Vida y Obra

1. «Mi pelo es audaz como
resina de castaño;
y mis ojos, como el
jerez en la copa
que el huésped deja»
Carta

2. EMILY DICKINSON(1830—1886)

4. Emily
Dickinson
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5. Nombres líricos que le
han sido dados:
“La reclusa de Amherst”
“La Vestal de Amherst”
“La monja de Amherst”
“La bella de Amherst”
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6.  Es la autora norteamericana más conocida.
 Una de los mejores poetas, si no la mejor de dicha
literatura.
 Es una escritora de lo más destacado de toda la
poesía estadounidense.
 Una escritora de gran poder y belleza.
 Fue una mujer que no se caso y pudo dedicarse a
la literatura.
 Solo contamos con los 1775 poemas recuperados
por su hermana y publicados por primera vez por su
sobrina.
 Durante su vida, se resistió a darlos a conocer y sólo
siete de ellos fueron publicados, algunos sin su
nombre
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7.  Fue una mujer inteligente,
intensamente sensible y
apasionada
profundamente.
 Escribió poemas que eran
sorprendentemente
originales tanto en
contenido como en
técnica.
 También se le reconoce
por su uso creativo de la
metáfora y el estilo
innovador global.
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8.  Se cuestionó a fondo sobre su
familia puritana calvinista y
exploró en el trabajo poético su
propia espiritualidad, a menudo
conmovedora, siempre
profundamente personal.
 La creación de sus poemas era
concisa y con imágenes ; a veces,
eran ingeniosos e irónicos, a
menudo valientes y francos, pero
cada uno de ellos ilumina la
aguda percepción que tenía de la
condición humana.
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9.  La obra de Dickinson ha tenido una influencia
considerable en la poesía moderna.
 Su uso frecuente de guiones, la capitalización
esporádica de los sustantivos, el rompimiento del
metro, fuera de rimas, metáforas poco
convencionales han contribuido a su reputación
como una escritora de lo más innovadora del
siglo 19 en la literatura norteamericana.
 Ella ha influenciado desde entonces a muchos
otros autores y poetas incluidos los del siglo 21
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10.  Nacio en Amherst, en una de las familias
más prominentes de Massachusetts, el
10 de diciembre de 1830.
 Fue la segunda hija de Emily Norcross y
Edward Dickinson, un graduado de Yale,
abogado de éxito, Tesorero de Amherst
College y miembro del Congreso de
Estados Unidos.
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11.  Her older brother was named William Austin
Dickinson (known as Austin) who would
marry her most intimate friend Susan Gilbert
in 1856.
 The Dickinsons were strong advocates for
education and Emily too benefited from an
early education in classic literature,
studying the writings of Virgil and Latin,
mathematics, history, and botany.
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12.  Durante dos años estudió en la Academia de
Amherst y de pasar una más en el Seminario
Femenino de Mount Holyoke.
 Rara vez deja Amherst.
 Más tarde, ella hizo un viaje hasta
Washington, y dos o tres viajes a Boston.
 Dickinson estaba "afligido" dos veces cuando
ella perdió a sus "tutores": Benjamín Newton
en 1853 y Charles Wadsworth en 1862.
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13.  Newton, un estudiante de derecho en la
oficina de su padre, pudo haber sido el
responsable de presentarla a Emerson y
otras influencias literarias.
 Wadsworth, el ministro casado, a quien
Emily Dickinson puede tener afecto
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14.  Dickinson lee vorazmente poesía y poetas
llamado "el más querido de los tiempos, los
más fuertes amigos de alma."
 Ella admiraba la poesía de Robert y
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, así como John
Keats.
 Ella se retiró de contacto social y se dedicó
a escribir su trabajo sin esperar verlo
publicado.
 Murió el 15 de mayo de 1886, a la edad de
cincuenta y seis años.
 Su tumba esta en el Cementerio Oeste de
Amherst, Condado de Hampshire, en
Massachusetts
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15.  "Porque no puedo detenerme a morir
 "Oigo el zumbido de las moscas cuando
yo muera
 Mi vida se cerró dos veces antes de
cerrarse
 "Me gustaría ver que lo lleva a miles de
kilómetros
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16.  collections: Poems, Series 1 in 1890,
Poems, Series 2 in 1891, and Poems,
Series 3 in 1896.
 Her three-volume poetry, Poems of Emily
Dickinson, is brief and condensed,
characterized by unusual rhyming and swift
flashes of insight.
 The collection Letter of Emily Dickinson was
published in 1958.
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17.  Dickinson’s poetry had no abstract theory of
poetry.
 It is not certain if she was familiar with the
poetic theories.
 When editor Thomas Higginson asked her to
define poetry, she answered:
 "If I read a book and it makes my whole
body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I
know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if
the top of my head were taken off, I know
that is poetry. These are the only ways I know
it. Is there any other way?"
