
In 1858 <strong>and</strong> 1861, ED drafted letters <strong>to</strong> a mysterious "Master" who has not been identified,
<strong>and</strong> in 1861, seems <strong>to</strong> have had a crisis-year. From this time on, she became more <strong>and</strong> more
reclusive, <strong>and</strong> dressed in white:
- the colour of virginity, of purity
- of Miss Havisham, in Dickens’s Great Expectations
- the crisis-colour for America, since 1861-5 saw the Civil War <strong>and</strong> the question of the black
as an issue that would not go away. White is therefore the colour of obsession, or of
pathology: if she dressed in white, that might suggest that she was recognising, or responding
<strong>to</strong> a sickness in America; which affected American women, <strong>and</strong> also denied their desire.
- the colour of snow, of paper that has not been printed on (see the poem "Publication is the
auction" no. 709. Dickinson wants her work <strong>to</strong> remain like white paper.
On Dickinson, you should <strong>read</strong>:
S<strong>and</strong>ra Gilbert <strong>and</strong> Susan Gubar, <strong>The</strong> Madwoman in the Attic, 1979
John Cody, After Great Pain, 1971
Robert Weisbuch, Emily Dickinson's Poetry, 1975
Paula Bennett, Emily Dickinson, Woman Poet, 1991
Martha Nell Smith, Rowing in Eden: Re-<strong>read</strong>ing Emily Dickinson
(there is a large secondary literature on Dickinson. For the idea of the hymen, see the essay
by Geoffrey Hartman in "Criticism in the Wilderness," 1980.
For a Bibliography, see Judith Farr, ed. "Emily Dickinson: A Collection of Critical Essays"
1996.
Note what there is not in ED's poetry:
No his<strong>to</strong>ry in the poems
No his<strong>to</strong>ry <strong>to</strong> be worked out from the poems: they seem <strong>to</strong> have no his<strong>to</strong>ry
No identifiable speaker.
No ranking, no selection, or ordering of the poems
No study of how <strong>to</strong> write, or comments on what she writes
No plot <strong>to</strong> the poems overall
No titles
No punctuation.