A VISION OF ONENESS

Emily Bronte seemed to be obsessed with what she called her Gondal Poems which she began collecting together in February 1844. This obsession continued right through the publication of Wuthering Heights in 1847 until May 1848.  Her poems were about imaginary heroes and heroines and contained a vision of oneness.  It was this vision that she sought to communicate in her poetry.  These poems and their themes provided a retreat for Emily’s imagination, for her fantasy.  They became a necessity for her life. They were a “benignant power” a “solacer of human cares” and a “brighter hope when hope despairs.”  -Ron Price with thanks to Juliet Barker, The Brontes, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1994, pp.435-6.

You started collecting your poems
the same month Samandar was born,
the great Apostle of Baha’u’llah,
one of the many heros and heroines
of the Cause. You finished just before
the Conference of Badasht with the Bab
in the fortress of Chihriq. And now my
imagination has a home among these
saints and martyrs that is a “benignant
poer”, a “sure solacer of human cares”
and a “brighter hope when hope despairs.”1

You died when the siege of the Shrine of
Shaykh Tabarsi began: aged thirty, as tough
as boot leather, an unbending spirit, proud
endurance, gifted soul, genius of liberated
mind and tranquil spirit: perhaps your spirit
was at Tabarsi!2

1 ibid., p. 436.
2  Emily Bronte had “a vision of the essential oneness of life which she gradually and haltingly communicated in her poetry.”(Winifred Gerin, Emily Bronte, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997, p.149. She died on 19 December 1848 the same day as the siege on Tabarsi began.

Ron Price
26 October 1999

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                                    GRADUALLY AND HALTINGLY

From 1837 to 1848 Emily Bronte, the author of the famous novel Wuthering Heights, wrote a collection of poetry known as 'the Gondal Poems.'  These poems were peopled with heroes and heroines. They tell of the life of the imagination, the place of her retreat.  These poems were a hymn to the imagination, to her private world.  It was a world where she expressed a vision of the essential oneness of life.  It was a vision, too, that came to find its apotheosis in Wuthering Heights. It was a vision gradually and haltingly articulated of a radiant world "marred by her growing awareness of humanity's misery."  These years were a decade, for Bronte, in which the unity of the individual with the universe formed the basis for her intuitive sense of humankind's oneness.-Ron Price with thanks to Winifred Gerin, Emily Bronte, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997, pp.144-154.

Your vision, too, was one of death
to which we all advanced
with those wild-eyed charioteers,
our day-to-day hours,
drawing us to be with those we love,
undivided, all and only one--beyond the veil,
where finally the sleep our lifted in eternity.

Your vision, too, brooding as it was
on the nature of things,
had a converse with angels,
holy, heavenly, surely a leaven
that leavened your world of being
and furnished the power
through which your art manifested.1

1 due in part, at least, to the new forces emerging in the world in the 1840s. Perhaps Bronte experienced what the Bab had prayed for during these years; namely, for that which will bring comfort to their minds, will rejoice their inner beings, will impart assurance to their hearts.(The Bab, Selections, 1976 p.179.)
1 there is no question, too, of the great power released into the world in the 1840s: all the world's which the Almighty hath created benefited through the power released by the Babi martyrs of the 1840s.(Gleanings, p.161)

Ron Price
6 July 2001