If a writer chooses a life path that is far away from the norm, he or she will be deified repeatedly in the future. Dickinson is like that. She chose to stay behind closed doors after she turned 25 and remained unmarried her whole life. She wrote poems without titles, without rhyme, and full of dashes "-". What is even more legendary is that a man who left nearly 1,800 poems behind him was almost unknown during his lifetime.
Part of Dickinson's appeal in every sense of the word is precisely that she invites you but evades you at the same time. For more than a hundred years, people have tried to interpret her poems from various angles. They have been fascinated by her almost primitive and intuitive use of words, and they often get lost in them. Dickinson rarely even shared these poems with friends. Paul Celan once said of George Steiner, "At some levels, [the poem] does not expect us to understand at all, and our interpretation (that is, our reading itself) is an intrusion." This is even more true for Dickinson. .
Stills from the first season (2019) of the TV series "Dickinson".
Therefore, it is quite difficult to write a biography for Dickinson. For a long time, people even thought that her art was static and could be interpreted without corresponding to the stage of life or the context of the times. But these are just due to the limited means of living. Contemporary scholar Alfred Harberg collected and compiled currently known documents about Dickinson and wrote a biography "My Wars Are Buried in Poems" in chronological order. Harberg found that Dickinson's works often reflected different stages of her life.
Although the poet's life is not the only way to understand his work, this is at least an opportunity to go behind the scenes. The ambiguous attitude towards war coexists with concern for others; she is intoxicated with the status of a "little girl" in love, and also makes fun of the norms of women... Such Dickinson is complex, entangled but sober. She uses her unique pathos and joys The intersecting irony creates an inescapable battle related to survival.
Original author｜[US] Alfred Harberg
"My Wars Are Buried in Poems", [US] Alfred Harberg, translated by Wang Bohua, Zeng Yifeng, Hu Qiuran, Echo | CITIC Publisher, February 2024.
Autobiographical creation at its peak
There has long been a consensus among academic circles: Dickinson's peak period of creation was from 1860 to 1865. The specific number of creations, according to Thomas Johnson's statistics, was 86 in 1861, 366 in 1862, 141 in 1863, and 174 in 1864. According to Franklin's most recent statistics: 88 songs in 1861, 227 songs in 1862, 295 songs in 1863, and 98 songs in 1864. This output is quite astonishing, and although Franklin's figure is more reliable, it is only an estimate. Some days she even writes several. In "I Send Two Sunsets Away" in 1863, she happily boasted of her fertility:
I raced with me during the day -
I completed two - several stars -
and he - only made one -
But we must remind ourselves that this is not a diary, and we know next to nothing about the original context of her daily creations. Due to the lack of drafts, notes, faithful memoirs, etc. of poems written in the early 1960s, we cannot determine how these poems are related to her life. Only a few poems can be dated with certainty, and most can only be speculated upon when they were written; although we can also learn some information from poems embedded in letters. However, the most important poems expressing personal feelings are only preserved in poetry albums without providing any textual background.
has only a few first-person poems - "I have suffered heavy losses twice" and "Heart!" Let's forget him" - can reveal some of the poet's story. This type of poetry was prolific around 1860. Some of the first-person experiences were placed in the present, some in the past, and most of them suggested an eager exploration of the poet's special destiny. The narrator of "I Am the Littlest of the Family" reflects on her sense of insignificance and privacy: "I can't bear to live - shouting - / How ashamed I am of the noise -". In "For Years I Hungry," she imagines walking to a table filled with food when she's hungry, but feeling "unwell—weird."
In another song, she looks back on her previous life, a state of severe poverty all year round: "A small mosquito will starve to death - living as small as me." Although these "I" memories are full of exaggeration and hallucination, they express real personal struggles - "a life-long struggle."
In these colorful autobiographical poems, Dickinson puts on a false mask in order to understand her own essence.
