My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close

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My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close

by Emily Dickinson

My life closed twice before its close—
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

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This poem by Emily Dickinson is eight lines long, broken into two four line stanzas, without a set meter, and including a rhyme scheme of ABDB for each stanza.

Thematically, the poem focuses on heartbreak, using death as a metaphor.

Stanza One:

My life closed twice before its close—
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

The first line of the poem lets us know that the Speaker is not being literal. Dickinson refers to her life’s “close” – a word used as a substitute for ending (or dying.) As one cannot literally die, twice, before one dies, we know that “close” is being used to represent another ending event in her life. The most likely stand-in for death, in my opinion, is heartbreak. It’s notable though that the Speaker does not clarify.

It could be that the “closure” to which the Speaker refers is a relationship that ended, or the death of two loved ones (though the latter obviously also equates to the end of a relationship.) Either way, the result of these events led the Speaker herself to feel as though she died.

Line three’s use of the word Immortality is bitter, and perhaps even sarcastic. The Speaker views herself as one who has died, more than once, but continues on anyway – like an Immortal might. The end of the stanza is filled with bitterness and hopelessness as she wonders whether she will be forced to endure another close. She personifies Immortality and seems to view it as a cruel actor.

Perhaps Dumbledore liked Dickinson and used her metaphor?

Stanza Two:

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

The second stanza describes the third close about which the Speaker worries. Line five gives us the Speaker’s feelings about it, though, describing the potential third close as “huge, so hopeless to conceive” before comparing it to the two events she mentions in the first stanza.

Lines seven and eight describe both heaven and hell. The references to the afterlife feel somewhat ironic, given that the Speaker also describes herself as immortal, but I believe there was a purpose. The Speaker treats her mortal life as if she is already in the afterlife. Fusing a permanent (Immortal) life with the notion of already being in an afterlife creates a sense of hopeless despair in the poem’s tone. There is a sense that no escape exists nor is improvement possible. She describes heaven as a place of parting and hell as a place that provides plenty of parting. Thus, the two places seem like the same place. And thus the afterlife is described as a continuation of her (im)mortal life. The three concepts together seem to create a sense that heaven, hell, and this world are all the same place and that they are places which must be endured hopelessly, bitterly, and forever.

The poem leads us back to an examination of the writer’s life. Here we find a writer who lived as a recluse. From wiki:

Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, into a prominent family with strong ties to its community. After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family’s home in Amherst.

Evidence suggests that Dickinson lived much of her life in isolation. Considered an eccentric by locals, she developed a penchant for white clothing and was known for her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, to even leave her bedroom. Dickinson never married, and most friendships between her and others depended entirely upon correspondence.

While Dickinson was a prolific writer, her only publications during her lifetime were 10 of her nearly 1,800 poems, and one letter. The poems published then were usually edited significantly to fit conventional poetic rules. Her poems were unique for her era. They contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends, and also explore aesthetics, society, nature, and spirituality.

Although Dickinson’s acquaintances were most likely aware of her writing, it was not until after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Dickinson’s younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that her work became public. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, though both heavily edited the content. A complete collection of her poetry became available for the first time when scholar Thomas H. Johnson published The Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1955. In 1998, The New York Times reported on an infrared technology study revealing that much of Dickinson’s work had been deliberately censored to exclude the name “Susan.” At least eleven of Dickinson’s poems were dedicated to her sister-in-law Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson, though all the dedications were obliterated, presumably by Todd. These edits work to censor the nature of Emily and Susan’s relationship, which many scholars have interpreted as romantic