4/26/2011

【文讀assignment #4】Biography Speculates Emily Dickinson Had Epilepsy (deadline: 5/6, 12 p.m.)

A genuis unrecognized in her lifetime, Emily Dickinson is now acknowledged as America's most original poet. Because she never married and rarely went outside her house in the last twenty years of her life, biographers and critics are interested in her mysterious private life and make many speculations about her sexuality and reclusivity. In the following interview, Lyndall Gordon (the author of Lives Likfe Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson & Her Family's Feuds) talks about the possibility that Dickinson may have been elipeptic, Dickinson's relationship with her brother, her sister-in-law, and her posthumous legacy. Listen carefully and write down anything that inspires you.



from npr.org (Fresh Air; July 6, 2010)

A week after Emily Dickinson died in 1886, her younger sister Lavinia opened drawers in the reclusive poet's bedroom and found a veritable treasure trove: nearly 1,800 poems, meticulously crafted by Dickinson during her lifetime.

But the discovery of the poems set off a multi-generational family feud within the Dickinson family over the poet's posthumous publication and her legacy. Writer Lyndall Gordon, a senior research fellow at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, describes the fight between Dickinson's sister-in-law Susan, and Susan's husband's mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd, in a new biography of Dickinson, Lives Like Loaded Guns.

"It would have seemed natural to everyone that Susan, who had been Emily Dickinson's support as a poet and keenest reader, should be the one to edit and publish the poems," Gordon tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "[But] after Emily Dickinson's death, she sent a poem to the foremost New York editor of the day, Richard Watson Gilder ... [and] he rejected Emily Dickinson's poem."

Nine months later, Mabel Loomis Todd — the mistress of Emily Dickinson's brother Austin — took matters into her own hands. Every few days, she typed up several of Dickinson's poems and started to send them to publishers. And she was successful: Four years after Dickinson's death, the first volume of her poetry was published.


Todd heavily edited Dickinson's poems, Gordon says. It wasn't until 1955, when Thomas H. Johnson published the Complete Poems, that Dickinson's writings were published without alteration from the manuscript versions.

Gordon says that several of those unaltered poems offer clues about why Dickinson rarely left her home: She may have had epilepsy. Several of her poems touch on a handicap — and, Gordon says, certain lines within those poems indicate that Dickinson may have had spells.

"I think that we have no way of knowing for certain," Gordon says. "But if it's true, it would explain everything. If there was this stigma associated with epilepsy, the best solution for her would have been for her to remain in what she called 'my father's house.' ... She was protected by her father and by her sister Lavinia. She had a comfortable room. She had the time and space to write poetry. If she had married, she would have had babies every year and many more domestic duties."

Lyndall Gordon has previously written biographies of T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Bronte and Mary Wollstonecraft.


4/01/2011

4/12文讀課改至圖書館多媒體放映室上課

Dear All,
4/12文讀課改至圖書館2F多媒體放映室上課,別忘了還有一首 "Lady Lazarus" 要讀。
Have a nice Spring Break!

張芬齡&陳黎譯普拉絲的〈爹地〉



爹 地

你再也不能,再也不能
這樣做,黑色的鞋子
我像隻腳在其中生活了
三十個年頭,可憐且蒼白,
僅敢呼吸或打噴嚏。

爹地,我早該殺了你。
我還沒來得及你卻死了──
大理石般沈重,一只充滿神祇的袋子,
慘白的雕像──有著一根灰色腳趾
大如舊金山的海狗

和一顆沈浮於怪異的大西洋中的頭顱
把綠色的豆子傾在藍色之上
美麗的瑙塞特的海水中。
我曾祈求能尋回你。
啊,你。

以德國的口音,在波蘭的市鎮
被戰爭,戰爭,戰爭的壓路機
輾壓磨平。
但是這市鎮的名稱是很尋常的。
我的波蘭朋友

說起碼有一兩打之多。
所以我從來未能告訴你該把
腳,你的根,放在何處,
從來無法和你交談。
舌頭在下顎膠著。

膠著於鐵蒺藜的陷阱裡。
我,我,我,我,
我幾乎說不出話來
我以為每個德國人都是你。
而淫穢的語言

一具引擎,一具引擎
當我是猶太人般地斥退我
一個被送往達浩,奧胥維茲,巴森的猶太人。
我開始學習猶太的談吐。
我想我有理由成為猶太人的。

提洛爾的雪,維也納的清啤酒
並非十分純正。
以我的吉卜賽血緣和詭異的運道
加上我的塔洛紙牌,我的塔洛紙牌
我真有幾分像猶太人呢。

我始終畏懼你,
你的德國空軍,你的德國武士。
你整齊的短髭,
和你印歐語族的眼睛,明澈的藍。
裝甲隊員,裝甲隊員,啊你──

不是上帝,只是個卍字
如此黝黑就是天空也無法呼嘯而過。
每一個女人都崇拜法西斯主義者,
長靴踩在臉上,野蠻
野蠻如你一般獸性的心。

你站在黑板旁邊,爹地,
我有這麼一張你的照片,
一道裂痕深深刻入顎部而不在腳上
但還是同樣的魔鬼,一點也不
遜於那曾把我美好赤紅的心

從中擊破的黑人。
你下葬那年我十歲。
二十歲時我就試圖自殺
想回到,回到,回到你的身邊。
我以為屍骨也是一樣的。

但是他們把我拖離此一劫數,
還用膠水將我黏合。
之後我知道該怎麼做。
我塑造了一尊你的偶像,
一個帶著《我的奮鬥》眼神的黑衣人

一個拷問台和螺旋鈕的愛好者。
我說著我願意,我願意。
所以爹地,我終於完了。
黑色的電話線源斷了,
聲音就是無法爬行而過。

如果說我已殺了一個人,我就等於殺了兩個──
那吸血鬼說他就是你
並且啜飲我的血已一年,
實際是七年,如果你真想知道。
爹地,你現在可以安息了。

你肥胖的黑心裡藏有一把利刃
村民們從來就沒有喜歡過你
他們在你身上舞蹈踐踏。
而他們很清楚那就是你。
爹地,爹地,你這渾球,我完了。


source: 陳黎的文學倉庫