They live in an era when the influence of Puritanism on social thought is gradually declining, and romanticism in the field of literature and art in the later period is dying but unsustainable. But they got rid of colonial rule politically, strengthened the central power, lifted the shackles of slavery economically, and the industry and commerce developed rapidly. Even, they began to expand outward and became more and more aware of their existence. A new national feeling has awakened and is being strengthened. Culturally, the era when the moon in the old world was rounder than that in the new world is also becoming a thing of the past. American literature, which once existed as a tributary of English literature in the former suzerain country, now strongly demands its own language, image and characteristics. In short, it needs its own personality.
Dickinson and Whitman are closely connected with the spirit of the times in thought and emotion. Poetry, in the United States, when did it have a "modern" look and when did it have an American style? These two poets are a watershed.
She began to write poetry at the age of 20. 1862, when she was 32 years old, she wrote to Thomas Wentworth Higginson for advice in order to write a poem. But Higginson was not Bole who discovered new stars. For her poems, he suggested "postponing publication". And she actually put off the publication until she came back.
Poetry is like a person; Poetry is a person. Dickinson's poems fully embody her unique personality. However, only personality, there will be no poetry, there will be no poet. The source of poetry creation can only come from life. Dickinson has a life. Although her experience is not extensive, she has a deep understanding. Although she was once called a "nun" by some people who didn't have much contact with her, she, like any normal woman, has tasted the ups and downs of love in addition to being unmarried and childless for life. After Dickinson's careful study and her own obscure poems, her love life has no privacy at all. She told us:
I sip the fragrance of life.
I'll tell you how much I paid.
No more, no less, for life.
She wrote down the germination, burning and disappearance of love with sweet but not greasy joy, blazing and implicit confidence, bitter but not sour pain and endless everlasting regret songs. Love is the focus of her poems, fresh and unique. For example, "Sir, why do I love you", she can even write a few rare poetess feelings that only women can understand:
He groped for your soul with his fingers.
Like a pianist fiddling with keys.
Then, officially put on the music.
He makes you dizzy gradually.
Get ready for your fragile heart
Meet that magical blow
With a faint knock, from far to near.
Then, slowly, let you.
When you are free, breathe a sigh of relief.
You have a cool bubble in your head.
Once again, solemnly, bang, thunderbolt.
Strip your soul.
The hurricane's fingers clung to the forest
The whole universe is quiet.
She loves nature, and writing about nature is like writing about home. She is full of kindness and gentleness to all the "residents" in nature and "beautiful residents in the jungle". She observes carefully and often paints accurately and vividly. She sticks to the truth and has uncompromising loyalty to it. She is convinced that "truth, goodness and beauty are one". She wrote some ordinary scenes, sometimes thrilling and sometimes pleasing to the eye. Its charm lies in that it always makes people feel an unquestionable, real beauty that has never been realized. Sunrise is a theme as old as the universe itself, but it is written like a brand-new discovery with a very strong sense of modernity:
The sun came out.
It changed the face of the world
Vehicles come and go in a hurry, like messengers.
Yesterday was old!
She loves life, loves life, and tries to explore, explain and express the meaning of life from many aspects, levels and angles. There are also a lot of remarkable deaths in her poems, because many relatives, friends and neighbors died before her because of illness, war (civil war, foreign war) or poverty in the small world she came into contact with. Dealing with death is so much that even death makes her feel "polite" and "kind". Because there are more terrible and unbearable things in the world than death, she is not afraid of death.
Her writing about death is unusual, especially different from popular sentimental cliches. Since life begins and death begins, she is "not afraid to know", just like death. 1In May, 886, the last suicide note she left to her two "little cousins" before she died, she only wrote a short sentence consisting of two words: "Calledback". Today, what we see on Dickinson's tombstone in Emminster Cemetery is only her "year of birth" and "year of return", not her "year of death".
Her death poems have a little outlook on life and death, but not entirely, because although she is not afraid of death, she is more attached to life, and the thought of life makes her "ecstatic". When she writes about death, or even "experiences" after death, humor and humor often overwhelm sentimentality.
Her speculative ability is as strong as her imagination. She writes philosophy, which is incisive and profound, intriguing and full of epigrams. She thinks:
Tell the whole truth, but not directly.
The road to success is tortuous.
……
The light of truth must be gradually released,
Otherwise people will be blind.
In general, her thoughts always have perceptible characteristics, and always appear in the form of size, sound, color and texture. For example, "Hope is something with feathers", which can fly, sing, have a body temperature and inhabit people's hearts. But there are also some poems, almost the noumenon of * * *. Among these poems, there are more lovely and chewy ones:
Beyond the fence
There are strawberries growing there.
I know, if I want to.
I can climb over.
