I Can Wade Grief

To suggest the formidable dimensions of life’s sorrows, Dickinson uses the Himalayan Mountains in the distant Asian subcontinent. Why? There were no shortages of local mountain ranges she could have used—the Rockies, the Appalachians, for instance, had both been mapped by cartographers, and the Berkshires were literally in her Amherst backyard. So why go halfway around the world for a symbol for life’s difficulties and the magnitude of not living in fear of them?

These mountains were not the contemporary tourist-friendly mountain range. In the mid-19th century, the Himalayans were exotic, their true dimensions unknown (it would not be until after World War Two that aerial surveillance provided any key to the actual dimensions of the mountains). No one knew the contours of the mountains nor had any reassuring direction for any ascent. The Himalayans were too dangerous to scale—such heroic enterprises were reserved for those who saw in the ascent into the clouds a metaphor for spiritual journeying. To engage the Himmaleh was to glimpse God’s face, to be spiritually purified, enlightened.

For Dickinson, engaging life’s sorrows would be akin to engaging such a mountain range. Unlike the Appalachians or the Rockies, already tamed by maps, the Himmaleh mocked such efforts. It is that sense of dimension-less dimensions that give to life’s agonies the reward Dickinson wants to offer. One doesn’t scale the Berkshires—one climbs them. Scale the Himmaleh? You have done something mystical, enlightening, and spiritually invigorating.