The Sarcastic Emily Dickinson

By Steven Scheer

Most people, it seems, want to be rich and famous. There is even a saying in America about celebrities. These are, some people claim, people who are being famous for being famous. Their fame seems to be undeserved, but they have it just the same. Emily Dickinson was a very private person. So private, in fact, that when she saw how a few poems of hers that did get published in her lifetime were edited (changed and made impersonal, in a way), she decided never to publish anything anymore. But - luckily for us - she kept her poems, and they did get published posthumously (after her death).

I use the word "sarcastic" in the title of this blog. But perhaps irony would have done as well. In any case, here is a little poem of hers that clearly goes against the grain of wanting to be - if not rich, at least famous, or - like some celebrities - to be known merely for being known. The poem is very short and simple:

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - Too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'll advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!

She wrote this way before our postmodern age of media where news travels lightning fast - especially bad news or scandal. Notice the irony in the third line? If "they" (the media, if you will) should find out that there are two of us who are not anybody famous, "they" are bound to report it to the world at large. And thereby hangs a tail, to use a Shakespearean phrase. Because if you get into the news for not being a well-known celebrity on the grounds that you and this other person are in that category, you immediately become known celebrities and, thus, you lose your status of being nobodies - that is, you lose your cherished privacy.

The second stanza indicates what, in Emily's view, is wrong with being well-known. But here the shift is from "they" to "us" (albeit indirectly). Those who want to be well-known seem to resemble frogs that croak all day - or through the month of June (why June? I don't really know) - to an "admiring Bog!"

Ah, a bog is a swampy piece of land, a good environment for frogs. But there isn't much else there except luxurious overgrowth of various plants or even weeds or the like. I don't know, I have never been to a bog. But I do know that the verb "bog" is not something nice. To be bogged down is to be stuck.

So, what's the final "meaning" of this poem. I am not entirely sure. And that's okay. I don't think Emily was/is (in her works she still "is") against being somebody in the sense of being an authentic person. But perhaps her poem is precisely about the loss of one's authentic self when one is merely well-known perhaps for simply wanting to be well-known. In the final analysis the poem seems to be a spontaneous little outburst against the possible loss of authentic self-hood due to, what, gossip? Possibly. Though the case of the frog in the second stanza also seems to indict bragging about oneself. My sainted mother used to warn me against that. She used to say, in my native Hungarian: "self-praise stinks." Ah, well.