Emily Dickinson of 16 years of age, the daguerreotype was taken in the Seminary of Mount Holyoke, between December of 1846 and the beginnings of 1847. It is the only authenticated image of the poet. She will always be the icon of the adolescent woman. This picture portrays a piece of an envelope with Emily's annotations, the beginning of a poem, which she wrote during night-time. This collection of pieces of paper, envelopes, were recently found in a trunk in a Massachusetts

Death points toward sheer mystery, a point of no return, about which nothing can be said. The annihilation of consciousness is abject discourse which cannot be named, it's taboo in Freudian parlance. The mystery of death confronts humanity via the spectacle of life. Life is something known, but at the moment of perplexity, aporia , it becomes unknowable. Life-death is totem and taboo. Much like the philosopher Martin Heidegger suggests in traces of his Being and Time : Being