給一位十九世紀美國女詩人的電郵

Miss Emily Dickinson, you've got an email!

 

Dear Emily,

 

We lost you in 1886. 

 

Posthumously your manuscripts found their way into print. Since then your readership has grown steadily. Today your poetry is widely recognized as an American classic. Of course, you can't care less. After all, you are no longer around.

 

When you were around, you had to contend with a mundane life. To your credit, you never surrendered to mundanity. Instead, mundanity surrendered to you. Reading your poetry, reading between the lines, I can't help but let you make my day. Your genius was most explicit in the implicit way you challenged the prosaic mind. Yes, you might not rhyme perfectly, but your rhymes were perfectly above the din of all those lonely crowds.

 

From a distance, you lived through the Civil War. You saw through the Civil War. You made your moral choice and you were not shy about confronting America's troubled history. By the way, America's troubled history did not end with you. It did not begin with you, either.

 

But something did begin with you. I call it original feminism.

 

Rest in peace.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Ren Qiulan

 

艾美莉•狄金遜（Emily Dickinson）一生沒有傳奇，雖然最近有網劇*在同性戀上給她大做文章。現實裏的她，史實裏的她，無非是個生活樸素，不婚不育的姑娘。跟她朝夕相對，令她魂牽夢縈的就隻有繆斯。

 

我們美國人，不論是土生土長還是移民，初讀狄金遜的詩，可能不解。解惑其實也不難，隻要對她的時代，尤其是對南北內戰年間的滄桑變幻有所掌握的話，就一定可以跟這位新英格蘭詩人氣息相通的。

 

* Dickinson, an Apple series (2019), 3 seasons, 30 episodes. I came away with the impression that Emily Dickinson was half George Sand and half Jane Austen. That said, she was a full-blooded Yankee rebel with a feminist cause, deadpan funny at times.

 

紉秋蘭原創

 

Emily Dickinson (Google Image)