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Emily DickinsonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
When “This World is not Conclusion” references the discipline of philosophy, it does so using synecdoche, a figure of speech in which a part rhetorically stands in for a larger whole. Here, philosophy represents all academic and scholarly knowledge. While the world “beyond” and its “species” (Line 2) simultaneously “beckon” and “baffle” (Line 5) the mind, seemingly inviting ongoing speculation into its mystery, “Philosophy, don’t know—/ And through a Riddle, at the last—/ Sagacity, must go” (Lines 6-8). Academic study will ultimately never understand this subject because in the end, academics are also human: Eternity “puzzles scholars” (Line 9) just as it confuses everyone else. Thus, “sagacity” or judgement and discernment “must go” in order for a person to reach out to eternity outside the normal structures of logic and intellect. Traditional schools of thought, represented by philosophy, are ultimately inadequate to solve the “riddle” of the world to come.
While defining the various lengths people have gone to and the sufferings they have endured in order to “gain” (Line 10) admission into the world “beyond” (Line 2), Dickinson makes mention of crucifixion. She writes, “To gain it, Men have borne / Contempt of Generations / And Crucifixion” (Lines 10-12).
By Emily Dickinson
A Bird, came down the Walk
Emily Dickinson
A Clock stopped—
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A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)
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Because I Could Not Stop for Death
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"Faith" is a fine invention
Emily Dickinson
Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Emily Dickinson
Hope is a strange invention
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"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
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I Can Wade Grief
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I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind
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I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
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If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
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If I should die
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If you were coming in the fall
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I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
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I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
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Much Madness is divinest Sense—
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Success Is Counted Sweetest
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Tell all the truth but tell it slant
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The Only News I Know
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