Emily Dickinson head-and-shoulders portrait via The Library of Congress
An animation from a Harvard neuroscience course explores representations of perception
THEATLANTIC.COM|由 NADINE AJAKA 上傳
We grow accustomed to the Dark -
When light is put away -
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye -
A Moment - We uncertain step
For newness of the night -
Then - fit our Vision to the Dark -
And meet the Road - erect -
And so of larger - Darknesses -
Those Evenings of the Brain -
When not a Moon disclose a sign -
Or Star - come out - within -
The Bravest - grope a little -
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead -
But as they learn to see -
Either the Darkness alters -
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight -
And Life steps almost straight.
“Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.”
― Emily Dickinson
A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just begins
to live that day.
– Emily Dickinson
"My friends are my 'estate.' Forgive me then the avarice to hoard them."
--
Emily Dickinson in a letter to Samuel Bowles (August 1858 or 1859)
*
Poems: Dickinson contains poems from The Poet's Art, The Works of Love, and Death and Resurrection, as well as an index of first lines.
"A word is dead when it is said. Some say. I say it just, begins to live that day." -- Emily Dickinson
"I must go in, for the fog is rising."
Emily Dickinson --The fog is rising.
【Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886), Her last words were: "I must go in, for the fog is rising."】
Emily Dickinson也常採用，如：
Mine – by the right of White Election!
Mine – by the Royal Seal!
Mine – by the Sign in the Scarlet prison
Bars – cannot conceal!
【HC：我不知其意，或許有人願意說明。】
****
"我至少在三層意思上引用了卡
瓦爾康蒂描寫輕感的例子。首先是語言的輕鬆化；使意義通過
看上去似乎毫無重量的語言肌質表達出來，致使意義本身也具
有同樣淡化的濃度。諸位自己可以找到這類的例子。例如艾米
莉·狄根森（ Emily Dickinson）就可以提供許多：
一個花托，一片花瓣和一根刺針，
在一個普通的夏日的清晨——
長頸瓶上掛滿露珠一一兩隻蜜蜂——
一息微風——輕輕搖曳的樹林——
還有我，是一朵玫瑰！
***
作者是我？
出版－－不啻出賣心靈
02/22/2007
艾蜜莉的詩，多數隱晦難解，因為她往往將具象與抽象互易，推到極限，發揮得淋灕盡致。而且還常常特意偏離「正常」文法，使得我們一般非英語原生族原本就很難看懂的英詩，更形難上加難。
艾蜜莉寫了近1800首詩，可是終其一生卻出版了大約七首。下面這首詩可以一窺她對出版一事的看法。
Emily Dickinson
#709
Publication -- is the Auction
Of the Mind of Man --
Poverty -- be justifying
For so foul a thing
Possibly -- but We -- would rather
From Our Garret go
White -- Unto the White Creator --
Than invest -- Our Snow --
Thought belong to Him who gave it --
Then -- to Him Who bear
Its Corporeal illustration -- Sell
The Royal Air --
In the Parcel -- Be the Merchant
Of the Heavenly Grace --
But reduce no Human Spirit
To Disgrace of Price --
這一首詩，先不論其意象之豐，乍看又是一首文法上的難詩，不過透過重組成「白話散文」，似乎可以看出幾分端倪，也顯示起碼在這首詩中，艾蜜莉還是恪遵了文法規則的：
Publication is the auction of the mind of man,
poverty possibly be justifying for so foul a thing.
But we would rather go white from our garret
unto the white creator than invest our snow.
(May) Thought belong to Him who gave it,
then belong to Him who bear its corporeal illustration.
Sell the royal air in the parcel;
Be the merchant of the heavenly grace.
But reduce no human spirit to disgrace of price.
