As a junior in high school, studying American Literature for the first time, I claimed Emily Dickinson as my poet. I felt as though I alone were given the gift to decode her poems. The rest of my class wanted to read more accessible poetry; they hated Dickinson's verse and were indifferent to her life story. Her use of elusive imagery and fourth-definition choices for words frustrated them but only increased my desire to study the poems more closely. I wanted to understand enough about Emily Dickinson so that I could emulate her.
I stayed in many a Saturday night that year, calling myself Dickinsonian and not pathetic. I wrote poems, lots of them, because I wanted to have a collection totaling 1,775--like hers. I even started using dashes in my writing. Her perceptions shook the naive grip I had on the world around me: "I heard a fly buzz when I died," she wrote, and no one I had ever met examined the world in that way. She questioned the unknowable, and imagined the impossible. I devoured her poems. Convinced that in getting to know her verse, I could answer not only her life's mysteries but my own as well.
Late this past fall when the leaves were peaking, I ventured from Boston to the Dickinson Homestead. We arrived late--at closing time in fact-- and missed the last tour of the day. We had to beg for admittance. A gracious tour guide let us stand for five minutes in Dickinson's bedroom, and I was happy--that was all I had come for. Without the crowd of a tour surrounding me, I imagined Dickinson had invited me over personally for tea or to share some poetry.
As I stood in her bedroom, I realized most of her poetry was written in this room. I traced my hand along the edge of the dark wooden bed frame, touched the pages of the Bible resting on the pew stool, and looked at the hanging pictures of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot. For some reason, I had imagined more clutter. The furniture and decorations were sparse and dainty.
A cream lace throw covered the bed. The room was altogether too neat. If Dickinson had in fact been neat, it wouldn't have surprised me--she was quite the perfectionist. But her room, kept that tidy over the years, felt like it was missing something.
What I found was a photocopied fascicle resting on her bureau. It was not enough, not what I had been looking for, but it appeased me. Dickinson arranged her poetry in miniature collections, now called fascicles, which she bound with red yarn. She wrote on lined stationary and her handwriting was loopy and large, becoming larger as she aged. Her words spilled from line to line, which made line breaks hard to decipher. Her dashes look almost like commas in fascicles, and she created no titles for the vast majority of her poems. Holding one of her fascicles while standing in her bedroom, I felt as if I had in some small way been a part of her creative process.
Aside from her bedroom, another place that inspired Dickinson was her garden. She found comfort in spending time among the company of flowers, birds, and insects. She studied them and created social structures for their interaction. An accomplished botanist, she kept flowers pressed in her favorite books. Surprisingly, Dickinson didn't have a view of the garden from her room. When she was alive, she looked out from her front window on hay meadows and a field. The Dickinson Homestead is now located on the Amherst College campus. Across the street from another side of the house are dormitories. Dickinson's father and grandfather were founders of Amherst College. Her father, Squire Dickinson, was a lawyer and prominent community member. His social status made his daughter's aloofness all the more incredible. Dickinson was afforded opportunities to be social and yet continually chose seclusion.
This choice, coupled with her poetic genius, has made Dickinson a literary legend. Her words have the power to make readers, like myself, reexamine the world, look at it from different perspectives, and attempt to understand ourselves better in the process. The frustrating and alluring contrast is that we cannot and will never fully understand how she managed to do these things. The irony of standing in Dickinson's bedroom clutching a recreated fascicle was that while I could reach out and touch her poetry, her essence would forever remain just beyond my grasp.
译文:
隐居在诗的世界里
我在高中后几年开始第一次接触到美国文学的课程，那时我就将艾米莉·狄金森视为“我的诗人”。我感觉自己仿佛是唯一一个能够解读她诗歌的人。我班上的其他人都渴望读到更加易于理解的诗歌，他们讨厌狄金森的诗作，对她的人生故事也漠不关心。她对难以捉摸意象的运用以及对第四人称的选择让那些人感到沮丧，但却能不断激起我对其诗歌的兴趣。我想多了解她一些，这样我就可以模仿她。
那年我花了很多周六的晚上，把自己认为是狄金森主义，也不觉得自己可怜。我写很多的诗，因为我想如她般拥有1775部诗作。我甚至开始在作文时运用破折号。她对世界的认识让我感到自己的世界观是如此狭隘，“我死时听见苍蝇嗡嗡作响。”她写道，我所认识的所有人中没有一个像她这样审视世界的。她探究未知的世界，想象未曾发生的事情。我如饥似渴地读着她的诗，以为读懂她的诗便能够让我解开她的世界以及我生活中的那些谜团。
当深秋的树叶掉落稀疏之时，我进行了一次大胆的探险，从波士顿来到狄金森的住所。我们到的时候天色已晚，实际上已是关门的时间了，也就是说我们错过了参观时间。我们只好哀求希望得到许可进去参观。一个和蔼的向导让我们在她的卧室中停留五分钟，我很开心，毕竟我就是为了这才来的。没有旅行团的人群在周围，我想象自己是被狄金森亲自邀请来品茶或赏诗的。
当我站在她卧室中时，我意识到她的大部分作品都是在这个房间中诞生的。我用手抚摸那张黑色木床的边缘，轻触摆放在那张新长椅上的圣经，注视挂在墙上的伊丽莎白.勃朗宁和乔治.艾略特的照片。出于某些原因，我想象她的房间应该是一派杂乱的景象。事实上，屋中的家具装饰却是少而精致。
奶油色的蕾丝床罩盖在床上。整个屋子实在是过于整洁。如果狄金森本身是个整洁的人，我并不感到惊讶，因为她是十足的完美主义者。但是她的房间，那么多年来都保持得那样整洁，却让我感到缺失了些什么。应该是缺失了言语。
我看见放在她书桌上被影印了的诗集分卷。虽然那些并没有我想象中的多，但我已经满足了。狄金森把她的作品整理成微型的集子，就是我们叫做（书刊）分册的东西，并且用红纱将它们束起。她在线条信纸上写字，她的文字很大而且一圈一圈的，随着她年龄的增长字也越来越大。她的文字散落在行与行之间，这使得各行之间也难以被辨别。她的破折号就像她诗集中的逗号，她大多数的作品都没有名字。拿着一卷诗集站在她的屋内，我觉得自己也参与进了她创作过程的一小部分。
除了她的卧室，另外一个给予她灵感的场所就是她的花园。她享受花儿，鸟儿以及昆虫的陪伴。她研究它们并为它们间的交往创造出一种社会模式。作为一个有所作为的生物学家，她把花儿夹放在她最钟爱的书中。让人奇怪的是，狄金森并不能从屋内直接看到这个花园。她那时从前窗看出去只有草地和一块田地。狄金森的住所现在位于Amherst学院内。马路对面另一侧的房子就是学生宿舍。狄金森的父亲和祖父都是该学院的创始人，她的父亲斯奎尔. 狄金森是律师，也是杰出的社区成员。因此，她父亲显赫的社会地位也就愈发使得人们对其冷漠疏远的处事态度感到难以置信。狄金森也曾有过各种进行社交活动的机会，但她还是选择了继续独处。
这个选择与她诗性的才华一起让她成为了文学界的神话。她的文字有一种力量让我这样的读者重新审视这个世界，换一种角度看问题，并且希望能够更好地去了解我们自身。但让人灰心却极具吸引力的问题在于我们从未也不会真正明白她是如何做到这些事情的。有些讽刺的是，我站在狄金森的屋内，紧握她的诗集，尽管触摸到了它们，它们想要表达的东西却是我永远也无法企及的。