The Existentialist Response

Abstract

Although as an explicit philosophical movement existentialism belongs to the twentieth century, its father-philosophers were Kierkegaard and, as a background presence, Kant, and all the conditions for its emergence as a stance or a way of life or an explicit philosophy already existed in the consciousness of Emily Dickinson’s time — her distinction is that she brought to conscious expression in poetry what was potentially already there; and, in doing so, she speaks with a voice more recognisably attuned to our century than to her own. To use her own words, we see her

better for the Years

That hunch themselves between —

The Miner’s Lamp — sufficient be —

To nullify the Mine —

(no. 611)

Rightly understood, she herself, in and through her poetry, can be a ‘Miner’s Lamp’ to help nullify the darkness that still underlies much of our surface attitudes and responses.