以下試就原詩譯成中文，韻腳就先不管了：
出版 -- 不啻拍賣
人的心靈所有 --
貧瘠 -- 因此或許
正合如此不堪
之事 -- 然而我們 -- 寧可
從我們的閣樓，迎向
雪白 -- 向那白色的造主
卻不出賣 -- 我們的雪花 --
讓思維歸於那賜下思維者 --
然後 -- 再歸於那具現
思維肉身形貌者 -- 去販售
那尊貴的氣息吧 --
整批包裝地賣 -- 去做買賣人吧
買賣那神聖的恩賜 --
但請不要，貶損人的靈性
蒙受標價污辱 --
小讀者注譯 H Bloom一段評說和Emily Dickinson 一首（並附瑞麟翻譯）
（我（hc）將小讀者主導的集合之）
「意識型態對於欣賞和理解反諷（irony）的能力是一大斲傷，意識形態膚淺的時候危害尤烈，因此我要提的第五個原則便是「重視反諷」。想想哈姆雷特無盡的反諷，他說的話幾乎都另有所指，甚至常與他的話截然相反。但是提到這項原則，我心裡頗感沮喪，因為現在已經不可能教人懂得反諷，正如不可能教他獨處一樣。然而，失去了反諷就是閱讀之死，也是泯滅了人性中被教化的部份。
我踩過一段又一段的甲板
小心緩步前進
星斗當空我感覺
海水中我的雙足。
我只知道下一步
便與死亡一寸之遙──
這讓我腳步蹣跚
有人說那是經驗。
I stepped from Plank to Plank
A Slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.
I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch -
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.
男女走路的方式有別，但除非是經過軍事操練，每個人的步態都不大一樣。狄金遜（Emily Dickinson）擅寫危顫不穩的壯麗，但是我們若對反諷無所感，便無法窺得其堂奧。她走在唯一能走的路上，走過「一段又一段的甲板」，說來諷刺，她的戒慎恐懼卻與豪放反叛並列，她覺得「星斗當空」，而雙足卻已浸在海水中。她不知道再走一步是否就「與死亡一寸之遙」，因而「腳步蹣跚」，她只說「有人」稱之為經驗。狄金遜讀過愛默生的散文〈經驗〉（Experience），這是一篇與蒙田（Montaigne）的〈論經驗〉（Of Experience）異曲同工的登峰之作，而她的反諷可說是回應了愛默生文章的開頭：「我們在哪裡找到了自己？在一連串我們並不知道極限何在、也不相信有極限的事物裡。」對狄金遜而言，極限就是不知道下一步是不是就到了底。「如果我們之中能有人知道自己在做什麼，或是在往何處去，甚至何時是在自以為是！」愛默生接下來的思緒在氣味上，或用狄金遜的話，在步態上，與她有所不同。在愛默生的經驗範疇裡，「萬物流動閃耀」，他那愉快的反諷不同狄金遜戒慎恐懼的反諷。但兩者都不是意識型態，而他們也仍然在其反諷的敵對力量中繼續存活著。」（郭強生譯）
---
小讀者 留言：
Plank: 甲板? 走在甲板上怎會在海水裡? === 橋板
I felt About my Feet the Sea: 我感覺"海水中"我的雙足? ===> 頂上掛星, 足下臨海, 但頭未沾星, 足亦未浸海. 除非是海上"浮木", 河中跨板, 或足可沾水.
precarious: 蹣跚? ===顫顫危危, 如臨深淵, 危哉殆哉...
感覺上很像走危危吊橋...
----
小讀者 留言：
Women and men can walk differently, but unless we are regimented we all tend to walk somewhat individually. Dickinson, master of the precarious Sublime, can hardly be apprehended if we are dead to her ironies. She is walking the only path available, "from Plank to Plank," but her slow caution ironically juxtaposes with a titanism in which she feels "The Stars about my Head," though her feet very nearly are in the sea. Not knowing whether the next step will be her "final inch" gives her "that precarious Gait" she will not name, except to tell us that "some call it Experience . She had read Emerson''''s essay "Experience," a culmination much in the way "Of Experience" was for his master Montaigne, and her irony is an amiable response to Emerson''''s opening: "Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none." The extreme, for Dickinson, is the not knowing whether the next step is the final inch...
----
but her slow caution ironically juxtaposes with a titanism in which she feels "The Stars about my Head," though her feet very nearly are in the sea.
Dickinson''s ironic juxtaposition of precarious and sublime:
- slow caution, the seas about my feet, uncertain/unknown last inch== precarious
極低極險 (one extreme of the series)
vs
- titanism, the stars about my head==> sublime
極高極崇 (the other extreme of the series)
就是在這向天抗爭的不確定經驗中, 狄金遜 (人類) 達到雖險卻崇的境地...
Titanism: The spirit of revolt against an established order; rebelliousness.
Spiritual Titanism: an extreme form of humanism in which human beings take on divine attributes and prerogatives.
----
Emerson's "Experience":
WHERE do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight...
