Observations placeholder
Dickinson, Emily - My life closed twice before its close
Identifier
000830
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
This is a fascinating poem. One can take it as meaning the shock of either her nearly dying, - a near death.She may have been asthmatic, for example, and had an attack.
But there is also - given her spiritual progress, a possibility that she had a rebirth experience, which is indeed a sort of heaven and hell and you do feel as though you have died.
Near death is rarely traumatic in the way she describes it, [hell] as such the latter may be a real possibility.
A description of the experience
The Complete Poems of 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