Help me understand this Poem!?! PLease

[dickinson lover]

[COLOR=Black]ok i am knew to these poems and i was wondering if anyone could tell me what this poem meant...its by Emily Dickinson...

No Romance sold unto
Could so enthrall a Man
As the perusal of
his Individual One--
"Tis Fiction's--to dilute to Plausibility
Our Novel--When 'tis small enough
To Credit--'Tisn't true!



I need help...please help me understand this poem.... :confused:

[mono]

No Romance sold unto
Could so enthrall a Man
As the perusal of
his Individual One--
'Tis Fiction's--to dilute to Plausibility
Our Novel--When 'tis small enough
To Credit--'Tisn't true!
Welcome to the forum, dickinson_lover, and I send compliments on your screen name. ;)
Much of Emily Dickinson's work, I think, can prove VERY difficult to understand, even after several reads; she has the talent of communicating so much in so few words, resulting that each word engenders an immense amount of meaning. Numerous readers end up with a subjective response, I have found.
The first four lines, in my opinion, contain elements of a "self-reliance" ethical philosophy, entailing that no pleasure from outside one's self could influence nor seem so elite as the contents of one's actual self, or "his Individual One." By her admitting of "Fiction" and "Novel," I think further describes her "self-reliance" logic when referencing others entirely instead of inner reflection, as cliché as that sounds; in her words, rejecting one's own thought and belief and adopting another's, hindering independent thought, subtracts subjective "plausibility" - perhaps what Maslow would call Self-Actualization. Dickinson continues with this thought, writing that the whole of dependently following others, "diluting" one's mind, proves not worth credit, and as good as living in a fiction book, as a created fictional character, constructed by others', "Our," beliefs and thoughts.
German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer wrote similarly that the incessant following and adopting of others beliefs through books, magazines, newspapers (television and Internet, I think, would also seem good examples), and any form of media hinders one's own truly independent thought and freedom.
The transcendentalists, decades later, like Ralph Waldo Emerson (writer of a famous essay, Self-Reliance, among many others), Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and William Ellery Channing would also recommend the independency of ethical thought, sometimes in relatively extreme examples as Thoreau did when refusing to pay taxes for a country in support of slavery.
Good luck! :)

[dickinson lover]

thank you for your time....thanks for the insight...it makes sense

thank you
dickinson lover

[dickinson lover]

I'd be more than happy if i had more more input on this poem...im interested in more interpretations...dont be afraid to write i would love to hear from you...

[byquist]

It's great to see folks cheering for wonderful Emily Dickinson. Apx. 5 years ago read a very thick biography that you'd really like, if not familiar. Quotes a lot of her poems and give the author's viewpoints on them in relation to Dickinson's life at the time.

Title, obviously: Emily Dickinson
Author: Cynthia Griffin Wolff

Actually it looks to have been first published first in 1986.

Until I re-read this book, and really study her poems in quietude which I have none of (may not ever occur) I wouldn't ever attempt explaining a single poem that she has written, even if about a fly or a flea. She is a big-time visionary.