“If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her.”

taymily dickinswift

FaceMePLS via Wikimedia Commons

I mentioned on Notes that I was reading Alfred Habegger’s My Wars Are Laid Away In Books, an immense and comprehensive¹ biography of Emily Dickinson. Anyway, I’m done with the book now.

Perhaps predictably, I found myself thinking a lot about Taylor Swift while reading it, mostly because this paragraph in Habegger’s introduction struck a chord:

One of the reasons readers at all levels respond to her with passionate enthusiasm is that, knowing something of her life and character, they approach her work with these in mind. Again and again, readers feel that, remote and difficult as she is, they are on the track of knowing her. They feel a heartbeat; they receive the words as primal and immediate, as coming straight from life. Sadly, this way of reading is generally a mistake, especially if we succumb to the illusion that we can zoom into her life and penetrate her secret being. One of Dickinson’s paradoxes is that she both invites and deflects such intimacy. …