Dickinson's Dao

Abstract

Drawing upon Mikhail Bakhtin's idea of the epistemic advantage of a cultural outsider, this essay seeks to enrich the newly developed Chinese critical perspective of rereading Emily Dickinson by arguing that Dickinson's explorations of spiritual ideals resonate with Daoism and Chan Buddhism in their focus upon non-action as a perfect action that entails consummate skills, sensuous eradication, and egoless aesthetics. Specifically, Dickinson uses the perfect actions to illustrate wandering (staying) at ease; she uses droppingbrain to emblematize eradicating senses; she exhorts selfsurrender and non-interference when dealing with the other; and she practices an egoless aesthetics that surpasses her predecessors and contemporaries. 1 K E Y W O R D S Chan Buddhism, creative understanding, Daoism, Emily Dickinson, non-action, Ralph Waldo EmersonRegarding a creative understanding, Mikhail Bakhtin privileges an outside position since it is "only in the eyes of another culture that foreign culture reveals itself fully and profoundly" (Bakhtin, 1986, 7). Bakhtin further indicates that a fruitful cross-cultural dialogue stems from "new questions for a foreign culture, ones that it did not raise itself" (p. 7). While much Emily Dickinson scholarship has worked to show how she is legible within her own cultural and artistic context, scholars have become increasingly aware of the need for more intercultural explorations. Echoing Bakhtin's insightful observation, Gary Stonum cautions that "a regional focus risks blinding the critic to larger patterns" (Stonum, 1998, 58). Inder Nath Kher also claims that an approach confined within "American history and culture" will "minimize the range of her poetic perspective" (Kher, 1974, 4-5). Both Stonum and Kher call for a crosscultural perspective that breaks through cultural boundaries and brings new cultural resources into critical considerations. There remains ample space for scholars to illuminate the ways that Dickinson as a powerfully idiosyncratic rule-breaker indefatigably reaches towards a larger circumference. For a critic situated in the Chinese context, significant "new questions" about Dickinson might include how Dickinson can be, and is, read by Chinese readers situated