Emily Dickinson. Favorite poems and their translations (14). Biography of Emily Dickinson Main themes of creativity

Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 in the small provincial town of Amherst, Massachusetts. The town belonged to the Puritans, its only religious community being the Congregational Church.

The Dickinson family was a typical Puritan family - traditionally well-behaved and fairly wealthy. My father, a highly respected man in the city, worked as a lawyer. At one time he even represented the interests of the state in Congress (1853-1855). Emily loved him dearly all her life, and her father spoiled his daughter in his own way. The girl's mother was a dry, strict and fanatically religious woman. Her relationship with her eldest daughter did not work out.

Emily also had an older brother, Austin (as a child, he secretly carried various literature to his sister, including literature that was forbidden in the house) and a younger sister, Lavinia, who were the closest people in life.

The future poetess's wealthy grandfather founded Amherst College in 1810, and her father was treasurer of the college from 1835 to 1870. It goes without saying that Emily was sent to a family institution to receive her education. Then, in 1847-1848, the girl continued her studies at Mount Holwalk Women's College.

Both at home and in the first and second educational institutions, the main place was religious education and home economics. So Emily's early years were spent under the strongest religious influence and in preparation for the performance of marital duties. On the other hand, the girl’s entire inner makeup did not correspond to the character of a religious housewife. She was never able to become a convinced believer and did not enter any church community. Emily did not become a married woman; she spent her entire life in her father’s house.

One day in 1850, Dickinson's father's subordinate, assistant lawyer Benjamin Newton, gave the girl a book of poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson, a free-thinking transcendentalist from Concord. For Emily, she said, Emerson became “an evaluator of life’s values.” Under the influence of his works, she also began to write poetry.

Biographers of Dickinson try to present Wadsworth as a key figure in the fate of the poetess. They claim that the girl fell in love with the pastor with her first, great and hopeless love - Wadsworth was already married. The poetess corresponded with her lover for a long time, but the pastor did not have any heartfelt feelings for her. Communication with Wadsworth allegedly inspired the poetess to create many brilliant poems during the years 1858-1862. We emphasize that this is only one version of Dickinson’s biographers. Other biographers consider this version far-fetched and far-fetched only in order to somehow refute the talk about the poetess’s unconventional orientation. Nobody knows what really happened.

In 1862, the pastor left for California, and Emily, again according to one version, experienced a severe emotional crisis, which resulted in her temporary creative decline.

Perhaps, truly being in such a difficult mental state, Dickinson for the first time decided to show her poems to an outsider. On April 15, 1862, Thomas Higginson, a well-known writer and critic in those days, received a strange letter with several equally strange poems. The aspiring poet Emily Dickinson asked him for an answer to the question of how “breathable” her poems were.

Higginson was fascinated by Dickinson's poems, but they shocked the venerable professional as “chaotic and careless.” The correspondence between the critic and the poetess continued throughout his life, until the death of the latter.

Emily Dickinson wrote the most poems - about eight hundred - during the Civil War between North and South (1861-1865). Then the poems began to decline.

A serious eye disease forced Emily to stop working for two whole years. In 1864-1865 she had to go to Cambridge and undergo a long course of treatment there. Returning home, the poetess never left her family property in Amherst.

Emily Dickinson lived like a recluse, communicating only with relatives and close friends, and even then through a half-open door or by correspondence, she did not strive for publicity - this was the life of a girl in Puritan America, and her seclusion was her free choice. During her first years, Emily read a lot, gardened, and created.

For a long time, relatives did not realize that Emily wrote poetry. And over time, she became even more withdrawn, uncommunicative and wrote down her short masterpieces without titles on small pieces of paper, which she then tied tightly with thread and carefully hid in different drawers of the chest of drawers. Sometimes I made handmade albums with poems, sewed them together with my own hands and hid them.

Austin Dickinson and his wife, a very close friend of the poetess Susan Gilbert, lived in the same house as her. It is known that a significant part of Emily's poems are dedicated to love for women. It is believed that Susan was the recipient of these works. We don’t know what really happened, since the poetess’s diary entries and Dickinson’s correspondence after her death were carefully edited by relatives.

There was whispering in the city that the old maid had become a voluntary nun. As if confirming this gossip, from 1870 the poetess began wearing only white dresses. That’s why she was later nicknamed the “White Recluse.”