Strawberries, how sweet!
But a dirty apron.
God must scold me!
Oh, honey, I think if he was a child, too
He will climb over, if, he can climb over!
On the other hand, people talk more about God, heaven, eternity, immortality and faith. This is of course a reflection of her own cultural background. After all, she grew up in a strong religious atmosphere. But to a greater extent, she often pours out the building blocks in her chest with the wine glasses on the religious altar, and expresses her impression of life with the words of the Bible and the tone of a missionary.
She pursues the poems of "living", "breathing" and "living". Since when did she make up her mind to write such a poem and become such a poet? The exact date is unknown. We only know that 1862 was her most creative year, in which she wrote 366 songs. At least one of the reasons why she gave up socializing was writing poetry, except for the frustration of love. Reading through the complete works, we have to admire her broad vision in a limited world. She made effective use of her limited direct experience, and learned everything she came into contact with. Housework can provide material, and school life is another source, so that she will write the sentence "God is in that beautiful classroom in the sky". She made up for her experience with rich book knowledge and unique imagination:
To create a grassland, only one alfalfa and one bee are needed.
Alfalfa, bees,
Plus daydreaming.
Daydreaming is enough,
If you can't find the bees.
Her vision is not limited to her ivory tower and narrow self-exploration. Although it should be admitted that she is indeed a talented landscape painter in the soul world: almost everything that should be in the human soul is written by her. By reading newspapers and periodicals, she also cares about the world outside her home, and there are many works with thorns. She once wrote in a letter: "Please forgive my sobriety in a crazy world".
She attacked "Parliament is a bone without bone marrow"; She mocked "insight" for obeying "rigid madness". She also cares about the fate of the country and even talks about international disputes. She has a poem satirizing "Great Britain doesn't like those stars".
Dickinson's creative heyday coincided with the Civil War, and 800 songs were written during the Civil War which ended in the abolition of slavery. She didn't write about the war she was not familiar with, but she didn't avoid it either. "Success tastes sweetest" and "It's too late to win" are obviously branded with war.
Dickinson was regarded as a pioneer by imagist poets who appeared nearly 30 years after her death, because her published poems at that time were more in line with their creed than the works of imagist drafters. As mentioned above, most of her poems use image language. Some images created by her can be regarded as three-dimensional and clear, which are deeper and fuller than the "images" completely rejected by some imagist poets later. Dickinson and Whitman, who inherited the romance, have undoubtedly performed in many works; People agree that modernism is the first of its kind.
By 1998, Emily Dickinson's poems edited by R·W· Franklin were published, and there were 1789 known Dickinson's poems. The increase in figures is not simply the difference between 1789 and 1775, but because Franklin took apart what he thought was wrong according to his own textual research and eliminated the wrong income.
We now know that Dickinson was once called "Sister Emminster", which is only a one-sided impression of some people and an exaggeration of some individuals. Dickinson, like her sister, missed a good marriage because her father loved her daughter too much and looked down on the young man who proposed marriage. The two sisters are single all their lives, but this does not prevent them from experiencing the whole life process that normal women can experience. 1932, Emily's niece Martha revealed for the first time in the book Face to Face that her menstruation had a secret affair with a married man. In her later years, she lived a sweet quasi-marriage life with Judge Lord, who was twenty years older than her and had recently lost his wife. In fact, she also left some poems about the joy and ridicule between men and women:
Shame, don't flinch.
In a world like ours,
Shame, stand up straight.
This universe is yours.
Some people in the world criticized Dickinson for her debauchery and being the only niece of Judge Lord, for fear that Lord's remarriage would affect her possible inheritance.
From June 5438 to October 2008, I visited amherst, and Amherst College was the host. They kindly arranged my residence in Amhersting, south of the east end of the main street, just opposite Dickinson's home and Evergreen Street. "Home" has been designated as "Dickinson Museum", and the adjacent "Evergreen Residence" is now estimated to be open to the public as a part of the museum. Sure enough, as Wang Meng told me, my Chinese translation "Selected Poems of Dickinson" is displayed in the center of many language versions. At the request of the curator, I signed the translation.
What impressed me most about this trip was Amherst Bookstore. The variety and quantity of Dickinson's biographies, works, materials and literary creations are sold there, which shows the momentum and fruitful research results of Dickinson research in the United States. The similarity is that most of them are original achievements, and none of them are the synthetic products of conformity. When you see Dickinson: An Unexpected Buddhist, it must be strange that the author still calls her "amherst Bodhisattva" in the preface. However, after reading it, you will admit that it makes sense and become a family statement.
After reading the works with different viewpoints, we can't help but marvel at Dickinson's profound spiritual realm and rich connotation of poetry, which can stand the exploration and interpretation of various theories and angles.