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48 十九世纪著名女诗人埃米莉·迪金森
Title=people in America #1825 - Emily Dickinson
Date=6-10-01
type=special English feature byline=Richard Thurman
Announcer:
People in America -- a program in special English about famous Americans of the past. Now, Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe tell the story of nineteenth century poet, Emily Dickinson.
(Theme)
Voice one:
Because I could not stop for death--
He kindly stopped for me--
The carriage held but just ourselves-
And (1) immortality.
Voice two:
The words are by American poet Emily Dickinson, who died in eighteen-eighty-six.
During her life, she (2)published only about ten poems.
Four years after her death, a few more poems were published.
But her complete work did not appear until nineteen-fifty-five.
Voice one:
I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you -- nobody -- too?
Voice two:
Emily Dickinson has become part of our language without really being part of our history. Some see her as the last poet of an early American (3)tradition. Others see her as the first modern American poet. Each reader seems to find a different Emily Dickinson. She remains as (4) mysterious as she was when she was alive.
Voice one:
Tell all the truth but tell it (5)slant--
Voice two:
The truth about Emily Dickinson has been difficult to discover. Few people of her time knew who she was or what she was doing. The main facts about her life are these.
She was born December tenth, eighteen-thirty, in the small Massachusetts town of Amherst. She lived and died in the same house where she was born. Emily received a good education. She studied (6)philosophy, the Latin language, and the science of plants and rocks.
Emily's parents were important people in Amherst. Many famous visitors came to their house, and Emily met them. Her father was a well-known lawyer who was elected to (7)congress for one term. Mister Dickinson believed that women should be educated. But he also believed that women should not use their education to work outside the home.
He felt their one and only (8)task was to care for their husband and children. Emily once said: he buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they (9)upset the mind."
Emily wrote more than one-thousand seven-hundred poems. There are three books of her letters. And there are many books about her life.
Some of her best work was written in the four years between eighteen fifty-eight and eighteen-sixty-two.
Voice one:
I live with him--I see his face--
I go no more away
For visitor--or sundown--
Death's single (10)privacy
Dreams--are well--but waking's better,
If one wake at morn--
If one wake at midnight--better--
Dreaming--of the dawn--
This is my letter to the world
That never wrote to me--
The simple news that nature told--
With (11) tender (12) majesty
Voice two:
In those years, Emily seems to have found her "voice" as a poet. She settled into forms she used for the rest of her life. The forms are similar to those of (13) religious music used during her lifetime. But her choice of words was unusual. She wrote that her dictionary was her best friend.
Other (14)influences were the English poet, William Shakespeare; the Christian holy book, the bible; and the forces of nature.
Voice one:
I dreaded that first robin so,
But he is mastered now,
And I'm (15) accustomed to him grown--
He hurts a little though
I dared not meet the (16) daffodils,
For fear their yellow gown Would (17) pierce me with a fashion So foreign to my own.
I could not bear the bees should come,
I wished they'd stay away
In those (18) dim countries where they go:
What word had they for me?
Voice two:
Throughout her life, Emily asked men for advice.
And then she did not follow what they told her.
As a child, there was her father.
Later there was her father's law (19)partner, and a churchman she met in the city of (20)Philadelphia. Another man who helped her was the writer Thomas Wentworth Higgins on.
Higgins on had written a magazine story giving advice to young, unpublished writers.
Emily wrote to him when she was in her early thirties. She included a few poems.
Higgins on wrote back and later visited Emily in Amherst. In the next few years, Emily sent him many more poems. But he did not have them published, and admitted that he did not understand Emily's poetry. Voice one;
'tis not that dying hurts us so--
'tis living hurts us more;
But dying is a different way,
A kind behind the door--
voice two:
Some historians wish that Emily's poems had reached the best American writers of her day, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau or Walt Whitman. These men could have over-looked her strange way of living to see only her ability.
Historians also say it is possible that Emily chose to write to someone like Higgins on so she would not be understood.
Voice one:
To hear an (21)oriole sing May be a common thing Or only a (22) divine It is not the bird Who sings the same unheard, As unto crowd.
