Dickinson, a poet who does not go out after the age of 25, has a glimpse of home life

[Editor's Note] Emily Dickinson, a genius poet of the 19th century, chose to work behind closed doors since she was 25 years old. She broke with the forms inherent in classical poetry before, and in a new style, became a pioneer of modernist poetry in the 20th century. She dedicated her passionate love and youth to her creation, and wrote down the expressions that were not made public on paper, carefully caring for them, she did not care whether these poems could be published, she only cared about flowers, plants and poetry. For decades, people have been curious about Dickinson's seclusion, and the Canadian writer Dominique Fortier has changed the traditional form of biography to tell the story, poetry and life that are inseparable from imagination and reality in prose poetry, and outlines the growth of a genius, her passion for poetry and her legendary life in "I Live in Infinite Possibilities: The Life of Emily Dickinson". In the book, Dickinson researcher and translator Wang Baihua selected 41 Dickinson's works with the text, taking people into her "Paper City" and feeling the remarkable talent of this rebellious girl from the lines.

With the authorization of the publishing house, excerpt the wonderful excerpts from the book and see the home life of the poet who stays at home.

I Live in Infinite Possibilities: The Life of Emily Dickinson, by Dominic Fortjet, translated by Le Min, CITIC Publishing Group, March 2022

Ideal life

People say that at first she just didn't want to go to the city, then her range of activities gradually narrowed to her garden, and then she stayed at home, and gradually, she couldn't even go downstairs. Finally, she wouldn't even get out of the bedroom door unless absolutely necessary. In fact, all along, she confined herself to a smaller place—a piece of paper the size of a palm.

This homeland, no one can take it away.

With just a few lines of sentences or even a few words on the paper, she could get some relief and a moment of relaxation from this inexplicable sense of urgency. Finally rescued. What misfortune did she derive inspiration from these verses? Whether it was oblivion, death, or the melting pot world, she couldn't say.

Dickinson's only portrait photo The images in this article are provided by the publisher

As the day drew to a close, she walked out the door and into the garden. The last rays of the setting sun passed through the gaps in the leaves, and the ground was a chaotic dark gold, like a silent orchestral instrument, abandoned there by the players. Not far away, a campfire was lit, and on the fire were several pumpkin swollen bags, like orange, apricot and cream sheepskin bags, with wisps of yellow smoke rising in the middle. A flock of geese flew across the sky, chirping along with their figures, breaking the calm, and behind them, the silence gradually occupied, like a wound healing scabs.

At this moment, Emily stood in the Mid-Autumn Festival, two eternities meeting at her feet—summer had parted, and winter was coming. Only by holding your head high and not moving can you not fall into the abyss on both sides, walk on the thin grass like a rope at a cautious pace, and go all the way.

Dickinson Museum, the sky, the trees, the evergreen house not far away.

…………

She did not deliberately hide, nor was she in seclusion. She perched in the very center of something, contemplating in the deepest part of her ego, maintaining a balance between the garden swarm and the sign of Bear Cub. The dial needle turns, the sun sets, and the two constellations shine brightly.

This was her ideal life, airtight and completely wrapped in herself. Round and plump like an egg. Each day is a complete closed loop, with the sun rising from the treetops as the starting point, summer as golden and autumn as copper; the sun setting on the other side of the sky, which is the end. The black night was blank. The next morning, as usual, was slightly different.

In such a delicate repetition, during the time when the pause button was pressed, she intermittently understood the whispers of the grass and the whispers of the wind. In order to stop, she woke up with the earth and slept with her, intoxicated by the dizziness of the rotational movement.

Red - Blazing - is early morning

Purple - It's noon

Yellow - daylight - in the fading

After - is empty

But the sparks stretched for miles - in the night sky

The vast expanse of the burning will be leaked

That silver kingdom - original

Not once - consumed

Autumn asks us for nothing. Dressed in gold robes and holding bronzes, it was already rich. It laughed and heroically threw its wealth to the ground. It knows that summer is fleeting, but death is long.

Emily had just opened the window and was momentarily choked by something. A fragrance struck, and the soul was destroyed. From the moment she stood in her bedroom overlooking the world, the outside world became thick and blazing. The windows, like a camera for the first time, condensed all the colors. Only by looking at the world from the keyhole can we see it truly and immerse ourselves in it.

The bedroom wasn't all she had. She also has the gentle chanting of starlings, the dark night of autumn, the torrential rain of spring, the familiar noise downstairs, the caramelized smell of bread in the oven, the freshness of apple blossoms, the burning of stones after sunburn, all of which are fascinating after death.

Year after year, the radius of the revolution gradually shortens over time, like a rope winding along the central axis at an imperceptible speed. Year after year, her distance from her heart also gradually shortened: this bedroom, this desk, this ink bottle. The tip of the pen between her fingers is the end of the world.

Dickinson's poem written on chocolate wrapper

The pen wrote to herself in Emily's hand. It is telling the life of a bird, from the eggs in the nest to the clumsy young birds that learn to fly, a touch of green light on the grass tip in summer, the white frost in autumn, the southward migration in winter, and the return to the north in spring. The pen tells it all to those who put the pages to their ears like listening to the waves in a shell. Although Emily can vaguely foresee the beginning and end of everything, when she sees a swaddled child, she still imagines what kind of an old man he will become in the future. When she saw a white-headed old man, she could easily guess what kind of a croak he had been, but he himself did not remember.

