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Unlike the myth of Platonic hermaphrodism or Romantic yearning for fusion, Dickinson’s desire is not to restore something lost. What she desires is alterity, the exteriority of the Other, and its most intense form is found in her erotic love poems. Her idea of the sexual relationship is based on sensuality and susceptibility. Neither the self nor the Other is abolished; both are in fact confirmed, since the Other is desired as Other, not as an other to be reduced to the subject. In many of her poems, we see the speaker’s hunger for the lover’s face or observe situations in which lovers are watching and touching each other face to face. In this characteristic Dickinsonian face-to-face relationship, the beloved one can be caressed but not possessed. Dickinson’s love poems reveal her desire to explore these aspects of proximity and duality in the relationship with the Other. She does not idly presuppose the fusion of the two sexes. However, many Dickinson scholars, including feminists, presuppose the “wholeness in love” paradigm when they discuss her love poems. Contrary to their premise, the difference between the sexes is not the duality of two complementary terms, because the idea of complementary terms presupposes a preexisting whole. To say that sexual duality presupposes a whole is to posit love beforehand as fusion. The pathos of love, however, consists of the insurmountable duality of beings. It is a relationship with what always slips away. The relationship preserves alterity rather than neutralizing it. Dickinson’s love poems vividly highlight the difference between two individuals in love and preserve the duality as a requisite part of the relation, which is why her love poems contain so much separation, despair, and death.
Unlike the myth of Platonic hermaphrodism or Romantic yearning for fusion, Dickinson’s desire is not to restore something lost. What she desires is alterity, the exteriority of the Other, and its most intense form is found in her erotic love poems. Her idea of the sexual relationship is based on sensuality and susceptibility. Neither the self nor the Other is abolished; both are in fact confirmed, since the Other is desired as Other, not as an other to be reduced to the subject. In many of her poems, we see the speaker’s hunger for the lover’s face or observe situations in which lovers are watching and touching each other face to face. In this characteristic Dickinsonian face-to-face relationship, the beloved one can be caressed but not possessed. Dickinson’s love poems reveal her desire to explore these aspects of proximity and duality in the relationship with the Other. She does not idly presuppose the fusion of the two sexes. However, many Dickinson scholars, including feminists, presuppose the “wholeness in love” paradigm when they discuss her love poems. Contrary to their premise, the difference between the sexes is not the duality of two complementary terms, because the idea of complementary terms presupposes a preexisting whole. To say that sexual duality presupposes a whole is to posit love beforehand as fusion. The pathos of love, however, consists of the insurmountable duality of beings. It is a relationship with what always slips away. The relationship preserves alterity rather than neutralizing it. Dickinson’s love poems vividly highlight the difference between two individuals in love and preserve the duality as a requisite part of the relation, which is why her love poems contain so much separation, despair, and death.