In "The Malay Got the Pearl", a desperate, dark-skinned Malay jumps into the sea to get the pearl, and a noble speaker sees his own cowardice in his opponent: "The black man will never know/I--" Also – pursue it”. Inspired by an article in Harper Monthly and illustrated with a dark-skinned diver, the poem sees the poet constantly thinking about longing and being alone ( "I cast the dew" "Born a bachelor"). How far can we go by matching the story told in the poem to Dickinson's real life? Someone suggested that the Malay man was Austin, the pearl was Sue, and Emily was the earl who wanted to jump into the sea for Sue.
This kind of reading method is both too literal and too allegorical, which bluntly deprives Dickinson of the freedom to change roles at will. After all, she was also a Malay who ultimately won. "As if" appears in many poems - "As if a small Arctic flower", "As if the sea is about to part", "As if a Goblin carries a meter"... There are obviously countless poems of this type.
The soul is trapped in the body,
And the body is trapped in the void
But there is still something personal; if the allegory in the poem changes, its emotional core does not, and those emotions always erupt from the huge central volcano, Like rolling magma on Mars. "I Dwell in Possibilities" seems to be talking about unrestricted fantasy. The imagination breaks free from the reins of life and runs freely. The final verse points out the real theme: "Stretch out my narrow hands / Gather the heaven." The poem always revolves around one theme - desire. The final turn to heaven is because the earthly conversation is interrupted and can only be completed in heaven. Emily said when she was 20 years old: "Don't you think...these brief, imperfect meetings have stories to tell...the place is in the sky."
In 1862, the poet put the idea that sprouted when he was 20 The view is pushed to the extreme:
Paradise is a place where the soul is so stretched that the soul disappears -
The architect - cannot prove again - its - location
It is vast - like our capacity -
Reasonable - like our ideas -
For those who have the heart He who is eager enough, it
is here, not far away -
"stretched like this" means "to that extent", although the concept of distance is not excluded. Like "I Dwell in Possibility," this poem attempts to express: Since heaven is the product of the soul's dreams, everyone can get it as long as you desire it enough. Beginning with infinity, Dickinson returns to its source—the place where the soul is trapped in the body, and the body is trapped in the void.
"Dwelling in Possibilities", [US] written by Emily Dickinson, translated by Wang Baihua and others, Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House, March 2018.
Many poems such as "He Forgot and I Remembered" and "I Showed Her Heights She'd Never Seen" deal with the same questions we see in letter after letter: Why didn't you write letter? Why is so-and-so always silent? Am I the only one who remembers it? Have I offended you? will you forgive me? Don't you write a letter? Pooh sums up his sister's life in a basic pattern: the constant loss of friends ("Death preyed on her again and again, each time with a twinge of pain"). If coupled with "neglected", Pooh's summary would be more accurate.In a poem possibly addressed to Bowles, Dickinson seems to be trying to rein in her passionate nature:
What shall I do - it whimpers so - The little terrier inside me
barks all day and all night Jumping -
In a more extreme poem, she is a lovesick martyr for love. Before she dies, she sings the last song soaked in blood for the man who stabbed her to death:
stab her to death - The bird building a nest in your arms -
, do you hear her last refrain - Bo!
"Absolution" - "Better" - Bo!
"Carlo is left to him - when I am gone"!
The last two lines represent the broken and bleeding heart of the bird, and every "pop" is a mixture of foaming blood and singing. Jesus said, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” and the bird’s “final refrain” expresses the desire to choose a most desirable lover for the murderer. This shocking poem is completely beyond the reach of good taste and proper self-respect. But how could someone who lives in "possibilities" stop there?
The theme of "agony" appears in several poems in 1859 and later became one of the key themes of Dickinson's poetry in the early 1960s. Her poems use the word "hurt" (including nouns and verbs) 21 times in total, all of which appear between 1860 and 1863. Instruments of torture and crucifixion - "screwdrivers," "metal teeth," "a weight with a needle" - are now almost commonplace, and together with the allusion to the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus, these are associated with Relevant to the narrator's own suffering. There is a poem in the poetry album written around the spring of 1861. The narrator in it writes about the most direct pain she felt in writing:
I will know why - when time ends -
I am no longer Think hard -
Christ will explain each pain one by one
In the beautiful classroom in heaven -
He will tell me the promise of "Peter" -
And I - amazed by his sorrow
Will forget this drop of pain, it is now
Burning me - burning me!
