Emily Dickinson

1830 - 1886
 Early Life
 She was born to religious, well-to-do family and
had a normal childhood in Amherst,
Massachusetts, attending school, taking part in
church activities, reading books, learning to
sing and play the piano, writing letters, and
taking walks.

 She studied English and classical literature, and

Latin; also was taught in other subjects
including religion, history, mathematics,
geology, and biology.
 Early Life

 1840 - Emily was educated at the nearby Amherst

Academy. She studied English and classical
literature, and Latin; also was taught in other
subjects including religion, history, mathematics,
geology, and biology.

 In 1847, at 17, Dickinson began attending Mary

Lyon's Mount Holyoke Female Seminary ( Mount
Holyoke College)

 Returned home after less than a year at the

Seminary, and she did not return to the school.
 Early Life
 Some speculate that she was homesick, however
there is also speculation that she refused to sign
an oath stating she would devote her life to Jesus
Christ.

 Everyone expected her to marry and raise a

family like most women of her class.

 During this time Dickinson also referred to a

trauma that she described in a letter: "I had a
terror -- since September -- I could tell to none".
The cause of that terror is unknown.
 She becomes a Poet and Recluse
 "Dickinson used precise language and unique poetic
forms to simultaneously reveal and conceal her private
thoughts and feelings. What happened to turn a young
girl into an unrecognized poet who never left her
house?

 Dickinson's young years were without no turmoil.

Deaths of friends and relatives, including her young
cousin Sophia Holland, prompted questions about death
and immortality.

 From the Pleasant Street house, located near the town

cemetery, Dickinson could not have ignored the frequent
burials that later provided powerful imagery for her
poems.
 Speculations
 Went to DC with her father, a congressman, because
she had fallen in love with a married lawyer, who soon
died of TB.

 There fell in love with another married man, a

minister. He moved to San Francisco in 1862. About this
time she wrote, “I sing as the boy does by the burying
ground, because I am afraid.”

 Within a few years, she had retreated from all social

life in Amherst. She remained in her parents’ house
and where she gardened, did household work and
wrote poetry, which she would sometimes send to
people as gifts for valentines or birthdays, along with a
pie or cookies.
 Only a few of her poems were published in her
lifetime.

 She sent four of them to a critic, Mr. Higginson,

asking for his help.When he sent suggestions for
changing her poems, she replied in a letter,
“Thank you for the surgery; it was not so painful
as I supposed. I bring you others, as you ask.”

 Dickinson was not the innocent, lovelorn and

emotionally fragile girl sentimentalized by the
Dickinson myth. Her decision to shut the door on
Amherst society in the 1850’s transformed her
house into a kind of magical realm in which she
was free to engage her poetic genius.
 Her seclusion was not the result of a failed love
affair, but rather a part of a more general pattern
of renunciation through which she, in her quest
for self-sovereignty, carried on an argument with
the puritan fathers, attacking with wit and irony
their cheerless Calvinist doctrine, their stern
patriarchal God, and their rigid notions of “true
womanhood.”

After her death, friends and relatives found bundles

of her poems, nearly 1800 in all.
They edited and “corrected” her poetry and
 had it published in installments.

 In 1955, Thomas H. Johnson finally published a

collection of her poems that had not been
“corrected.” These are the versions we read today.
 Famous poems of Emily

1. Success is counted sweetest (1859)

2. I'm nobody! Who are you? (1861)
3. "Hope” is the thing with feathers (1861)
4. I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (1861)
5. There’s a certain Slant of light (1861)
6. Wild Nights – Wild Nights! (1861)
7. This is my letter to the World (1862)
8. I dwell in Possibility (1862)
9. I heard a Fly buzz– when I died (1862)
10.It was not Death, for I stood up (1862)
Thanks for Watching

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Success is Counted Sweetest
-Emily Dickinson
 About the poem

 "Success is Counted Sweetest" is an early poem

written by the American poet Emily Dickinson in
1859.

 It makes the bold claim that success is best

understood by those who fail, and illustrates this
claim by contrasting a victorious army with a fallen
soldier from the other side.

 The poem has the rare honor of publication during

Dickinson's lifetime (in 1864), though it was
published anonymously; of her approximately 1800
poems, only a handful were published during her
life.
 About the Poem

 The poem ‘ Success is Counted Sweetest’, deal with

basic human concerns such as love, pain, fame,
death and immortality. The reflection of an intense
and painful struggle is noted in simple diction,
colloquial rhythms and unconventional imagery.
The key message in the poem states that to achieve
success we have to undergo pain of defeat. And
that is vital progress.

 The poem “Success is Counted Sweetest” is made up

of twelve lines split into three stanza.

 This poem does not have any particular rhyme

scheme, which allows the author to convey her
point with ease.
 Text of the Poem

Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host

Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of victory

As he defeated – dying –
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
 Summary of the Poem

 People who always fail are the ones who

appreciate success the most. To truly value
something sweet like success, you have to really,
really need it.

 Not a single soldier in the army that won the

battle today has as clear an understanding of the
meaning of victory as does a dying soldier from
the opposing army.

 To this dying soldier's ears, the distant sounds of

celebration ring out painfully clear.
 Stanza 1

Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

The first stanza which is in quatrain, establishes the

base theme: that the one who can best understand the
true meaning and value of success is the person who
has faced failure.
To appreciate the taste of nectar one has to be really in
deep desire to attain. In Greek mythology, nectar was
the drink of the gods, which has the power to give
immortality. In common usage, a nectar is any delicious
drink or, figuratively, any uplifting experience.
 Stanza 2

Not one of all the purple Host

Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of victory.

The first stanza which is in quatrain, establishes the

base theme: that the one who can best understand the
true meaning and value of success is the person who
has faced failure.
 Stanza 2

As he defeated – dying –
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

The first stanza which is in quatrain, establishes the

base theme: that the one who can best understand the
true meaning and value of success is the person who
has faced failure.
Thanks for Watching

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