“I’m Nobody! Who are you?”. Repetition as a Project in Kierkegaard and Dickinson

Abstrakt

The article presents a comparative analysis of Kierkegaard’s Repetition and the Dickinson poem “I’m Nobody! Who are you?”, in relation to their poetic and philosophical projects. Through the figure and presence of the ‘nobody,’ it analyzes the manifold patterns of relations between the self and the Thou, the reader and the creator, the writer/poet and the process, as well as between the various existences of the ‘I.’ Thanks to this, both works turn out to be dynamic explorations of identity, which the key question is who am ‘I’ in relation to myself. The article strongly emphasizes the performative aspect of Kierkegaard’s and Dickinson’s works, making it possible to read them as existential exercises in which being a ‘nobody’ is not negative, but is a constant opening to a new, uncertain and interesting existential possibility.