Peter had previously promised to be with the Lord during His trials, but later denied that he knew the Lord. The narrator hopes that one day when she reaches heaven, Christ will tell her the pain of abandonment, and she will finally let go of her own pain. What Dickinson longs for most is to end her pain. From this point of view, she does not seem to be a masochist in this poem.
Stills from the first season (2019) of the TV series "Dickinson".
In 1862, as the pain faded, Dickinson looked back:
... That prayer
Yesterday - I knew it all -
The hot one - "Thou hast forsaken me" -
Recited fluently - Here -
"La Martha Bathethanis” – “Why have you forsaken me?” – were the last words Jesus uttered on the cross. This poem, sent to Frances and Louisa (apparently after Lavinia's death and before Lorraine's death), is an Orthodox demonstration that pain is good for the soul. This view appeared in a sermon sent by Wadsworth to Dickinson in 1858: "Character is developed in growth and hardship. It requires enduring countless pains, not just pleasures."
Despite this (Dickinson (seemingly taking this idea to heart), her most profoundly moving ordeals, such as "I Like the Look of Pain," "I Feel a Funeral, In My Brain," and "After the Pain,... A formal feeling." We also note that these three poems were included in the 16th and 17th collections of poems around 1862. As far as we know, they have not been read by anyone.
How to understand Dickinson's love poems?
A series of poems describing pain composed between 1861 and 1862. They express their attachment to an unknown man in the first person, alternately calling him "master" and "signor". , Italian) "sir" (sir) "caviler" (he) (he, nominative case) "him" (him, accusative case) "you" (you).
One of the reasons why this collection of love poems is striking is that the narrator's voice is full of frustrated longings and passionate fantasies. Sometimes the narrator dwells on the past. Sometimes she wished she could be with him again, or for eternity. What remains unchanged is the insurmountable distance between them, as in "Ah, the Moon, and the Stars!" "", she finally admitted that "the distance between him and me is farther than the sky." Despite this, she reiterates her beliefs over and over again, such as in another poem about the moon, where she compares her absent lover to the moon, and she follows its tides.
What is the relationship between this series of love poems and Dickinson's own life experience is still an unsolved mystery.
Some readers, regardless of the existence of sexual nouns and personal pronouns, suggested that the lover in the poem is actually a woman. Some readers blindly adhere to the principle stated by the poet, that is, the "I" in the poem is a "hypothetical person", so they basically read these marriage poems as fiction. Others avoid this issue and regard them as separate and independent "texts". All the above solutions are derived from their respective positions and will inevitably erase the half-hidden and elusive autobiographical content.
Another possibility is that Dickinson lost her mind and could not distinguish between reality and fantasy. She herself spoke of her "insanity" in several passages, the earliest of which was written in 1852. She said to Sue: "When I miss those I love, my rationality is gone. Sometimes I really I'm afraid I'll have to go to the hospital to cure this hopeless insanity."
Some scholars ignored the joke and exaggeration and took her words seriously, the most representative of which was John Cody, who considered Dickinson. On Austen's mental breakdown after marrying Sue: "Emily's self was like an opal full of cracks and fragments, so fragile that it could no longer be cohesive into a whole, and now and then it showed this or that fractured surface. ”
We need to be wary of this (admittedly vivid) picture and its corresponding diagnosis, because here arises a paradox that is difficult to explain: a fragmented self, and a resourceful integration embodied in the poet’s work. Furthermore, many of Dickinson's contemporaries, who could read, write, and were outspoken, left no record of her madness.
How to understand Dickinson's love poems? There seemed to be only one possible way: that she had some kind of painful relationship with a real man, and that this was her reaction to that relationship. Of course, even if we connect the dots of the poet's life to find the man, we must remember that she was a poet who preferred fiction, fantasy and mystery. She may or may not have had a special "box / in which his letters grew," but she may have had a correspondent.
Stills from the second season (2021) of the TV series "Dickinson".