--
Montaigne's "OF EXPERIENCE"
There is no desire more natural than that of knowledge. We try all ways that can lead us to it; where reason is wanting, we therein employ
experience, which is a means much more weak and cheap; but truth is so great a thing that we ought not to disdain any mediation that will guide us to it. Reason has so many forms that we know not to which to take; experience has no fewer...
------
男女步態往往有別, 但除非把我們編成隊伍, 嚴格統制, 走起路來人人多少各有其態。狄金遜, 這位最能掌握顫危而高崇境地的大師, 我們若對她筆下的反諷無所知感, 就完全不能體會她的意趣。她走在別無選擇的惟一路徑上, 「一條又一條跨板」地走去, 可是她這分遲疑小心, 卻又反諷地和一種與天地同大 (爭輝?) 的意識並置, 在其中她感到「星星就在我的頭際」, 雖然她的腳幾乎就要陷入海中。不知道下一步是否就是她的「末步」, 使她取得了「那種顫危不穩的步態」, 她卻不明言這種態勢, 只告訴我們「有人稱此為經驗」。她讀過愛默生的論「經驗」一文, 此文(問: 還是經驗?) 對愛默生來說, 乃是最高境界, 正如蒙田的「經驗談」之於蒙田, 這位他所崇效的前輩大師。而她的反諷, 則是一種聲氣相通的回應，答復了愛默生開篇之問：「我們在哪裡找見自己? 在一步步系列經歷之中──我們不知道這系列的兩極何在，也深信它根本沒有極處。」而極處, 對狄金遜來說，卻正是下一步或許就是末步的那種不可知狀。
****
I stepped from Plank to Plank
A Slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.
赴黃泉
步履艱
海水濺
星斗懸
rl 留言（閒著也是閒著的rl）：
:
I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch -
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.
悟失足
成千古
步踟躕
飽世故
Emily Dickinson died on May 15th 1886. Only 10 of her poems were published during her lifetime; hundreds more were discovered in a wooden chest after her death, and a legend grew up, sweet with pathos, of a woman too delicate for this world, disappointed in love.
http://econ.st/1d2Nifd
Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds. By Lyndall Gordon. Viking Press; 512 pages; $32.95. Virago; £20. Buy from Amazon.com,...
Emily Dickinson《艾蜜莉．狄金生詩選》
George Lytle，董恆秀譯，台北：：
貓頭鷹出版社，2000
第313頁談下首詩：起碼有一處嚴重錯誤：中文錯行：(不論版本的不同標點)
Part Four: Time and Eternity
CXLI
|
| ON this wondrous sea, | |
| Sailing silently, | |
| Knowest thou the shore | |
| Ho! pilot, ho! | |
| Where no breakers roar, | 5 |
| Where the storm is o’er? | |
在眾帆歇息 (sic) |
In the silent west
錨繫穩住 (sic) | |
Many sails at rest,
安詳的西方 (sic) | |
| Their anchors fast; | |
| Thither I pilot thee,— | 10 |
| Land, ho! Eternity! | |
| Ashore at last! |
應該是：
安詳的西方
In the silent west
在眾帆歇息 |
|
Many sails at rest,
錨繫穩住
Their anchors fast |
狄金生的詩集在1890年出版後意外地大受歡迎，當時的編輯為迎合讀者的口味，將她的詩做了很多修改，完整的版本一直到1955年經哈佛大學教授江森重新編輯才得以呈現在世人面前。本書确是根據此版本挑出最重要的五十首代表詩作，並經哈佛大學出版社正式授權出版，是目前台灣第一本最完整的狄金生詩選。