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18.  “Like Ezra Pound, William Carlos and e.e. cummings,
Emily Dickinson sought to speak the uniqueness of her
experience in a personal tongue by reconstituting and
revitalizing– at the risk of eccentricity– the basic verbal
unit.” (The Emily Dickinson Handbook, 275)
 1. Highly compressed, compact, shy of being exposed
(“Tell all the Truth but tell it slant”).
 2. Her style is elliptical.
 She will say no more than she must, suggesting either a
quality of uncertainty or one of finality.
 3. Her lyrics are highly subjective.
 One-fifth of them begin with "I" –she knows no other
consciousness.
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19.  4. Ambiguity of meaning and syntax.
 “She almost always grasped whatever she sought, but
with some fracture of grammar and dictionary.”
(Higginson)
 5. Concreteness
 Even when she is talking of the most abstract of
subjects, Emily specifies it by elaborating it in the
concreteness of simile or metaphor.
 6. Use of poetic forms such as alliteration( 头韵 ),
assonance( 谐音 ), and consonance( 和音 ); also
onomatopoetic effects( 拟声 ) 幻灯片 18
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20.  -- We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
 And I had put away
 My labor, and my leisure too,
 For his civility.
 • -- ’T was later when the summer went
 Than when the cricket came,
 And yet we knew that gentle clock
 Meant nought but going home.
 ’T was sooner when the cricket went
 Than when the winter came,
 Yet that pathetic pendulum
 Keeps esoteric time.
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21.  7. Obscurity.
 " ... she was obscure, and sometimes inscrutable.”
(Higginson )
 8. Caesura
 A pause within a line of poetry, usually indicated by
a mark of punctuation (some poets can achieve this
without punctuation)
 The Sunrise—Sire—compelleth Me—
 Because He’s Sunrise—and I see—
 Therefore—Then—
 I love Thee—
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22.  9.Irregular Capitalization
 -- To personify the word
 -- To create emphasis
 -- To establish a parallel between words/ideas
 Because I could not stop for Death,
 He kindly stopped for me;
 The Carriage held but just Ourselves
 And Immortality.
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23.  A few themes occupied the poet:
 love, nature, doubt and faith, suffering, death,
immortality – these John Donne has called the
great granite obsessions (Compulsive
preoccupations; anxieties) of humankind.
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24.  Amor
 A pesar de que se sentía sola y aislada,
Emily parece haber amado
profundamente, tal vez sólo los que han
"amado y perdido" el amor puede, con una
intensidad y deseo que nunca se pueden
cumplir en la realidad del contacto de los
amantes.
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25.  “Why do I love” You, Sir?
 Because—
 The Wind does not require the Grass
 To answer—Wherefore when He pass
 She cannot keep Her place.
 Because He knows—and
 Do not You—
 And We know not—
 Enough for Us
 The Wisdom it be so—
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26.  The Lightning—never asked an Eye
 Wherefore it shut—when He was by—
 Because He knows it cannot speak—
 And reasons not contained—
 —Of Talk—
 There be—preferred by Daintier Folk—
 The Sunrise—Sire—compelleth Me—
 Because He's Sunrise—and I see—
 Therefore—Then—
 I love Thee—
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27. Temas en la poesía de Dickinson
 Two candidates have been presented: Reverend Charles
Wadsworth, with whom she corresponded, and Samuel
Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican, to whom
she addressed many poems. In 1861-62 she had a
crisis; it is not known if she ever fully recovered.
Wadsworth had moved to San Francisco and Bowles
disappointed her by traveling in 1861 to Europe. He
returned in Autumn 1862. At that time Dickinson did
not want to meet him or write to him any more
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28.  Naturaleza
 A fascination with nature consumed Emily. (“I
taste a liquor never brewed”)
 She summed all her lyrics as "the simple news
that nature told."
 She loved "nature's creatures" no matter how
insignificant it is. (“A Bird cam down the Walk”;
“Nobody knows this little Rose”)
 Only the serpent gave her a chill.
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29.  Nobody knows this little Rose—
It might a pilgrim be
Did I not take it from the ways
And lift it up to thee.
 Only a Bee will miss it—
Only a Butterfly,
Hastening from far journey—
On its breast to lie—
 Only a Bird will wonder—
Only a Breeze will sigh—
Ah Little Rose— how easy
For such as thee to die!
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30.  Faith and Doubt (“Faith is doubt”)
 Emily was Puritan, but she reacted strenuously
against two of them: infant damnation and
God's sovereign election of His own.
 This explains a kind of paradoxical or
ambivalent attitude toward matters religious.
 She loved to speak of a compassionate Savior
and the grandeur of the Scriptures （经 文） ,
but she disliked the hypocrisy and arbitrariness
of institutional church.
