Behind Me-dips Eternity' (721) strives for an equally strong affirmation of immortality, but it discloses more pain than "Those not live yet" and perhaps some doubt. Within the first stanza, the loudspeaker is trapped in life between the immeasurable history and the immeasurable future. Death is represented as the dark of morning hours which will become the light of paradise. The second stanza celebrates immortality as the world of God's timelessness. Instead of celebrating the trinity, Emily Dickinson first insists on God's sole perpetual being, which diversifies itself in divine duplicates. This difficult passage probably means that all person's accomplishment of immortality makes him part of God. The phrase 'they say' and the chant-like insistence of the first two stanzas suggest a person trying to convince herself of the truths. The pain expressed in the final stanza illuminates this uncertainty. The magic behind her is the never-ending scope of time. The magic before her is the offer of resurrection, and the wonder between is the quality of her own being-probably what God has given her of Himself-that warranties that she will live again. However, the previous three lines portray her life as a living hell, presumably of conflict, denial, and alienation. If this is the case, we can easily see why she actually is yearning for an immortal life. But she still concerns that her present "midnight" neither promises nor deserves to be modified in heaven. These uncertainties, of course, are only implications. The poem is primarily an indirect prayer that her hopes may be fulfilled.
One might be enticed to claim that Dickinson is not so much concerned with time as it can determine our earthly living but instead with timelessness, eternity, and immortality. Yet worthwhile our critical factor is how she uses accurately those signifiers of the absence of time as a means of approaching the concept of time, which seems so elusive even to her. Perhaps one of the most successful attempts at defining time through timelessness is achieved in her poem "Behind Me - dips Eternity -" (FP 743). John Vanderstice points out that "the first three lines present an essential, visual image of time" (195):
However, whether this image always suggests "a round style of time () where an eternal history arcs upward, operates through the present, and continues on the equally eternal future ()" is questionable (195). The circular model itself might be disputed as a result of prepositions "behind" and "before" which suggest linearity, however the emphasis here juxtaposes eternity and immortality as representing timelessness on the one hands and time, or the lifestyle in between, on the other. Furthermore, it is not existence therefore, the Being of the world, that is attributed time, however the individual, the lyrical I in the poem: "Myself - the word between -" (emphasis added). This is significant because the poet thus declares that it takes human consciousness in the first place to conceive both of time and of its reverse. The crucial word in this lines, however, is Term, " since it denotes both a specific time period as well as a verbal expression. Oddly enough, this range, unlike both preceding, lacks a verb, unless we apply "dips" from the first series to this one as well. But that could not make much sense. Any verb used for grammatical functions is designated by its tense and so signifies a certain time. The usage of today's tense therefore adequately will fit the first two lines since without future and previous eternity and immortality express the forever now. By abandoning the verb and thus the utilization of a specific tense in the third line, Dickinson handles to enough time dilemma of capturing present, earlier, or future. The "Term" is made up of all. Discussing the individual and presence, this poem also features the actual fact that human lifetime is terminated, framed by start and end. The "Term between" could thus even suggest only interruption of timelessness. The problem detailed by Vanderstice is dissolved by the poet: "The issue of immortality for Dickinson, then, is that if immortality means the continuation of individual consciousness, it must also mean an ongoing knowing of time, whereas if one escapes the knowing of amount of time in immortality, then immortality must imply 'the end of most awareness in oblivion'
In 1863, in the middle of the Civil Warfare, Emily Dickinson imagines floating high above the earth and its history, looking down. From that perspective, she recognizes time itself:
Behind Me - dips Eternity
Before Me - Immortality -
Myself - the Term between -
Although the loudspeaker of this poem increases above record, her soaring journey is stressed. The poem concludes with the image of your dark and stormy nights. She actually is suspended, she writes,
With Midnight to the North of Her
And Midnight south of Her
And Maelstrom - in the Sky
This is a Civil Warfare poem. Projected in to the sky, the loudspeaker imagines herself as a "term" negotiating between eternity and immortality at the heart of the surprise that rages between the dark causes of North and South. But this is a weird civil battle poem. It isn't everything patriotic. It won't take attributes. The personal that Dickinson explains - located between former and future, eternity and immortality, North and South - is remarkably unstable, hard to fix or pin down. Not only is she is in the centre of the maelstrom - she is a maelstrom. During the Civil Battle, when Dickinson was writing and revising furiously, her poetry often assumed a high-flying, abstract perspective on far-off assault. Poems such as "At the rear of Me - dips Eternity" bring together Dickinson's preoccupations with point of view, with historical and theological time, and with the war. Dickinson was interested in what she called "substance vision, " and often presented a poetic viewpoint located somewhere beyond time and above the earth. She was also fascinated with the conflict. The carnage inspired her. With some regret, she described herself as a poet who sang "from the charnel steps" (JL 298). Many of her war poems are about violence, death, and uncertainty; a surprising amount are also aerial point of view poems. But Dickinson's version of the bird's-eye view pushes beyond popular conventions. She has a particular knack for abstract aerial perspectives that are as disorienting as aerial photographs. Dickinson's poetic eye-sight was profoundly molded by the aesthetic structure of modern warfare.
At the beginning of this article, "Behind Me - dips Eternity" (FP 743) offered as an example of your Civil Battle poem that presents an abstracted aerial view. "Behind Me" is also one of the many poems in which Dickinson's "compound eye-sight" is explicitly aerialized to such a great level that she is in a position to see time itself - both historical time (the eternity that extends behind her) and the posthumous future (the immortality that exercises before her). In "Behind Me, " as with of "The Admirations - and Contempts - of time, " the "Height" is somehow related to "Dying. " The grave itself
is an optical device that helps to develop an aerial point of view.
"In back of me - dips Eternity" comes with an unusual usage of tenses.
