Person on the Page

One of the most interesting tidbits to emerge from my recent dabbling in genealogy is the revelation that Emily Dickinson is my sixth cousin. A few times removed, yes, but we’re cousins, nevertheless.

Now that I’ve made this discovery, I feel as if my life finally makes sense.

It makes sense that I spent all those hours as an undergraduate at Frostburg State University’s Ort Library poring over her poems, looking up all the words I didn’t know in the massive dictionary housed on its regal podium in the Quiet Section of Floor Five. (Hail, language! that podium seemed to say. Hail, words!)

It makes sense that when I was a doctoral student the topic for my dissertation dawned on me at West Cemetery in Amherst, Massachusetts, as I stood at Cousin Emily’s grave. No, I didn’t hear a voice; she didn’t whisper to me from her little cottage in the sod. Or, did she? Oh, of course not. The topic just came to me because of — well, you know — her.

I may have felt drawn to the poet and her writing because something in my genes resonated with something in hers. An interest in words, ideas, verse, the intensities of desire, the magnitude of death — all these may have been programmed into both Cousin Emily and me through the same inherited chromosomal coding. At least I like to think so.

Now that I know about our familial connection, and now that I have written the dissertation, earned the doctorate, and am nearing the end of my academic career, what resonates most with me about Dickinson is her proclamation, penned sometime around 1860 in her characteristically sprawling, loopy handwriting, “I’m Nobody!”

What a coincidence, dear Cousin. I feel like a nobody, too. I can relate.

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you — Nobody — too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Dont tell! they’d advertise — you know!

How dreary — to be — Somebody!
How public — like a Frog –
To tell one’s name — the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

Emily Dickinson, #260 (Franklin)

In her poem that begins “I’m Nobody!” Dickinson (or at least the colorful persona she cultivates in her writing) speaks as a self-declared nobody calling upon other nobodies to form a secret club that excludes the mass of self-asserting somebodies. In the second stanza, she condemns somebodies as “dreary,” leading readers to conclude that being a nobody must be superior.

What’s a nobody anyway?

Now, I understand that Dickinson means something different with her self-identification as a nobody than I mean with mine. The nobody status that she claims may result from her exposure to the nineteenth-century Emersonian edict to depart from popular beliefs and opinions and forge one’s own way based on what Emerson calls “an original relationship to the universe.”

Emerson achieved this relationship, he claims, by becoming a “transparent Eyeball,” observing the universe from the vantage point of invisibility. He is, in other words, nobody. And being a nobody, for him, is a privileged position.

Caught up in Emersonian fervor, Dickinson implies, I’m Nobody because I can be. I’m a member of a prominent and prosperous New England family. I have no husband to answer to. I can understand life the way I choose. I don’t have to embrace mainstream beliefs — religious, political, or social. I don’t have to follow the crowd.

Dickinson was an elitist. She mingled among the ranks of the popular philosophers of her day. And she was a retreatist. She could disdain society with all its pressures and inhabit a universe of her own choosing while living in the secluded comfort of her father’s mansion. She was a little rich girl who could afford to declare herself a nobody.

On the other hand, when I say I’m a nobody I’m thinking of my flaws and failures. I’m lamenting that, although I earned the degrees and had the career, I never achieved as much as I’d hoped to. I never made a name for myself. I never accomplished what I’d hoped to with my writing, either. How’d I do at being a wife and mother? Many stumbles and falters, as I see it. When I say I’m a nobody, I mean that I never was able to be what the world sees as a success.

I suspect that feeling like a nobody is common among twenty-first-century people who reach a point in their lives when they realize they will never live up to their dreams. Here we are marching toward the end of our careers, inching toward the end of our lives, regretting our failures, missed opportunities, mistakes — all the ways we missed the mark.

To Dickinson, being a nobody is a condition to be desired. It’s a crown of achievement to distinguish oneself from the mainstream, to follow one’s own path and to live for oneself.

To some of us twenty-first-century nobodies, not so much.

While we contemporary folks may say, If only I’d earned even a little recognition, a little fame, Dickinson writes that it’s dreary to be trying like a frog to ribbit one’s way into public notice.

But, wait. Do I hear a voice calling from the grave?

Even as I’m writing this, I sense a distant mumble from Dickinson’s alabaster chamber. No, I’m not hearing voices. Or, am I?

I think I hear her say, Wait a minute, Cousin. Elitist? Retreatist? Really?

I was a single woman living all my life with my parents. I baked bread for Daddy to earn my place in his house, for gosh sake. I tried going to college, but the headmistress sent me home. Something about my being “hopeless.” You call that elite?

Okay, I wasn’t poor, but as a nineteenth-century woman I didn’t have many opportunities, did I? I’m the same kind of nobody that you are, aren’t I? Think that wasn’t as frustrating for me as it is for you?

I stand corrected, Cousin.

During her lifetime, Dickinson was a hard-working artist, producing almost 2000 poems, only a handful of which were ever read by anyone. They couldn’t be read, because for a woman of her time being a writer was not considered appropriately “feminine.” So, she wrote privately, enjoying none of the public acclaim received by her male contemporaries who took up the pen. Not until decades after her death were her poems published. Not until then was she regarded as the only woman in the nineteenth-century American literary canon. Definitely, by then, a somebody.

During her lifetime, she really was a nobody. So maybe her poem reflects the mental defense mechanism psychologists call Sweet Lemons — an effort to make the undesirable seem desirable. She may be saying, I’m Nobody! And I’m going to make the best of it.

What can we nobodies learn from my famous cousin?

Ironically, Dickinson’s poems exploded upon the American scene long after her death, making her now one the most prominent somebodies in the literary world. In college literature classes everywhere, her poems voice their public ribbit the livelong academic year. If recognition was what she really wanted, she got it — albeit posthumously.

If many of us nobodies look closely at our lives, our flaws and failures and our lack of recognition, I wonder if we might rethink our bitterness and reconsider our position in the world. Could we be exercising the psychological defense mechanism known as Sour Grapes — finding the negative in what are probably relatively good circumstances?

Wouldn’t many of us benefit from embracing our nobody status? Couldn’t we step out of the fray, put a pause on competing, lay aside our desire to be known for our accomplishments, and enjoy what’s available to us along the quiet sidelines of the race for recognition?

As I come to the end of a disappointing career, and contemplate the eventual finish of what will have been an imperfect life, can I learn to love being a nobody? Can I learn, for instance, to cook a fine meal, not to impress anyone — just to please me? To sit down and savor each bite of it without regard for what’s next on my schedule, without looking ahead to the next task, the next goal?

Can I learn to write for the love of writing, without worrying about the number of readers I attract? Just for the joy of it?

Perhaps I can learn to really see, to really experience my life, without the distractions of public participation. I can amble into the woods, say, with no plan or purpose. An almost invisible observer, I can notice the greening of trees in spring. Hear the melody of a skylark in the distance, the muted shush of a breeze through leaves.

And as I meander toward a stream, I can note at the water’s edge the insistent croak of an unassuming frog.

Cover Image: AI generated by Gemini