In 1874, Dickinson's beloved father died. His death brought the poetess closer to the friend of the deceased, Otis Lord. Emily's biographers identified him as the recluse's last great love.

Either impressed by the death of her father, or in longing for late love, but at the end of the 1870s, Dickinson devoted herself to voluntary confinement within the walls of her own home. Both before and after this, not a single historical event that happened during Emily’s life and shook the United States was reflected in her creations. The poetess simply did not notice them.

Dickinson lived quietly in her room on the second floor, and her unmarried younger sister Lavinia, who settled in the neighboring house, jealously guarded Emily's peace. The sister took upon herself all the household chores so that nothing would disturb the dear hermit. The family's significant fortune allowed the sisters to lead a comfortable, unnoticed existence.

Locked in her room, the poetess had a hard time with the deaths of her mother and Wadsworth in 1882 and Otis Lord in 1884.

Emily Dickinson died in May 1886, in the same house where she was born. In her suicide note she wrote briefly: “Little cousins. Called back."

Before her death, she begged her loved ones to burn all her manuscripts, but, fortunately, Lavinia did not dare to fulfill the will of the deceased. She collected her older sister's leaves and albums and did everything possible to ensure that Emily's poetic legacy found its reader.

In total, Dickinson wrote over 1,770 poems. During the poetess's lifetime, only seven works were published against her wishes, anonymously and without payment of royalties.

Dickinson's first unedited collection of poems was published in 1890. He amazed readers with his refined and sophisticated mysticism, irregular experimental grammatical forms and lack of rhyme.

In the 20th century, Emily Dickinson was recognized as one of the central figures of American literature.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Emily Dickinson did not publish a single book during her lifetime. Not only America, but even her closest neighbors did not know her as a poet. It can be said about her that she lived in obscurity, but a few years later the appearance of her poems in print became a literary sensation - and the small town of Amherst in which she lived went down in history as the birthplace of Emily Dickinson. She became a classic of American literature.

Her biography is not eventful, there are almost none at all. Emily lived in her father's house, rarely went out into the city, and later stopped leaving her room altogether, communicating only with family and letters with a few people. She did not have whirlwind romances or any love stories at all that would have been reflected in her work, although some researchers believe that there were several loves that were left unrequited by the lovers.

Dickinson lived the “life of the spirit,” living her rich inner world. Her father was, as they say, one of the “pillars of local Puritanism,” so religious themes for Emily were to some extent hereditary. In her youth, she was attracted to philosophy; she idolized the thinker Emerson, with whom she entered into correspondence.

She lived in seclusion, but was able to express what can be difficult for people living in the thick of things to express. J.B. Priestley wrote: “The poet who came closest to expressing the character and spirit of New England was that which remained in obscurity until the end of the last century, Emily Dickinson, half spinster, half curious troll, harsh, impetuous, often clumsy, prone to brooding about death, but at his best an amazingly courageous and focused poet, in comparison with whom the male poets of her time seem both timid and boring.”

E. Dickinson’s books were extremely rarely published here before due to the religiosity of her poetry, and now poetry, and even foreign poetry, is published in minimal editions, so it would be appropriate to introduce the reader to the poems of the American poetess, in order to then continue our story, relying on some of our common familiarity with texts.

They sing not only in autumn

Poets, but also in the days

When blizzards swirl

And the stumps crack.

It's already frosty in the morning,

And the days are stingy with light,

The asters have bloomed in the flowerbed

And the sheaves were gathered.

Still water your easy run

Swift - but cold,

And the elves of the golden ages

Fingers touched sleep.

The squirrel remained for the winter,

Hiding the treasure in a hollow.

Oh, Lord, give me warmth -

To withstand Your cold!

I know -

The sky is like a tent

Someday they will collapse

Loaded into a circus van

And quietly set off on their way.

Not a sound of hammers

Not a sound of nails -

The circus has left - and where is it now?

Does he make people happy?

And what captivated us

And it was fun yesterday -

Arena illuminated circle,

And glitter and tinsel, -

It dissipated and flew away,

Disappeared without a trace -

Like an autumn caravan of birds,

Like a bank of clouds.

Hope is one of the birds,

She lives in the soul

And your song without words

Sings tirelessly -

It's like a breeze is blowing

And a storm is needed here,

To give this bird a lesson -

So that she trembles.