There is an obvious connection between Dickinson's love poems and the second and third letters to the "Master," but the mystery is rife.
Based on the paper and handwriting, Franklin determined that the letter was written in 1861. The apology letter, written in pencil, expressed extreme anguish and began, "Ah! I offended it - didn't it want me to tell the truth? Daisy - Daisy - offended it." The other was written in ink and didn't look like a draft. If Dickinson hadn't made some corrections at the beginning of the letter, the letter should have been mailable, so I had to make a new copy and leave it. Got this draft. Apparently, the poet was caught off guard by a letter from an unknown correspondent, so at the beginning of the letter, she responded:
Master:
If you see a bullet hit a bird - and he Tell you that he was not shot - you may shed tears for his kindness, but you can't help but doubt his words -
a deep wound, another drop of blood soaked in your daisy's chest - and then do you believe it?
The following content is not directly mentioned in the poem: the injured and bleeding bird, the pain caused by her master not accepting her as she is now, the truth and loyalty, but the poem and the letter still echo each other in many aspects.Her desire is so frank and expressed so fully and completely: "I want to see you more, sir - this is my biggest wish in this world - this wish - slightly adjusted - will be my only wish for the sky."
What she wanted was not marriage (obviously she couldn't get it), but some kind of private, non-physical union where no one needed to know that she would always be the best girl anyone could want.
Paradoxically, Dickinson made a childish request, but expressed it in a very warm, full, almost masterful way. Although she reveled in her humble "'little girl' status," she mocked the norms of womanhood and made her desires explicit and explicit. Here, she is the pursuer, the seducer, setting the course of the conversation to get the other person to give up their reluctance. She even assumed that the two of them reversed their genders - "But if I had a beard on my face - like you - and you - had daisy petals - and you cared about me so much - what would you do?" She imagined this erotic scene. One scene—prickly stubble and glossy petals—takes the form of an inversion, so that what is assumed becomes the vehicle of what is. Despite its displacement, this letter reaches something of an extreme in its direct expression of desire and pain.
Although the poet calls herself "daisy", which symbolizes her ordinaryness and insignificance, she knows very well that she is also a volcano. Her correspondent complained that she had not told him everything, to which she replied: "Vesuvius spoke not - nor did Etna - thousands of years ago - one of them - but uttered a single syllable, which Pompeii heard, forever Hide-" Although she knew that there were many things that could not be said, she still bravely uttered a "syllable" like Mount Vesuvius.
Creation is not for recognition,
but to express a battle for survival.
Those who think that the American Civil War had no impact on the poet have probably not read her correspondence with the Norcross sisters.
In March 1862, President Stearns' beloved son Fraser was killed in action. She wrote to her cousins and truly reported the condolences of the local residents. A few weeks later she wrote in a consoling letter to Uncle Joel, "Many brave men - died, this year - and they were not alone - not like in the past - before the war broke out." By the end of 1862, Dickinson was thinking more about the war, telling her cousins how the horrors of war had permeated her life:
Since the war began, grief has not only been reserved for a few, but has enveloped us all. heart; if the pain of others can help resolve one's own pain, there are too many such medicines now... I read another poem by Robert Browning and was very shocked - until I remembered that I, alone, My little way, "From the Morgue Steps" sings. Life feels more powerful every day, and as long as we have enough courage, this power will be even greater.
This important text reveals the multiple and complex relationships between the poet's painful creative experience, the pain of war, and the picture of heroism. Bereavement had been a defining experience for her, such as the recent deaths of Aunt Lavinia and Lamila. The war amplified and summarized her thoughts on more universal issues such as life, aging, sickness and death of mortals, and ultimate value. Now, as she inches closer to the greatness she and Louisa anticipated in October 1859, she discovers that her newfound strength is somehow connected to the trials facing the entire nation. It seems that her most basic commitment has been recognized.
Stills from the third season (2021) of the TV series "Dickinson".
Despite her isolation, Dickinson was still very much a part of her time. To separate her from the American Civil War is to miss her poems of the early 1960s - what would have been a great and classic adventure had that staggering catastrophe not occurred not far away, a descent into personal hell. It can't happen.