Voice two:
So little is know about Emily's life that many writers have created a life for her. They talk about the things that interest them as if they interested Emily, too. But one writer says part of the joy in studying Emily is what we cannot know. Emily herself said, "I never try to lift the words which I cannot hold."
voice one:
I cannot live with you,
It would be life,
And life is over there
Behind the shelf
So we must keep apart
You there, I here,
With just the door (23) ajar
That oceans are,
And prayer,
And that pale (24)sustenance,
Despair!
Voice two:
Emily Dickinson sewed the pages of her poems together with thread and put them away.
She also seems to have sewed her life together and put it away, too.
Step by step, she withdrew from the world.
As she grew older, she saw fewer visitors, and rarely left her house.
The time of Emily's (25)withdrawal was also the time of the American civil war.
The events that changed America's history, however, did not touch her. She died in eighteen-eighty-six, at the age of fifty-five completely unknown to the world. No one wrote about Emily Dickinson's poems while she was alive. Yet, in the hundred years since her death, she has come to be seen as one of America's greatest poets.
Voice one:
The brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will contain With ease--and you beside. Voice two:
After Emily died, her sister Lavonia found Emily's poems locked away.
Lavonia wrote to Thomas Wentworth Higgins on and demanded that the poems be published. Higgins on agreed. And a few of Emily's poems about nature were published. Slowly, more and more of her poems were published.
Readers soon learned that she was much more than a nature poet. In her life, Emily was an (26) opponent of organized religion.
Yet she often wrote about religion. She rarely left home.
Yet she often wrote about faraway places. She lived quietly.
Yet she wrote that life passes quickly and should be lived to the fullest.
Will we ever know more about the life of Emily Dickinson? As she told a friend once: "in a life that stopped guessing, you and I should not feel at home."
We have the poems. And for most readers, they are enough.
Voice one:
Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine (27) incisions
(28) Stirs the (29) culprit--life
(Theme)
Announcer:
You have been listening to the Special English program people in America.
This program was written by Richard Thurman. Your (30)narrators were Kay gallant and Harry Monroe. Listen again next week at this same time on VOA for another story of people in America. This is Shirley Griffith.
(1) immortality [imR:`tAlEti] n.不朽, 不朽的声名
(2) publish [ 5pQbliF ]vt.公布, 发表
(3) tradition [ trE5diFEn ]n.传统
(4) mysterious [mis`ti[ri[s] adj.神秘的
(5) slant [ slB:nt ] n.倾斜
(6) philosophy [ fi5lCsEfi ]n.哲学, 哲学体系
(7) congress [ 5kCN^res ]n.(代表)大会
(8) task [ tB:sk ]n.任务, 作业
(9) upset [ Qp5set ]vt.扰乱, 使不适, 使心烦
(10) privacy [ 5praivEsi ]n.秘密
(11) tender [ `tendE] adj.嫩的, 温柔的, 软弱的
(12) majesty [ `mAdVisti] n.最高权威, 王权, 雄伟
(13) religious [ri`lidVEs] adj.信奉宗教的, 虔诚的, 宗教上的
(14) influence [ 5influEns ]n.影响
(15) accustomed [a`kQst[md] adj.通常的, 习惯的
(16) daffodil [ `dAfEdil] n.水仙花 adj.水仙花色的
(17) pierce [piEs] vt.刺穿, 刺破, 穿透, 突破, 深深感动
(18) dim [dim] adj.暗淡的, 模糊的, 无光泽的
(19) partner [ 5pB:tnE ]n.合伙人
(20) Philadelphia [ 7filE5delfjE ]n.费城(美国宾西法尼亚州东南部港市)
(21) oriole [ 5C:riEul ]n.金莺类, 白头翁科的小鸟
(22) divine [di`vain] adj.神的, 神圣的, 非凡的n.牧师
(23) ajar [[`dVB:] adj. (门窗等) 微开的
(24) sustenance [ 5sQstinEns ]n.食物, 生计, (受)支持
(25) withdrawal [ wiT5drC:El ]n.撤退
(26) opponent [[`p[Un[nt] n.对手, 反对者
(27) incision [in`siVEn] n.切割, 切开, 切口
(28) stir [stE] vt.动, 移动, 摇动, 激起
(29) culprit [ `kQlprit] n.犯人
(30) narrator n. 讲述者
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