Inward Journey

By T.E. Kalem

THE BELLE OF AMHERST

by WILLIAM LUCE

compiled by TIMOTHY HELGESON

The candlelight of a questing spirit can shame the sun. The luminous portrayal of Emily Dickinson by Julie Harris does this with piercing beauty.

This is a monodrama artfully pieced together from the 19th century poet's poems, letters and reclusive life. Dickinson's was an inward journey, an intrepid exploration of the heart, the mind and the soul. The only tracks she left were her finest poems.

Americans get both nosy and fidgety when a genius like Dickinson fails to "go public" like a common stock. The idea of solitary, unapplauded artistic effort as its own reward seems unnerving. Ferreting scholars have turned out reams of speculation about her poetry's springing from unrequited love, particularly for a married minister named Charles Wadsworth. But Emily was a closemouthed New Englander, and she knew how to keep her secrets.

She also knew the lonely burden of her quest:

To fight aloud is very brave

But gallanter, I know,

Who charge within the bosom,

The cavalry of woe.

The artist struggles with intractable materials -- in the writer's case, words -- to bring forth a new birth of consciousness. The pain is the passion. If the work lives, the birth is successful. From the minutiae of the constricted world Dickinson knew -- tending her father, cooking, the muffled gossip of Amherst, Mass., in the 1870s and '80s -- she built a bridge to the transcendental mystery of existence. At her best, she succeeded. What makes Julie Harris' performance so moving is that she perceives and conveys these moments of transcendence.

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