Wetzler
English 11
1/17/17
Meaning between “There’s a certain Slant of light” and “A Light exists in Spring”
American Romanticism started in the late eighteenth century, it is a literary, artistic, a rejection of seventeenth-century enlightenment ideas. It is based on creativity and imagination, and express dissatisfied for the reality. Romantic poet ordinarily seek for the universal truth. They believe reason and logic are the only way to truth. How do you get the truth? Feeling, emotion, passion creative energy, even imagination, are the ways to access truth. Also, nature is a great gift for them. Romantic poets love nature, like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Nature, peace and environment, gives them thoughts and ideas to make …show more content…
In the first poem, light means despair, loss, hardship; and the second poem, light means God, knowledge, truth. There is two different times for it, first is “Winter Afternoon”, another is “Spring”. Different timing can express a different feeling. Winter can describe a worse mood, like pain. Spring is more like a positive word. But there’s common between this two poem, poet use Imagination Intuition all for the second stanza. “Heavenly hurt”, we can see that is spiritually hurt, internal scars, really painful. The second poem, Solitary fields, it makes me feel like lonely. However, first one “Landscape listens”, not alone; “upon the furthest slope you know, it almost speaks to you”, not alone. And the biggest difference is between two poems, every ending has a different meaning. “When it goes, ‘tis like the Distance, On the look of Death” That pain is almost killing her, but it didn’t, so she got the conclusion: “What does not kill you, it will only make you stronger”. For the “A Light exists in Spring”, “A quality of loss, Affecting our Content, As Trade had suddenly encroached, Upon a Sacrament”, The things we used to trust, used to believe, became a “merchandise” for trading, that will a sin that made.
So my conclusion is, American Romanticism had impacted the world since 1800s; Emily Dickinson is a great poet for 18th century American history; she wrote these two poems, these two poems got the different meaning, to shout out her feeling: we will be stronger every time we felt pain, moreover we should keep what we believe, our religious faith,truth, and do not ever trade