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31.  "Faith" is a fine invention
 For Gentlemen who see!
 But Microscopes are prudent
 In an Emergency!
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32.  The going from a world we know
 To one a wonder still
 Is like the child's adversity
 Whose vista is a hill,
 Behind the hill is sorcery
 And everything unknown,
 But will the secret compensate
 For climbing it alone?
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33.  Pain and Suffering
 She is eager to examine pain, to
measure it, to calculate it, to
intellectualize it as fully as possible.
 Her last stanzas become a catalog of
grief and its causes: death, want, cold,
despair, exile.
 “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”
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34.  Death
 She is able to probe the fact of human death.
 She often adopts the pose of having already died
before she writes her lyric.
 She can look straight at approaching death.
 her father Edward died suddenly in 1874
 In 1878 her friend Samuel Bowles died and another of her
esteemed friends Charles Wadsworth died in 1882, the
same year her mother succumbed to her lengthy illness.
 A year later her brother Austin’s son Gilbert died.
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35.  “Because I could not stop for Death”;
 “I died for beauty-- but was scarce”;
 “I heard a Fly buzz– when I died--”;
 “Because I could not stop for Death”
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36.  Major pattern is that of a sermon.
 Her poem is usually structured as statement
or introduction of topic, elaboration, and
conclusion
 There are three variations of this major
pattern:
 1. The poet makes her initial announcement
of topic in an unfigured line.
 2. She uses a figure for that purpose.
 3. She repeats her statement and its
elaboration a number of times before
drawing a conclusion.
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37.  She writes about death and immortality, nature,
religion, success and failure.
 The largest portion of Dickinson’s poetry
concerns death and immortality.
 For Dickinson, death leads to immortality.
 Dickinson sees nature as both gaily benevolent
and cruel.
 On the ethical level, Dickinson holds that beauty,
truth and goodness are ultimately one.
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38.  Dickinson was greatly influenced by Emerson’s
transcendentalism.
 She had a profound love for nature and was often
intoxicated with the beauty of nature. This poem
is a fine example.
 The poet compares nature to liquor that has
never been brewed and herself to a debauchee ( 浪
荡 子 )who loves wine more than her life.
 The image the poet uses to suggest drunkenness
indicates her deep love for nature.
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39.  This poem employs all of Dickinson's formal
patterns: trimeter and tetrameter iambic lines (four
stresses in the first and third lines of each stanza,
three in the second and fourth, a pattern Dickinson
follows at her most formal);
 rhythmic insertion of the long dash to interrupt the
meter;
 and an ABCB rhyme scheme.
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40. "I heard a Fly buzz--when I died--..."
 Interestingly, all the rhymes before the final
stanza are half-rhymes (Room/Storm,
firm/Room, be/Fly), while only the rhyme in
the final stanza is a full rhyme (me/see).
 Dickinson uses this technique to build
tension; a sense of true completion comes
only with the speaker's death.
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41.  One of Dickinson's most famous poems, "I heard
a Fly buzz" strikingly describes the mental
distraction posed by irrelevant details at even
the most crucial moments--even at the moment
of death.
 The poem then becomes even weirder and more
macabre by transforming the tiny, normally
disregarded fly into the figure of death itself, as
the fly's wing cuts the speaker off from the light
until she cannot "see to see."
 But the fly does not grow in power or stature; its
final severing act is performed "With Blue--
uncertain stumbling Buzz--."
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42. "I heard a Fly buzz--when I died--..."
 This poem is also remarkable for its
detailed evocation of a deathbed scene--
the dying person's loved ones steeling
themselves for the end, the dying woman
signing away in her will "What portion of
me be / Assignable" (a turn of phrase that
seems more Shakespearean than it does
Dickinsonian).
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43.  En este poema, Dickinson utiliza imágenes
recordadas del pasado para aclarar
conceptos infinitos mediante el
establecimiento de una relación dialéctica
entre la realidad y la imaginación, lo
conocido y lo desconocido.
 Al ver esta relación de manera integral y
ordenando jerárquicamente las etapas de
la vida que incluyen la muerte y la
eternidad, Dickinson sugiere la naturaleza
interconectada y mutuamente determinada
de lo finito y lo infinito.
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44.  Tanto los poemas de Emily Dickinson
como los Walt Whitman, fueron
considerados como parte del
«Renacimiento Americano ".
 Ellos eran considerados como pioneros
del imaginismo.
 Ambos rechazaron la costumbre y
sabiduría recibida y experimentaron con
el estilo poético.
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45.  Whitman parece mantener el ojo puesto
en la sociedad en general.
 Dickinson explora la vida interior de la
persona.
 Whitman es "nacional" en su
perspectiva.
 Dickinson es "regional" en su perspectiva
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