Boundary crossing remains a key theme in this chapter, which discusses the relevance of quest to Dickinson’s sense of the poetic life. In Matthew’s depiction of the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus draws attention to the path he must travel, praying: ‘O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done’ (Matt. 26.42). Here there is a process to be undergone, a time to be lived through and a challenge to be accepted. These things are mortal and in theological terms they are transitory. That just makes them inescapably real for the lonely hero of the synoptic Gospels.

Dickinson used classical quest narratives to structure her appropriation of the Gethsemane story in order to convey the personal transition and loneliness that she felt as an inescapable part of the poet’s life. This chapter explores the typological significance of Jacob’s struggle at Peniel for Christ’s struggle in Gethsemane, arguing that Dickinson was inspired by a biblical blurring of divine and diabolic power in both stories and that she drew parallels between this struggle and her own poetic project. The discussion also embraces phenomenological distinctions between space and place which are relevant both to Dickinson’s poetics and to the geographical contours of religious experience. Old Testament and classical notions of ‘wilderness’, ‘wandering’ and journeying to the place of the dead had a central place in Dickinson’s understanding of her own vocation.