Emily Dickinson
Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson were two major poets in late 19th century. The two are of entirely different visions, styles and personalities.
Whitman, in his poems, he expressed his strong love toward his country, his nation and his people, he showed great optimism and confidence towards the future of America. 作者features
Because Emily Dickinson withdraw herself from the society and lived like a hermit, so any political and social things did not influence her. she just focused her attention on the inner world. Her themes ranged from love, death, religion, nature, immortality, pain and beauty, especially about the exploration of death. She was a pessimistic writer.
But posthumously the greatness of both was firmly established and they proved to be the genuine precursors (先驱)to the most serious modern American poetry. Themes Dickinson often brought dazzling originality to overwrought topics.
Life, Love, Nature, Time and Eternity, Death and Mourning, Religion and Faith, Isolation and Depression, Poetry and Language
On poetry. She thought that poetry should be powerful and touching. The inspiration of the poet came from his inner world or intensity of his emotions and the past literary traditions and the noble heroes. Like Emerson, she thought that only the real poet could understand the world. Truth, virtue and beauty are all the one thing. The most dignified beauty was embodied by the active, affirmative dignity. Poetry should express ideas through concrete images. It was the poet’s duty to express abstract ideas through vivid and fresh imagery. She was against the restriction of the traditional doctrines and argued for the depiction of one’s inner world.
On nature. Dickinson observed nature closely and described it vividly but never with the feeling of being lost in it, or altogether part of it, nor was she surprised when its creatures also kept their distance. She thought that nature was both kind and cruel, which was similar to Tennyson.
On death. Her attitude toward immortality was contradictory. It is clear always that for Dickinson life and consciousness are inseparable. To be transmuted into grass or transcendentally made one with the ocean or the over-soul are as irrelevant and meaningless to this individualist as the idea would have been to her puritan ancestors. Style A: Her poems have no titles, hence the first line of each poem is always quoted as the title of each poem.
B: particular stress pattern: dash“— ” C: Capital letters as a means of emphasis; D: Language: brief, direct, and plain;
E: Poem: short, always on original images or symbols F: Conventional meters, iambic tetrameter, off-rhymes.
G: Short poetic lines, condensed by using intense metaphors and by extensive use of ellipsis.
H: Regular meter—hymn meter and ballad meter, also known as Common meter（ the usual (iambic) meter of a ballad ）
Quatrains（四行诗）
Alternating tetrameter（四音步） and trimeter （三音步）
Often 1st and 3rd lines rhyme, 2nd and 4th lines rhyme in iambic pentameter Visual and audible effects, great imagination, sincere emotions.
I: Her poems tend to be personal and meditative (e.g. “Because I could not stop for Death”). 诗歌鉴赏
I’m Nobody
Metaphor: A comparison.
Example: “A frog is a celebrity.” Simile: A comparison using like or as. Example: “How public—like a frog?”
我是无名之辈，你是谁？ 你也是无名之辈？
那么，咱俩是一对——且莫声张！ 你懂嘛，他们容不得咱俩。
做个名人多无聊！
象青蛙——到处招摇—— 向一洼仰慕的泥塘
把自己的大名整天宣扬！）
I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—
我听到苍蝇的嗡嗡声——当我死时 房间里，一片沉寂
就像空气突然平静下来—— 在风暴的间隙
注视我的眼睛——泪水已经流尽—— 我的呼吸正渐渐变紧
等待最后的时刻——上帝在房间里 现身的时刻——降临
我已经分掉了——关于我的 所有可以分掉的
东西——然后我就看见了 一只苍蝇——
蓝色的——微妙起伏的嗡嗡声 在我——和光——之间 然后窗户关闭——然后 我眼前漆黑一片——
In this first stanza, the scene of a deathbed is set.
The second stanza discusses the state of mind of those waiting by the deathbed of the speaker. They have obviously been crying by the suggestion that their eyes had \
What does the “king” refer to?