Both in the summer heat and in the cold

She lived, ringing,

And I never asked

I don't have a crumb.

Like the Stars they fell -

Far and near -

Like Snow Flakes in January -

Like with Rose Petals -

Disappeared - lay down in the grass

High without a trace -

And only the Lord faces them all

I remember it forever.

He fought furiously - himself

Substituted for bullets,

It's like nothing else

He did not expect anything from Life.

He walked towards Death - but

She didn't go to him

She fled from him - and Life

She was scarier than her.

Friends fell like flakes,

Drifts of bodies grew,

But he stayed to live - because

That I wanted to die.

One of the main themes of E. Dickinson's poetry is death. She often imagines herself dead in her poems - and again and again she touches on the incomprehensible mystery of death. Sometimes with fear. Her contemporary, the poet Whitman, on the contrary, was not afraid of death; he considered it the beginning of a new life, a natural manifestation of the harmony of existence.

Poets have always strived and will strive to unravel the mystery of death. After all, to unravel it means to unravel the mystery of life. Critic Conrad Aiken wrote that Dickinson "died in every poem." Researcher of the work of the American poet E. Oseneva believes that there were two logical exits from Dickinson’s mentality: “Either suicidal nihilism (and Dickinson was sometimes close to it), or a deliberate return from abstractions to the inviolability of simple things, limiting oneself to the realm of the concrete. The second path is more typical for Dickinson. If Whitman's powerful earthly realism, his love for the concrete - a thing, a fact - were fueled by his enthusiastic worldview, then Dickinson pushes disbelief towards realism. The simple beauty of the world is her refuge from the soul-corroding nihilism.”

But here I would like to argue that it is not unbelief, but precisely faith, religious faith that returns it from heaven to earth - to the real miracles of the Creator. And then - she always pushed away from the concrete again and rose into Heaven. And she couldn’t live on earth without Heaven.

Who did not find Heaven below -

Can't find it anywhere

After all, wherever we live - God

Lives nearby.

Here are some more wonderful poems by Emily Dickinson:

Repentance is Memory

Sleepless, after

Her companions come -

Acts of past years.

The past appears to the soul

A message for me.

Repentance cannot be cured -

God invented it

So that everyone - what is Hell

I could imagine it.

Only in early spring

This is how light happens -

At all other times

There is no such light.

This is the color

By the sky above the hill,

No matter what you call it

And I can’t understand it with my mind.

He lingers above the ground

Soars above the grove,

Lighting up everything around

And he almost speaks.

Then beyond the horizon

Flashing for the last time,

He leaves silently from heaven

And leaves us.

And like beauty

Stolen from the day -

As if my soul

Suddenly they deprived me.

Quiet yellow star

Ascended to heaven

She took off her white hat

Bright moon

The Night flared up in an instant

A series of windows -

Father, today you are

Accurate as always.

Emily Dickinson's poems have been translated into Russian by several people. The most popular were the translations of Vera Markova, our famous translator of ancient and modern Japanese poetry. She translated Dickinson well, but for her it did not become, so to speak, the work of her life, as it was for Arkady Gavrilov (1931-1990).

Arkady Gavrilov, a professional translator of American literature, was simply captivated by Dickinson’s poetry throughout his not very long life, thought a lot about her, translated her poems, it seems to me, more adequately, intimately and poetically than other translators, made a lot of notes in the margins of the translations, which his widow published after his death. I would like to introduce readers to some notes - they will help to penetrate deeper into the world of Emily Dickinson's poetry.

“E.D. I was terribly lonely. She almost physically felt the vastness of space. Loneliness is only fruitful for an artist when the artist is burdened by it and tries to overcome it with his creativity.”

“For a hundred years, the second E.D. has not been born anywhere. They compare Tsvetaeva with her, but their poems are similar only to the eye - graphics, an abundance of dashes, well, perhaps also impetuosity. Although, it must be admitted, Tsvetaeva strove for that attic of the spirit in which E.D. She lived her whole life, not suspecting that someone might be envious of her share. Tsvetaeva was drawn to the earth by her feminine nature, which she had not overcome (should she, having given birth three times, compete with a woman-child!).”

“Many poems by E.D. cannot be translated equivalently. Why cripple them by stretching the joints to a “longer” size? Honest word-for-word is better than such violence. For example: “I am Nobody!” And who are you? And you too Nobody? Are we a couple? How boring it is to be someone! How shameful - like frogs - to repeat your name - all June - to the admiring inhabitants of the Swamp!

