Unto Me? I Do Not Know You

Unto Me? I Do Not Know You - context Summary

Engaging Divine Identity and Doubt

Written in Dickinsons later religious mode and published posthumously in 1914 within The Single Hound, the poem stages a startling, compressed dramatic speaker who alternately disavows and asserts a Christlike identity. It compresses theological paradoxes—exile and presence, power and humility—into terse declarations that question recognition, authority, and salvation. The voice emphasizes paradoxical status ("Late of Judea / Now of Paradise" is echoed in tone) and insists on humble worth, reframing divine authority as intimate and unostentatious. The poem reflects Dickinsons ongoing, probing engagement with Christian language and the selfs relation to the divine.