The king may be God, Christ, or death;
The King is probably God in this context and they are all awaiting his entering the room to take the soul of the speaker.
What’s the meaning of “last onset\ \
\means a beginning and \means an end. For Christians, death is the beginning of eternal life. The third stanza
How to understand “I willed my Keepsakes”?
These keepsakes could be material goods that the speaker collected during life. There will be no use for these goods in heaven so this line discusses the tradition of willing away property and material belonging.
The fly \ which means to come between or intervene The vision of death it presents is horrifying, even gruesome. Poet form
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; rhyme scheme: abcb.
Interestingly, all the rhymes before the final stanza are half-rhymes (Room/Storm, firm/Room) 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.
Because I could not stop for Death—
Because I could not stop for Death— He kindly stopped for me---
The Carriage held but just Ourselves— And Immortality.
We slowly drove—He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility—
We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain--- We passed the Setting Sun—
Or rather—He passed Us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill— For only Gossamer, my Gown— My Tippet—only Tulle---
We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground— The Roof was scarcely visible— The Cornice—in the Ground—
Since then—tis Centuries—and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses’ Heads Were toward Eternity—
First stanza: The opening of the poem has an understated casualness of tone :
In the first line the persona is too busy and too contented as she lives her life to both to stop for the gentleman’s call;
but, through his kindness and consideration, she is compelled at last to go with him.
In the third line, the dramatic scene is set in the carriage. The situation is one of intimacy---- “the carriage held but just ourselves.”
He has called on her as a beau; and, like a true gentleman, he has included a chaperon, “Immortality.” Second stanza: The first line of the second stanza indicates the peacefulness and pleasantness surrounding an appointment with a beau.
He drives leisurely, without haste---- ironically, as if they had all the time in the world.
She who could not stop for Death in the first stanza is completely captivated by him in the second and third lines of this stanza.
He is such an artful charmer that she needs neither labor nor leisure, for in his “Civility” he has taken care of everything. Third stanza: By the third stanza, they are nearing the edge of town.
The three elements summarize the progress and passage of a lifetime. Children strove on the playground-------youth the Fields of Gazing Grain----adulthood The setting sun-----old age
As critic Charles R. Anderson described in them,
“The seemingly disparate parts of this are fused into a vivid reenactment of the mortal experience. It includes the three states of youth, maturity, and age, the cycle of day from morning to evening, and even a suggestion of seasonal progression from spring through ripening to decline.” Forth stanza: the lady is getting closer to death;
for “The Dews” now grow “quivering and chill” upon her skin, the traditional associations of the coldness of death.
In the third line, however, the lady is still holding onto life by offering a rational explanation about her chill. She is not really dying, she seems to say: she is cold simply because her gown is thin. But she cannot escape her death, for she reveals even in her garments the dying influence: her gown is gossamer, a substance associated with spirits and other worldliness, and her tippet made of lace is something one might expect to see around the shoulders of a deceased woman lying in repose. Fifth stanza: In the fifth stanza, they have arrived at a country cemetery.
The House is the House of death, a fresh grave, sketched only with a few details.
The roof is a small tombstone, and the cornice, the molding around a coffin’s lid, is already placed “in the Ground.”
The lady is alone now, her gentleman friend has vanished unexplained. Six stanza: In the sixth stanza the words “first surmised” contribute a note of ironic surprise.
All along, then, she did not realize where her kind, intimate, slow driving, civil suitor was taking her.
It was not until after the school children, the “Gazing Grain,” the “Setting Sun,” and the “Swelling of the Ground” that she began to realize where she was heading.
She had, therefore, apparently been tricked, seduced, and then abandoned. In these terms: then Dickinson is being terribly ironic throughout the poem. She is saying “kindly,” “slowly drove,” and “Civility” in retrospect through clenched teeth. Conclusion: In its depiction of Death on one hand as the courtly suitor and on the other as the fraudulent(不诚实的) seducer, the poem reflects a basic ambiguity about death and immortality.
相关推荐：
loading