The Poetry of ‘As If’: ‘The real — fictitious seems’

Abstract

Emily Dickinson’s poetry might well be called the poetry of ‘as if’, as she playfully, earnestly explores the propositions that occur to her about the nature of the world. In Poem 1454 she refers to ‘Costumeless Consciousness’ in such a way as to reveal her notion that in life consciousness inevitably adorns itself in costumes — fictions, hypotheses and propositions — which it imposes on the world. In an early letter to Abiah Root, she invents a fanciful tale of catching a cold and then remarks:

Now my dear friend, let me tell you that these last thoughts are fictions … They are flowers of speech, they both make, and tell deliberate falsehoods, avoid them as the snake, and turn aside as from the Bottle snake, and I dont think you will be harmed. (L 31)

As it takes but a moment of imagination to place us anywhere, it would not seem worth while to stay where it was stale — (PF 66)