给一位十九世纪美国女诗人的电邮

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•狄金逊（Emily Dickinson）一生没有传奇，虽然最近有网剧*在同性恋上给她大做文章。现实里的她，史实里的她，无非是个生活朴素，不婚不育的姑娘。跟她朝夕相对，令她魂牵梦萦的就只有缪斯。

 

我们美国人，不论是土生土长还是移民，初读狄金逊的诗，可能不解。解惑其实也不难，只要对她的时代，尤其是对南北內战年间的沧桑变幻有所掌握的话，就一定可以跟这位新英格兰诗人气息相通的。

 

* 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.

 

纫秋兰原创

 

Emily Dickinson (Google Image)