VOA慢速英语2010年-PEOPLE IN AMERICA - Emily Dickinson, 1

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: I’m Shirley Griffith with PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English. Today we tell about nineteenth century poet Emily Dickinson.

(MUSIC)

READER:

Because I could not stop for Death —

He kindly¹ stopped for me –

The carriage held but just ourselves

And immortality².

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: The words are by American poet Emily Dickinson, who died in eighteen eighty-six. During her life, she 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.

READER:

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you -- Nobody – Too?

Emily Dickinson

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Some experts see Emily Dickinson as the last poet of an early American tradition. Others see her as the first modern American poet. Each reader seems to find a different Emily Dickinson. She remains³ as mysterious as she was when she was alive.

READER:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant⁴ --

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: 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 philosophy, Latin 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 Congress for one term.

Mr. 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 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 upset the mind. "

Emily Dickinson 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.

READER:

I live with Him -- I see his face --

I go no more away

For Visitor -- or Sundown--

Death's single 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 tender Majesty⁵

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: In those years, Dickinson 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 religious music used during her lifetime. But her choice of words was unusual. She wrote that her dictionary was her best friend. Other influences were the English poet, William Shakespeare; the Christian⁶ holy book, the Bible; and the forces of nature.

READER:

I dreaded⁷ that first robin⁸ so,

But he is mastered now,

And I'm accustomed to him grown--

He hurts a little though

 

I dared not meet the daffodils,

For fear their yellow gown

Would 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 dim countries where they go:

What word had they for me?

(MUSIC)

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: 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 partner, and a churchman she met in the city of Philadelphia. Another man who helped her was the writer Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Higginson had written a magazine story giving advice to young, unpublished writers. Emily Dickinson wrote to him when she was in her early thirties. She included a few poems. Higginson wrote back and later visited Dickinson in Amherst.

In the next few years, she sent him many more poems. But he did not have them published, and admitted that he did not understand her poetry.

READER:

'Tis not that dying hurts us so --

'Tis living hurts us more;

But dying is a different way,

A kind behind the door --

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Some historians wish that Emily Dickinson’s poems had reached the best American writers of her day: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau or Walt Whitman. These men could have overlooked her strange way of living to see only her ability. Historians also say it is possible that she chose to write to someone like Higginson so she would not be understood.

READER:

To hear an oriole sing

May be a common thing

Or only a divine

It is not the bird

Who sings the same unheard,

As unto crowd.

(MUSIC)

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: So little is known about Emily Dickinson’s life that many writers have created a life for her. One writer says part of the joy in studying her is what we cannot know. The poet herself said: "I never try to lift the words which I cannot hold."

In two thousand ten, a new book about the poet was published. It is called “Maid as Muse⁹: How Servants Changed Emily Dickinson’s Life and Language.”

The author, Aife Murray, writes that over the years, Dickinson employed an ethnically¹⁰ diverse group of servants. These included African-American gardeners, Native American laborers¹¹, maids from Ireland and men from England who worked with the horses. Murray writes about the relationship between Dickinson and her workers. She says their language and culture influenced Dickinson’s life and her writing.

Before her death, the poet wrote about her wishes for her funeral. She chose six of the family’s workmen, laborers, gardeners and stablemen to carry her coffin¹². This shocked her family and neighbors.

READER:

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 ajar

That oceans are,

And prayer,

And that pale sustenance¹³,

Despair!

(MUSIC)

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: 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.

This was the time of the American Civil War in the eighteen sixties. 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, so many years after her death, she remains one of America's greatest poets.

READER:

The brain is wider than the sky,

For, put them side by side,

The one the other will contain

With ease -- and you beside.

(MUSIC)

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: After Emily Dickinson died, her sister Lavinia found the poems locked away. Lavinia wrote to Thomas Wentworth Higginson and demanded that the poems be published. Higginson agreed. And a few of the poems about nature were published. Slowly, more and more of Dickinson’s poems were published. Readers soon learned that she was much more than a nature poet.

In her life, Dickinson was an 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 her poems. And for most readers, they are enough.

READER:

Surgeons must be very careful

When they take the knife!

