Mariella Gattini

A Quiet Passion is an extraordinary, delicate, contemplative film about the life of poet Emily Dickinson, portrayed brilliantly by Cynthia Nixon. Her teacher tells her: “It’s not about how you feel, it’s about how you ought to feel.” And later, “You are alone in your rebellion, Miss Dickinson.” That statement, in my opinion, is very significant in the life she had to live.

When her family asks why she was so unhappy in school, Emily replies that she suffered “an acute case of evangelism”, and she adds that there’s bullying and coercion, and that she suffered “a good combination of both”. What a remarkable piece of art, written and directed by Terence Davies. Clever film; outstanding execution.

The pace allows for a meditative insight into the soul of this remarkable creature in the rhythm of her time. Her friend says to her: “Don’t be too radical, Emily. Radicals don’t thrive in this country.” To what Emily answers in short: “What is there then? Death?” Her friend replies: “… in America we consider death our personal failure.” Those remarks remind me of how deep we are drowning in noise today, and how dumb the rhetoric has become.

Her mother, whose name was also Emily, states: “I prefer to listen and remain silent, that way a prejudice doesn’t seem like an opinion.” Emily Dickinson’s entire family was unique, intelligent, and exceptional. She is one of those souls that will remain with us, as long as we live.

“You have your poetry.” says her sister-in-law, to which Emily replies: “You have a life, I have a routine.”; “But in the matter of the soul, you are rigorous.”; “Rigor is not substitute for happiness.”

She had to go through the Civil War, as far as she knew 600,000 men had perished. Her brother Austin had the opportunity to hear Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in person; he found it “shocking in its brevity, he spoke for about three minutes, not memorable.”

Emily thought that the war was nonsense: “… and for what? To end slavery, which should have never flourished in this country in the first place.” Being an abolitionist in her time was considered practically a sin.

She suffered from kidney disease, which today is called nephritis, but in those days was known as Bright’s disease. She also appeared to have suffered from epileptic spasms. Despite all her health issues she was in charge of much of the domestic affairs, and it is for that reason, I surmise, that she only found peace at night to write.

Emily was focused more than anything else on death, transcendence, and immortality. She didn’t know anything outside her life with her immediate family; her mother and father, her sister Lavinia, and her brother Austin. She admitted that she didn’t know better, that she didn’t find herself at ease “among strangers,” and as she grew older, she became more and more reclusive.

She made fun of people obsessed with fame, and with having “a posthumous reputation. Still, to be racked by success. But I would like some approval before I die,” she confides to Reverend Wadsworth, with whom she seemed to have had a platonic mutual attraction.

At the end of her life she says to her sister: “We become the very thing we dread. I’ve become bitter.” Her sister Lavinia, Vinnie, answers, “… you are so easy to love.” But she also advices Emily to keep her religious, political, and gender rebelliousness quiet, for fear of “retribution,” as she herself states. Emily left her boarding school behind, stopped going to church, and thought that gender also was war, just like the Civil War—because she considered the life of women slavery too.

She confides in her sister-in-law: “For those who live minor lives and are deprived of a particular kind of love [referring to sex], we know best how to starve, we deceive ourselves, and then others. It is the worst kind of lie.” And later, “If I cannot have equality, I want nothing of love.”

Emily never had the chance to know how important her work would become for all of us, and how big of an inspiration she would be, not only to live a life of contemplation and creation, but also to help us go in a direction of depth, substance, and profound love for the written word. She just asks of us, people in the future, “… judge tenderly of me.”

If I could talk to her, I would say: I don’t judge you at all, I can only admire you. I only resent the fact that you are not longer among us. I wish you were. The only thing that appeases my longing is your writing, your work, which for sure will reach the eternity you so laboriously earned.

In response, Emily would say to all of us: “I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you Nobody too?”