Emily Dickinson has often been called a paradoxical poet, or a poet of paradox. The word ‘paradox’ is
employed frequently to refer to the enigmatical aspects of Dickinson’s work or of her life. Dickinson
wrote almost 1800 poems and numerous letters. In Johnson’s edition there are over 1000 letters
addressed to more than 100 recipients, and this is only a small part of the correspondence she
maintained. Dickinson’s correspondence is an important source of information for scholars writing
on the life or personality of the poet. But in spite of the great number of poems and letters she
wrote, Dickinson still eludes us. Somehow we do not really get to know who she was, how she lived
or what her motives were for writing as she did. There is a paradox in knowing so much about her,
and yet so little, but the paradox we find in her poems is of a quite different nature.
In Paradoxes Their Roots, Range and Resolution Nicholas Rescher says: “A paradox is literally a
contention or group of contentions that is incredible – beyond belief. … One must distinguish
between logical and rhetorical paradoxes. The former type is a communicative predicament – a
conflict of what is asserted, accepted of believed. The latter is a rhetorical trope – an anomalous
juxtaposition of incongruous ideas for the sake of striking exposition or unexpected insight.” (3-4)
A paradox is first of all a phenomenon within logic. Generally a paradox arises when premises that
are all plausible but mutually inconsistent entail a conclusion which is also plausible. We have a
plurality of theses, each individually plausible in the circumstances, but collectively inconsistent.
Every member of the group stakes a claim that we would be minded to accept if such acceptance
were unproblematic. But when all these claims are conjoined, a logical contradiction ensues. (4-7)
Paradoxes are often posed as a kind of riddle. Assuming that of two contradictory statements only
one can be true, the riddle can (and should) be solved.
