Introductory Notes

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (1830-1886), a great Amer­ican poet, wrote about 2,000 poems, only seven of which are known to have been published during her lifetime. She gradual­ly withdrew from public life into her inner world, eventually, in her forties, refusing to leave her home and only maintaining contact with some people by correspondence. After her death, her poems were found, assembled in packets. Unfortunately, her sister unbound the packets, and thus the real chronology and connection between the texts were lost forever. The only true argument for the order of her poems for the editors has always been the table of changes in her hand-writing, worked out by Thomas H. Johnson, the editor of a 1955 selection. These changes were established on the basis of her personal letters, dated and, addressed to famous people.

Emily Dickinson came from a distinguished family: her grandfather had founded Amherst College, and her father was a lawyer and State Congressman. Emily herself was renowned for her wit and lively and sociable household — until her mid-twenties. From that time on she became a recluse. Speculation has it that the reason was unrequited love.

What is important to us, though, is her poetry. This did not come to light until after her death. The first selection of her poems was published posthumous in 1890, arranged and edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson. Eventually, other editions, more carefully edited and selected, and volumes of letters appeared, mak­ing her a legendary figure in the history of American literature, and

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the small town of Amherst, Massachusetts, became the place of literary and tourist pilgrimage.

Emily Dickinson was not an amateur; she knew herself to be a true poet and she did not need contemporary endorsement. Like most good poets, she expressed herself more frequently through metaphor than simile, and her metaphors first make the reader pause at their strangeness — and then agree to their just­ness. Her metaphors range from visual details like "gazing grain," "the steeples swam in amethyst," to shocking "zero at the bone," and very often reach the point of irony based on a contrast (Auto-da-fe and judgement / Are nothing to the bee; / His separation from his rose / To him seems misery.) or of paradox in "Parting is all we know of heaven / And all we need of hell."

Emily Dickinson had the power and perception of a great poet, and some of her lines make you feel "zero at the bone" when her common metre and regular rhymes dash with the grimness and dra­matic shifts of her images and tones, while her imagination seems truly metaphysical. That paradoxical combination of the unortho-doxy of her thought and imagery with the accuracy of metre and expression let her transform her personal experience into universal truth. Her works present very sophisticated themes — a mystic ap­prehension of the natural world, fame, death and immortality.

Small and significant the subjects of her interest might seem, like a bobolink singing or a certain slant of light in the sunset, or a ball of yarn, she manages to raise these commonplace details of the world to the transcendent heights of the rebellious soul and powerful mind of a philosopher and — a poet. In her own words, "a Poet... distils amazing sense from ordinary Meanings — and Attar so immense from the familiar species that perished by the Door..."

The honour of having discovered Emily Dickinson for the Russian reader belongs to Vera Markova, who was the first to trans­late a collection of her poems, while a few other translators had only picked a poem or two the 1960s and 1970s. Another translat­ed collection of her poetry was produced by Elga Linetskaya, a

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Imagery in Translation

prominent poet, translator and writer from St. Petersburg, who с fessed that she had been translating Emily Dickinson all her but never published a line of her translations because she was satisfied with the results. Linetskaya inspired her disciples to tri late Emily Dickinson, and now the Russian reader has a very < ciently translated collection of Dickinson poetry.

The poem under consideration for comparison, The sk low, was apparenthy written in 1866 and was included into first edition of her poems (1890). The world of Emily Dickin: her Nature, is almost alive and human. You can feel the mood the character of the cloud, the miserable state of the flake of sn the gloomy wind and the tired Nature in her lowest spirits. I h added my own translation to those of Vera Markova and I Linetskaya to illustrate the difference in manners of transforrr the verse and the distance between visions of the source text their Russian substitutes. The three translations differ from another and from the source text, each in its own way.

The poem chosen for translation is, primarily, an exer in the choice of words. The straight and exact manner of nan-things is not always possible in Russian, if we are to preserve direct meaning of the word. For example, the short word m means «•местность, поросшая вереском» in Russian, which not fit any poem, especially a short one like this.

Task for comparison:

The sky is low — the Clouds are mean

****

The sky is low — the Clouds are mean. A Travelling Flake of Snow Across a Barn or through a Rut Debates if it will go —

A Narrow Wind complains all Day How some one treated him.

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Nature, like us is sometimes caught Without her Diadem.

'вод В. Марковой:

Небо низменно — Туча жадна — Мерзлые хлопья — на марше — Через сарай — поперек колеи — Спорят —• куда же дальше.

Мелочный Ветер — в обиде на всех — Плачется — нелюдимый. Природу — как нас — можно застать Без праздничной Диадемы.

гвод Э. Липецкой:

Нависло Небо, Тучи хмуры,

И, съежившись в комок,

Не знает Снег, скользнуть ли в Желоб,

Присесть ли на Конек.

А Ветер про свои обиды Все ноет, ноет нудно... Как нас, Природу в затрапезе Застать совсем нетрудно.

гвод Т. Казаковой:

На небе — нищебродство туч. Как будто сиротинка, Не знает, где ей ляжет путь, И мечется снежинка.

И ветер ноет целый день На жалобные темы — Вот так природу застаешь Порой без диадемы.

Imagery in Translation

EXERCISES FOR COMPARISON

• Read about Emily Dickinson and her poetry. Read some
other poems by her.

• Read the poem attentively and study the meanings of the
words and their symbolic value.

• Study the rhythm, metre and rhyme scheme of the poem.
What impression does the sound and intonation of the text pro­
duce on the reader?

• Study the stylistic devices used to create the imagery of
the poem.

• Identify the key-words of the text and play with them; try
to use synonyms or direct meanings.

• What words of the text can we omit or transform? How
will the text change with those transformations?

• How would you imagine the character of the poet from
this text?

■ Comment upon the images and moods of the poem.

• Change the poem into prose and analyse the difference.

• Translate the poem word for word. Bear in mind all pos­
sible lexical and grammatical variants.

• Reconstruct the system of stylistic devices in accordance
with Russian stylistic norms.

• Arrange a pattern of rhymes for the Russian text.

• Fill in the lines with fitting words within the rhyming
frame. Watch possible and necessary changes in the vocabulary,
grammar and style of the text.

• Read the result aloud to see if it produces a similar rhyth­
mic effect to that of the source text.

• Compare the results with the other translation versions
and comment upon them.

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Task for translation: / never saw a moor

I never saw a moor;

I never saw the sea;

Yet know I how the heather looks,

And what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God, Now visited in heaven; Yet certain am I of the spot As if the chart were given.

EXERCISES FOR TRANSLATION

• Study the poem, its contents, imagery and metric pattern.

• Translate the poem word for word; identigy the most im­
portant words that are found in the strong rhythmic positions.

• Study such words as moor, heather, heaven, chart. What
Russian substitutes are possible for them? Consider their com­
parative expressive value and associative force.

• Reconstruct the rhyme scheme of the text in Russian; se­
lect rhyming words as close to the source pairs as possible.

• Complete the lines with words and arrange them syntac­
tically to retain the logic and metre of the source text.

• Read the results aloud to hear how the text sounds in com­
parison with the source text.

• Complete the translation and check its emotive power.

• Discuss the results.

• Look for some other translations of the poem and com­
ment on them.

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