Underneath¹⁴ their fine incisions¹⁵

Stirs the Culprit – Life

(MUSIC)

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: This program was written by Richard Thorman and produced by Lawan Davis. The poetry reader was Kay Gallant¹⁶. I’m Shirley Griffith. You can comment on this program on our website, voaspecialenglish.com. You can also find transcripts¹⁷, MP3s and podcasts. And you can find us on Facebook, Twitter and iTunes at VOA Learning English. Join us again next week for PEOPLE IN AMERICA in VOA Special English
 

1 kindly   

adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地

参考例句：

• Her neighbours spoke of her as kindly and hospitable.她的邻居都说她和蔼可亲、热情好客。
• A shadow passed over the kindly face of the old woman.一道阴影掠过老太太慈祥的面孔。

2 immortality   

n.不死，不朽

参考例句：

• belief in the immortality of the soul 灵魂不灭的信念
• It was like having immortality while you were still alive. 仿佛是当你仍然活着的时候就得到了永生。

3 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

4 slant   

v.倾斜，倾向性地编写或报道；n.斜面，倾向

参考例句：

• The lines are drawn on a slant.这些线条被画成斜线。
• The editorial had an antiunion slant.这篇社论有一种反工会的倾向。

5 majesty   

n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权

参考例句：

• The king had unspeakable majesty.国王有无法形容的威严。
• Your Majesty must make up your mind quickly!尊贵的陛下，您必须赶快做出决定！

6 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

7 dreaded   

adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词)

参考例句：

• The dreaded moment had finally arrived. 可怕的时刻终于来到了。
• He dreaded having to spend Christmas in hospital. 他害怕非得在医院过圣诞节不可。 来自《用法词典》

8 robin   

n.知更鸟，红襟鸟

参考例句：

• The robin is the messenger of spring.知更鸟是报春的使者。
• We knew spring was coming as we had seen a robin.我们看见了一只知更鸟，知道春天要到了。

9 muse   

n.缪斯（希腊神话中的女神），创作灵感

参考例句：

• His muse had deserted him,and he could no longer write.他已无灵感，不能再写作了。
• Many of the papers muse on the fate of the President.很多报纸都在揣测总统的命运。

10 ethnically   

adv.人种上，民族上

参考例句：

• Ethnically, the Yuan Empire comprised most of modern China's ethnic groups. 元朝的民族成分包括现今中国绝大多数民族。 来自汉英非文学 - 白皮书
• Russia is ethnically relatively homogeneous. 俄罗斯是个民族成分相对单一的国家。 来自辞典例句

11 laborers   

n.体力劳动者，工人( laborer的名词复数 )；（熟练工人的）辅助工

参考例句：

• Laborers were trained to handle 50-ton compactors and giant cranes. 工人们接受操作五十吨压土机和巨型起重机的训练。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. 雇佣劳动完全是建立在工人的自相竞争之上的。 来自英汉非文学 - 共产党宣言

12 coffin   

n.棺材，灵柩

参考例句：

• When one's coffin is covered,all discussion about him can be settled.盖棺论定。
• The coffin was placed in the grave.那口棺材已安放到坟墓里去了。

13 sustenance   

n.食物，粮食；生活资料；生计

参考例句：

• We derive our sustenance from the land.我们从土地获取食物。
• The urban homeless are often in desperate need of sustenance.城市里无家可归的人极其需要食物来维持生命。

14 underneath   

adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面

参考例句：

• Working underneath the car is always a messy job.在汽车底下工作是件脏活。
• She wore a coat with a dress underneath.她穿着一件大衣，里面套着一条连衣裙。

15 incisions   

n.切开，切口( incision的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Cruciate incisions heal poorly and are not required. 不需要愈合差的十字形切口。 来自辞典例句
• After two days red incisions appear on their bodies. 一两天内身体会出现粉红色的损伤。 来自电影对白

16 gallant   

adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的

参考例句：

• Huang Jiguang's gallant deed is known by all men. 黄继光的英勇事迹尽人皆知。
• These gallant soldiers will protect our country.这些勇敢的士兵会保卫我们的国家的。

17 transcripts   

n.抄本（ transcript的名词复数 ）；转写本；文字本；副本

参考例句：

• Like mRNA, both tRNA and rRNA are transcripts of chromosomal DNA. tRNA及rRNA同mRNA一样，都是染色体DNA的转录产物。 来自辞典例句
• You can't take the transfer students'exam without your transcripts. 没有成绩证明书，你就不能参加转学考试。 来自辞典例句