As the North came together under Abraham Lincoln and the South attempted to secede from the Union, (Emily Dickinson's father) Edward Dickinson continued to be associated with the Constitutional Union Party.This small party, led by John Bell of Tennessee and Edward Everett of Massachusetts, attempted to quell the division between the North and South simply by reaffirming the Union and the Constitution. In December 1859 the Bell-Everett Party (as it was nicknamed) held a "League Meeting"; one of its many vice-presidents, Edward Dickinson, submitted a letter denouncing Public statements from the North and the South said their tone was too harsh and suggested that both sides compromise and live in harmony.
In 1860, Massachusetts federalists elected Edward as their candidate for acting governor. Although Edward immediately refused (Henry Morris, who defeated him in 1854, was also on the candidate list), the Bell-Everett Party newspaper 10 days later Still put his name at the top of the editorial column. Emily wrote to Frances in Boston, asking her to "bring my respects to the 'Bell and Everett Party' if she happened to pass by their organization while on her way to school? I heard they wanted me to be an agent." The governor's daughter. If they were cats, I would pull its tail, but they are just a bunch of patriots, so I had to give up the fun." This strange statement, which was both contemptuous and respectful, was consistent with her father's confused and confused position.
Emily, like her father, has a vague and contradictory attitude towards the war. Sue and Winnie were in high spirits, looking forward to "running to the battlefield" in winter, but Emily only thought about watering the geraniums in winter. Patriotic women actively prepared bandages, but she refused to help. As she wrote in 1861, she could not "knit blankets, or boots," and therefore "there will be no winter this year - because of the soldiers." The dangers, both physical and mental, that soldiers faced were so far away from Emily that when a Northerner on his way to the war stopped at her door to request a bouquet, she wrote in her oddly sharp tone, "I think he thinks we There’s an aquarium.”
However, Dickinson, like her father and brother, was deeply concerned about victory, defeat, and death on the battlefield, and she often expressed different ideas. A few months before Fraser Stearns' death, she hoped her "rosy face wouldn't come home as frozen as frost". When a professor's widow loses her second son, Dickinson conveys the woman's experience of physical and mental collapse, describing the young man's ghost "riding the night's winds - back to the country cemetery where he had never dreamed "What a dreamless sleep!" Dickinson told Bowers when he returned from his trip to Europe in the fall of 1862: "We often said to each other when you were away - how terrible it is to lose in a battle!" Easy - now you're back". From this we can surmise that she shared the experience of the Union army's defeat at Bull Creek in August 1862.
There are a few poems that explicitly mention the war, such as "When I was little and a woman died" and "Feeling alive is a shame", which express the casualties of war. In "He Fights Like He Has Nothing to Lose," a soldier who feels that his life is "of little use anymore" emerges unscathed on the battlefield while his comrades fall one after another. The American Civil War provided Dickinson with a starkly symbolic theater, a world of ultimate terror and ecstasy, where earthly life was forgotten and everything and nothing was lost. The war provided her with a powerful tool to explore her own limits.
Stills from the third season (2021) of the TV series "Dickinson".
Intentionally or unintentionally, between the two poems mentioned above, there is the following poem about reputation:
To defend my reputation,
All the applause of others
It is superfluous - flattery
is purely superfluous -
My reputation is lacking - even if
my name is high -
it is just a reputation -
a vain crown -
Her self-affirmation ("my reputation") does not rely on the praise of others to prove it, lacking reputation Nor can it be compensated by the praise of others.These lines, embedded between the two glorious battle poems, obviously not shown to anyone else, make it clear that Dickinson's work is making a statement: she is not writing diligently to gain recognition, but to express a story. It is an inescapable, arduous, and existential battle, so irony with a mixture of sadness and joy is the most appropriate attitude. It means a lot to her to know that others are fighting too.
The content of this article is excerpted from "My Wars Are Buried in Poems" with the permission of the publisher.
original author/[American] Alfred Harberg
excerpt/Shen Lu
editor/Xixi
introduction part proofread/Wang Xin
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