Dickinson's translations-Devin D.
Emily Dickinson has provided many mysterious to the literary critic. Ignored in her time, she spent a lot of her life secluded from the public. Dickinson has been mythologized as a recluse who hated light, and she loved her sister’s husband. There has been only one confirmed daguerreotype of her, along with a recently discovered (and controversial) photograph.
Her work was published and consumed after she died, leaving editor’s a tough challenge to try and provide the best volume and edition to the public. Dickinson’s use of the dashes proves difficult for editors trying to transfer her work into print. Many Dickinson fanatics feel the only way to really read her poems would be to read the hand-written poems themselves. I had a teacher in high school who wouldn’t teach Dickinson because she believed we need to read her hand-written pages rather than a loose translation of her writing.
Now, what is the point of this blog post? A discussion of Dickinson can provide an interesting discussion of literary fidelity. Translations have always fascinated me, because it seems so wrong. If not done by the author, the work becomes infected with another’s words. Poetry is the most affected by this unfortunate transformation. For instance, the poems included at the end of the novel Dr. Zhivago aren’t good. Okay maybe that’s harsh, but they don’t have any rhythm, rhyme, flow, proper stresses, &c. They fail to stand on their own (at least in English), and become the equivalent of the special features on a DVD.
While Dr. Zhivago’s poems are translated across language, Dickinson’s only have to be translated from the hand to type. But they still create a narrow gap between the author’s intention and the author’s printed work. Should we regard her journals as “better” than the translated printed word, or should we take the printed word as is? I think Whitman can be lumped in here—he too provides a challenge to readers and critics since he was a constant editor, publishing some six to nine editions of Leaves of Grass. Which one is the definitive version? I own the 8th edition, published in 1889. Harold Bloom seems to prefer the first edition of Leaves of Grass. One of my professors has a compilation of every edition. Which one should I read?
For more information about the recently discovered photograph, check out http://www.common-place.org/vol-04/no-02/gura/