Rumi, Dickinson, and Whitman: A Dialogue of Possibility and Self

Emily Dickinson once wrote: “I dwell in Possibility — / A fairer House than Prose.” Her metaphor of the self as a dwelling with infinite windows and doors has its counterpart in Rumi’s Masnavi, where the soul is described as a house for passing states.

Persian (Masnavi V, 155):
هست مهمان‌خانه این تن ای جوان
هر صباحی ضیف نو آید دوان

This body is a guest house, O young one.
Each morning, a new guest comes rushing in.

Rumi’s guest house is Dickinson’s house of possibility. Both imagine the self not as a fixed structure but as a dwelling open to arrivals from beyond. For Dickinson, these arrivals are “possibility” itself, enlarging the chambers of being. For Rumi, they are the visitors of joy, sorrow, fear, or wonder — each to be welcomed, each to be let go. Both affirm that life’s fullness is not in closure but in receptivity.

Another Masnavi passage expands this sense of openness into a vision of perpetual becoming.

Persian (Masnavi IV, 135):
آمده اول به اقلیم جماد
وز جمادی در نباتی اوفتاد

At first he came to the realm of mineral;
from mineral he passed into plant.

Rumi traces existence as a journey through forms — from mineral, to plant, to animal, to human, and onward. Dickinson’s “chambers as the cedars” resonate here: each stage is another room, more spacious than the last. Life, for both poets, is not confinement but expansion — an invitation into ever-wider possibility.

If Dickinson finds kinship in Rumi’s house of possibility, Walt Whitman finds his mirror in Rumi’s cosmic self. Whitman’s “Song of Myself” exults: “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” In the Masnavi, Rumi sings the same truth:

Persian (Masnavi IV, 117):
ما ز بالاییم و بالا می‌رویم
ما ز دریاییم و دریا می‌رویم

We are of the Above, and to the Above we rise.
We are of the sea, and to the sea we return.

Here the self is not bounded; it belongs to sky and sea alike. Whitman’s multitudinous “I” and Rumi’s wave-soul both dissolve into the Whole, affirming that individuality and universality are one.

And just as Whitman delights in the newness of each perception, so too Rumi celebrates renewal:

Persian (Masnavi IV, 124):
هر زمان نو صورتی و نو جمال
تا ز نو دیدن فرو میرد ملال

At every moment, a new form, a new beauty;
in seeing anew, weariness fades.

This is Whitman’s sacred present tense, where each blade of grass or pulse of the body is fresh. Rumi affirms the same: creation is not finished but endlessly unfolding, and the soul that can see with new eyes never tires of life.

Conclusion

Placed alongside Dickinson and Whitman, Rumi’s Masnavi becomes a voice in a centuries-long conversation. Dickinson dwells in possibility; Rumi opens the door of the guest house to welcome new possibilities. Whitman sings the self as cosmos; Rumi declares that we are of the Above, of the the Unbounded Ocean of Being. Each affirms that human life is not a cage but a dwelling, a journey, a song — and when we are open to what comes, we are renewed by what is and what may come.