本書選錄的詩作是由耶魯大學博士Mr.Lytle與其得意門生董恆秀小姐，花費十年的時間共同翻譯完成。每首均為中英對照，詩後有詳盡的解說與賞析。書末並附有年表與相關文章供讀者參考。
艾蜜莉．狄金生（Emily Dickinson,1830-1886）
山間行草／文】
這個世界，處處可以是作者的行蹤：屈原有他行吟的澤畔，蘇東坡有他一再謫放的天涯，傑克‧倫敦（Jack London, 1876-1916）有他的荒漠北極，費滋傑羅（F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1896-1940）有他的燈紅酒綠，而海明威，有他的狩獵場和戰地……。其他人，即或沒這麼戲劇性，至少都有一定廣度的生活經驗，作為寫作素材的來源。像那樣，一輩子住在她出生的屋子裡，二十幾歲還是青春年華就開始足不出戶的，大概少有別的例子了。她在五十六歲時因腦膜炎過世，一生當中至少有三十年，過的是自我幽囚的日子。
狄金生身後留下了一千七百多首詩，生前發表的卻只有七首（其中有兩首重複，所以嚴格講只有五首），並且是別人替她投出刊登的；就詩人的身分來說，她生前近乎沒沒無聞。但死後她妹妹將她的詩稿交給出版社，一八九○年單卷版出書，立即就引起注意。隨後幾年狄金生詩集不僅一再出版，連她的書信集也緊接著在一八九四年整理問世。進入二十世紀後，狄金生作為十九世紀最重要美國詩人之一的地位，也逐漸確定，一九五○年，她的全部手稿由哈佛大學購齊，出版全集。
狄金生家世相當顯赫，祖父是麻省Amherst學院的創辦人，父親曾任美國國會參院和眾院的議員。以這樣的家庭背景，狄金生很有機會活得眾星拱月，熱鬧繽紛。但她一生卻只留下一張約二十歲左右時拍的，輪廓清麗但沒什麼表情的照片；所有的傳記，則都只能從她的書信去努力想像各種可能的蛛絲馬跡。這個女子，是的，在她青春盛放的歲月，就選擇了把自己幽禁在一個屋簷下。她做家事，她一首又一首寫不期待讀者的詩。即使對左鄰右舍，她也只是偶爾素衣在窗前閃過的身影。
研究狄金生的人，最好奇的都是她的感情生活。狄金生沒留下任何談戀愛的具體紀錄。但書信中有不少詞語熱切的信是寫給某位特定異性的，信的抬頭是master，對方顯然是個長輩：有人猜是她父親的一位法律界朋友，有人猜是一個編輯人，但總之無從證明。狄金生也跟一位女性朋友Susan Gilbert寫極熱情的信，用詞之親暱可以斷定兩人之間關係非比尋常。但後來Susan竟成為她的弟媳婦，兩人因此似有一段時間的不諒解，書信也就戛然而止。
狄金生的詩，奇特地，越過它們的創作者殊異的人格特質，也超越了她幾乎刻意隱匿的存在，在她身後大放光芒。早期的出版，讀者雖也立刻被她奇特的想像、精巧的譬喻所吸引，但多半對她完全不守格律規章的寫法不能認同。她任意斷句，句中句尾到處加破折號，韻腳不齊，又喜歡隨便大寫，就像這首〈靈魂選擇她自己的同伴〉（第一段）：
The Soul selects her own
Society
Then shuts the Door
To her divine Majority
Present no more
……
她也不給自己的詩訂題目。後人替她出的詩集，只好都用第一行作題目酖酖倒彷彿我們古代的《詩經》。但是越到二十世紀，英詩的格律式微，連康明思（ee comings, 1894-1962）那樣在詩裡把一個個字拆得七零八落的都有，狄金生的劣勢反而變成優勢了。不管是愛情詩中的難解的隱喻，還是宗教想像中的神祕色調，或者歌頌自然時的細緻觀察，她的特立獨行和女性特質，都使二十世紀以來的讀者不僅接受，而且擁抱她。而狄金生自己，儘管孤僻自閉，刻意與外界隔絕，並沒有失去對自己作品的信心，她曾說，"If fame belonged to me, I can not escape her."「如果名聲該屬於我，我絕逃不掉。」歷史也證明她果然沒有「逃掉」！
狄金生所處的時代環境，一方面是基督教的復興，一方面是一八六○年代南北戰爭的發生。她的詩裡常可看到信仰的影響：冥冥中的主宰和神祕的永恆，都常是她詩中隱喻的主題；至於那幾乎撕裂了美國的戰爭，作為隱者的狄金生，顯然不特別關注。狄金生證明的也許是，文學是有可能完全不必對外界作回應，而依然成其「好」的。
除了唯一的一張照片，很多人也注意到狄金生特別的墓誌銘。狄金生死後就葬在居處不遠，墓碑上刻著「CALLED BACK」。原來是她過世前一天寫給表妹們的字條，"Little sisters, Called back." 表妹們，我（奉召）要回去了。後來親人就把字條上Called back這兩個字作了她的墓誌銘。
這是狄金生遠行前向世界的慎重告知，卻恐怕也是最短的詩人墓誌銘了。
Poems: Dickinson contains poems from The Poet's Art, The Works of Love, and Death and Resurrection, as well as an index of first lines...
Everyman's Library
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,
As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear!
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