American poetess Emily Dickinson: biography, creativity

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

You can write much more about her work than about her biography. The fact is that her fate was not at all full of bright events, stormy romances, or at least some ups and downs. And mostly because that was her life choice. A woman poetess in American society in the mid-19th century could be very popular, but Emily Dickinson preferred fame, fame and the hustle and bustle of social life to quiet seclusion in her hometown. Why? Part of the answer to this question is provided by her poetry. So, what do we know about Emily Dickinson, whose poems are considered classics of American literature?

Origin

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born in 1830 in the small provincial town of Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. Her journey ended there in 1886.

She was the middle of three children in the family of lawyer and congressman Edward Dickinson. She received a Puritan upbringing, which may have affected her lifestyle later. She grew up to be a reserved and pious girl. The family was quite religious, and Emily was also instilled with faith in God.

Education

AfterAfter graduating from elementary school, the future poetess continued her studies at the Academy of her hometown of Amherst from 1840 to 1847. There she studied such disciplines as Latin, arithmetic, psychology, English language and literature. Later there was an attempt to study at a female seminary, but Emily spent only six months there and returned home. Since then, her hometown has become her permanent home, she almost did not leave it for the rest of her life. The exception was a trip to Washington, accompanied by his father, who was supposed to take part in the US Congress.

The formation of the personality of the poetess

Of course, the very education in the spirit of asceticism played a role in the reluctance to be open to the public. And as a result, during the lifetime of the poetess, the world saw only an incomplete dozen of her poems. Surprisingly, Emily Dickinson herself spoke out against the fact that her work was printed, books with lyrics of which appeared after her death.

At the age of 14, she lost her friend - her cousin Sophia, after which she began to fall into a state of depression and even needed rehabilitation. This is the first death of a loved one that Emily faced, which undoubtedly gave impetus to the further development of the theme of death, which was one of the main ones in Dickinson's work. Although after this event, Emily began to actively attend church, but, obviously, not having found real consolation there, she stopped doing it, and she clothed all her thoughts about the search for the meaning of life and the transience of being in poetic lines.

Dickinson was also familiar with the prose and poetry of that time, in particular with the transcendentalism of Ralph Emerson and the romanticism of William Wordsworth, and shared many of their views. This testified to her desire for all progressive ideas. She even corresponded with the thinker Emerson, hence the philosophical motives of her lyrics.

Private life

There are many assumptions about the reasons for her voluntary seclusion, and lovers of trivial explanations immediately offer unhappy love, they say, but how could it be otherwise? Ben Newton, a student of their family, Henry Emmons, and a priest, Charles Wadsworth, are attributed to the number of her failed lovers, but biographers have no evidence, except for pure water of assumptions.

It is true that Emily Dickinson, whose biography is not replete with love affairs, never married, although she was not bad-looking.

Yes, that's pretty weird. But perhaps it was her conscious choice, dictated by her worldview: Emily Dickinson's rich inner world made her a self-sufficient person without marriage or motherhood. Be that as it may, love lyrics and affairs of the heart do not appear so often in her poetry, and even if there are romantic motives, they sound in the context of something more global, for example, the relationship between man and nature, man and the Creator.

Main themes of creativity

She did not waste her time on trifles, but wanted to get to the bottom of the essence, so she touched the great in her poetry. If outlinethe main motives of her works, then the following topics can be distinguished: the aesthetic perception of the world by the poet, nature, the inner experiences of a person, the opposition of life and death.

Emily Dickinson says: "She died in every poem." Yes, the poetess, as if playing cat and mouse with death, often imagined herself dead. But the realization that in an instant everything can disappear does not attract, but horrifies and deeply upsets Dickinson's lyrical heroine. And the bright moments of life - that same love, joy - are just a prologue to complete suspended animation.

She mourns that death destroys harmony, brings chaos, and therefore seeks to solve the mystery of immortality, often disappointed in these searches and realizing that loneliness is the lot of a person.

But the poetess is not inclined to absolute nihilism, rather, she finds tenderness in simple things, stating the fact that everything amazing is very close, it's like "an angel on every street rents a neighboring house." But, on the other hand, Emily Dickinson, whose quotations from poems express her thoughts, understands that a person will never comprehend everything, especially when it comes to nature: "After all, we are the farther away from it, the closer we get," and therefore "It's wonderful that that will never be given in the hands."

Poem publications

The fact that Emily writes poetry was known to many, including her family. But it was only after her death that they were able to realize the scope of her work, when her sister found the drafts.

The first edition of the writings saw the world in 1890. But it has undergone many revisions. Only in 1955, thanks to Thomas Johnson, a complete collection of her poetry was published in 3 volumes.

Emily Dickinson Translations

Due to religious motives, little is known about her in the post-Soviet space, because before her work was simply ignored.

Of course, nothing can replace the original, but a lot has been done recently to bring the words of the great American poetess to Russian-speaking people. For example, L. Sitnik, A. Gavrilov, A. Grishin, Ya. Berger and others took on this work. But still, not every one of Emily Dickinson's 1800 poems has been translated into Russian. I also don’t want to evaluate professional suitability by gender, but there is an opinion that Dickinson’s poetry can be perfectly felt and conveyed to the listener by a female translator, so it’s worth remembering the works of T. Stamova and V. Markova.

Still I want to sincerely believe that soon this brilliant poetess, who is considered one of the classics of American literature, will become even more readable in Russian.