“She always strove for the sky - moving on a plane was not interesting to her.”

“E. D.’s poetics belongs to the nineteenth century, the themes and nature of his experiences belong to the twentieth. There was a similar phenomenon in Russian poetry - I. Annensky.”

"A. Blok once (at the “tower” of Vyacheslav Ivanov) said about Akhmatova: “She writes poetry as if in front of a man, but one must write as if in front of God” (remembered E. Yu. Kuzmina-Karavaeva). About E.D.'s poems he wouldn't say that."

“A deep thought cannot be lengthy. An acute experience cannot last long. Therefore, the poems of E.D. short."

“A person dies only once in his life, and therefore, having no experience, he dies unsuccessfully. A person does not know how to die, and his death occurs gropingly, in the dark. But death, like any activity, requires skill. To die completely safely, you need to know how to die, you need to acquire the skill of dying, you need to learn how to die. And for this it is necessary to die while still alive, under the guidance of experienced people who have already died. It is this experience of death that is given by asceticism. In ancient times, the mysteries were the school of death” (P. Florensky). This passage from P. Florensky sheds some light on the poems of E.D. about death, indicating that she repeatedly “died” during her lifetime (“My life ended twice…”), tried death on herself (“A fly buzzed in silence - when I was dying…”). Her withdrawal from the world, voluntary seclusion, was a kind of asceticism, similar to the monastic schema.

“In one of Emily Dickinson’s very first poems, the motif of a summer meadow with blooming clover and the buzzing of bees appears (“That’s all I could bring...”). This symbolism of harmonious life on earth, life inaccessible to man, will appear from time to time in her poems throughout her entire creative career. All the more sharply, by contrast, does the disharmonious inner world of the lyrical heroine E.D. stand out. in poems about death. Judging by these verses, E.D. I really wanted to, but I couldn’t fully believe in my own immortality. She constantly alternates between hope and despair. What happens after death? This question haunted the poetess. She answered him differently. She answered traditionally (as she was taught in childhood): “The members of the “Resurrection” are sleeping meekly, that is, the dead are sleeping for now, but then, in due time, they will wake up and rise in the flesh, as the “firstborn from the dead” has already demonstrated, Jesus Christ. They are like members of the joint stock company “Resurrection,” which guarantees its shareholders as a dividend on their capital, that is, on their faith in Christ and a virtuous life, awakening from the sleep of death, resurrection. But this typically Protestant belief in a fair exchange, beneficial to both exchanging parties, could neither satisfy nor console her. Where there is exchange, there is deception. She reassured herself: “It doesn’t hurt to die at all.” She almost believed that Death “with Immortality on the beam” would bring her to Eternity. She imagined, anticipating Kafka, De Chirico and Ingmar Bergman, the afterlife in the form of scary “Quarters of Silence”, where “there are no days, no eras”, where “Time is up”. She wondered: “What does Immortality promise me... A prison or the Garden of Eden?” She admired the courage of those who are not afraid of death, who remain calm, “when footsteps are heard and the door quietly creaks.” She was horrified: “Master!” Necromancer! Who are those down there?” And finally she found another answer, perhaps the most undesirable one. But, being brutally honest with herself, the poetess could not leave this answer without consideration: “And nothing later.” E.D. passed away without finding for herself the only, final answer to the question of what will happen to her after death.

The question remains open. All her hopes, doubts, fears, horrors and admirations are clear to us even a hundred years later. We are like great poets in everything. In addition to the ability to express oneself with sufficient completeness.”

“For E.D. everything was a miracle: a flower, a bee, a tree, water in a well, blue sky. When you experience nature as a miracle, it is impossible not to believe in God. She believed not in the God whom her parents, school, and church had imposed on her since childhood, but in the One whom she felt within herself. She believed in her God. And this God was so personal that she could play with him. She felt sorry for him and explained his jealousy: “We prefer to play with each other rather than with him.” God is lonely, just like her. It is not uncommon for two lonely beings to become close - they do not need to expend much mental effort to understand each other. Moreover, God was a convenient partner for E.D. since he had no physical substance. After all, even those few of her friends whom she loved, she loved at a distance and not so much in time as in eternity (after their death). From some point on, she began to prefer the ideal existence of a person to the real one.”