For a moment, she lifted her pen, and the pen could not write without ink. Instead of dipping it in ink, she gently pressed her palm against the tip of the sterling silver pen. It was the pen that drew the lines of her palms: her heart, her life, her destiny and the whirlpool.........

Portrait of Otis Alan Bullard for dickinson's three siblings, with Emily Dickinson on the left

"I dwell on possibility"

Emily had been closed for a while, first going to the garden, then confining herself to the building, and finally shutting herself in her bedroom on the second floor all day. Sometimes guests come to visit, and she will receive them, but there is always a partition between the two. The visitor sat in a chair in an empty room, she sat on the other side of the partition, and both spoke to the curtain wall.

Very few people come to visit, and those who come again and again are very few. No one likes to chat in the confession room. This feeling of talking to people across the wall made the visitor feel very confused, as if he had been teased, but he could not say who the person was, and finally had to leave with embarrassment. And this situation is not an isolated case.

To apologize to them, Emily prepares some souvenirs that only children like: a lily orchid, a rose bud, an all-white clover, sometimes a few lines, or a glass of golden sherry.

A specimen of clover made by Dickinson

On days when she stayed at home, she didn't give up her garden. The garden came with her into her bedroom, where flowers have been blooming ever since. Emily would rather spend her days with flowers, much to everyone's surprise.

The world marveled at Emily's years of living alone, as if it were an act against human nature. But I would like to reiterate that it is truly surprising that there are so few writers who can lock their doors and devote themselves to creating. Isn't it true that human nature is entangled in endless trivialities and obligations, and a life as lively and extraordinary as a circus?

What is surprising about a person who is in the company of books and voluntarily cuts off contact with the outside world? Only people who have a very high self-esteem are willing to meet with people all the time.

Dickinson Commemorative Stamps

She had imagined making a book out of flowers, as she had done when she was fourteen. But now her garden was pure white. On the paper, the words she nailed down resembled butterflies. Her pen triggered the rustling of bird's claws. In the poem, half of them are. And the other half, there are aster flowers, burning clouds, endless eternity, and the all-encompassing Bible that sleeps beside her pillow.

I live in the possibility -

A house more beautiful than prose-

More windows are countless-

Door - Higher-

The rooms are like cedars -

Naked Eye Can't See Through-

An eternal roof-

The Fan of the Firmament-

Visitors - Perfect -

Come here- Settle down -

Stretch my narrow hands

Bringing Paradise Together-

A room filled with poetry

When the drawers were gradually unable to close her scattered poems—cinnamon, chocolate, seeds, flour, and frosting—she decided to set out to organize them into a book. In order to see all the poems, she first laid them flat on the table. The wooden table tops were quickly paved. She got up, put a few pieces of paper on the stool, took a few more pieces and put them on the mantelpiece, and finally decided to lay the rest on the ground. The pieces of paper are placed in unison with the pieces of paper, leaving neat gaps in the middle, which look like a huge puzzle from a distance.

Dickinson Manuscript "I've Never Seen the Wasteland – I've Never Seen the Ocean -......"

Poetry filled the room. The narrow gap between the pieces of paper was her only passage, and she had to tiptoe away from her steps so that she wouldn't crease them. She walked on thin ice and walked forward cautiously.

Now that all the poetry had its place, she stopped where she was. What if there was a sudden gust of wind – or a spark was polished?

She hunched over, took one in her hand, and began to look for chapters related to it. It was in the other corner of the room. Very well, she held two pieces of paper in her hands. It is not so easy to find another poem that is related to the second and fits the first. As the number of poems increases, so does the difficulty of collation. Two hours later, Emily was holding fifteen or six poems in her hands, and it felt like the sky was spinning, like a drink and a cup. She carefully packed up the rest of the pieces of paper and waited until the next day to rearrange them.

Dickinson Manuscript "'Hope' is food with feathers – it inhabits the soul-......"

At night, the work of tidying up becomes more complicated, because the most expressive and likable poems have been selected, and they call on friends and companions, like good guests in the party, so that everyone present feels comfortable and happy. Later, however, the more disgusting the rest of the poems became, they were prickly like chestnuts, resisting any contact with their kind. Soon, all that was left around her was the same poetry as hers: a group of lonely people.

A week had passed, and she had to face the reality that the book she had painstakingly sorted out was now to be re-scattered and start all over again. It was a few more weeks, and then even months. It took her nearly a year to find her relatives and home for each poem.

She organized the poems into fascicles, each with dozens of pages. She borrowed a sewing kit from Lavinia, threaded the needles, put on the thimbles, and bound them carefully, stitch by stitch, and every volume was the same.

The word "fascicle" has long been used to describe thin collections of manuscripts that were secretly compiled in the bedroom. Originally, however, it referred to the unit of measure of herbs in pharmacies, i.e. the amount of herb that was lifted by the arm against the crotch, usually twelve.

Before it became an anthology, the "note" was a bunch of plants that could heal diseases...

(The subscript for this article has been prepared by the editor and has been derogated from the text.) ）