Translating the Imaginary Space in Poetry: An Example of Translations of Emily Dickinson into German
Wait! Look! Her little Book –
The leaf – at love – turned back –
Her very Hat –
And this worn shoe just fits the track –
Herself – though – fled!
– Emily Dickinson, Poem 344 [1]
Emily Dickinson, ca. 1847, daguerreotype. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Introduction
A close analysis of Emily Dickinson’s (1830–1886) poetry and its translations into German led me to comprehend the metaphor of the imaginary space as key in the reception of a literary text, especially a poetic one. Speaking about the nature of lyrics, Marshall Brown notes, “Whether we call it music, suggestiveness, or haunting, the interior distance achieved by lyric is an opening onto a dynamic mental space whose power has often been felt, even if it is rarely formulated.”[2] Indeed, each poem unfolds in a certain space that primarily exists in the author’s mind. However, thanks to various poetic means, the poet seeks to recreate this space in the text and somehow invite the readers into it, giving them the opportunity to observe what is happening from a certain point of view. The imaginary space of the original poetic text has both some ambiguity and mobility, and is a direct expression of the author’s will.
What is the job of a translator of a poetic text? It seems that the translator’s primary desire is to transfer the original meaning of the work as accurately as possible, considering both single words and images, and the entire structure of the poem. The obvious inconsistencies between the semantic and grammatical features of languages lead to difficulties finding and choosing appropriate words and expressions. However, it seems that it is impossible to pay attention to words without observing and analyzing the entire imaginary space in which they exist.
While working with a difficult and complex text, each case of literary translation is of great interest. Poetic translation is evidence of the translator’s deep reflection on the original text, their attentive and thoughtful reception. Every translator is primarily a reader, and observing their work allows us to answer one of the fundamental questions of any researcher of fiction: how exactly does the text chosen for analysis build communication with the reader? In this piece, I will focus on communication within the imaginary space of the poem, which is carried out, in particular, with the help of various riddles, hints, and both unambiguous and ambiguous pointing gestures. Before the translator can invite a reader into a new language environment, they must first comprehend their own presence in the imaginary space. The material I have chosen is the poetry of Emily Dickinson and translations of her poems into German. I will pay attention to some translations of her lyrics which focus intently on the category of the imaginary space. The main purpose of my analysis is proving the necessity of readers to reflect on the phenomena of the imaginary space and the important role it plays in a complex system of relations between the author and the receiver (reader as well as translator) in the poetic text.
Creating The Space
To comprehend the concept of the imaginary space and its implementation in Dickinson’s poetry, it seems important to conceive the existence of a poetic text in two concurrent fields—symbolic and deictic. The first is the space of symbols that requires a certain conventionality to be definitive; the symbol is “a conventional sign” which “acquires a meaning not by virtue of any qualitative character but by social agreement.”[3] In turn, the deictic field points back to situational spatial locations and temporal frames, making it a space of greater freedom and mobility. Its meaning is not prescribed in advance but formed in the process of a specific pointing gesture. It is the deictic field that becomes a space of communication, “an area of common purpose between speaker and hearer, between writer and reader.”[4] When referring to the deictic dimensions (place, time, and grammatical person), the writer creates a “deictic window” that “provides the reader with two shifting foci, an origin and a content of perspective.”[5] It may seem that the deictic field hardly gives the reader more freedom than the symbolic field does, as it is also pre-chosen by the author. However, the pointing gesture refers to the reader’s individual knowledge, their experience of being in real space. The author uses this deictic center “as we would use the ‘I’ of face-to-face interaction to anchor our comprehension of the text. The reader tracks the shifted deixis in the text as if placed in that center.”[6] Thus, deictic field turns out to be connected with the “I” not only of the lyrical character but also of the poet themself, as well as the implicated reader. That allows the readers to find themselves in an imaginary space that still exists exclusively in the poet’s mind.
Thus, the process of literary translation faces a lot of problems, the most obvious of which is the primal grammatical differences of languages. Deictic categories presented in one language may be implemented differently or simply absent in another. More complications arise when examining the translation strategy itself, in which translators often seek to transfer the ground meaning of the text, which at first glance is enclosed in the symbolic space. The transition of symbols into a new language environment often becomes the primary task of the translator. Can this indeed be an opportunity to realize the emotional potential of the original text as well? By regarding the deictic origin as less significant and concentrating on the overall impression made by the poem, the translator often sacrifices some barely noticeable accents which create a finely balanced construction of the author’s imaginary space. The emotive language of literary texts, in turn, builds primarily on the deictic center that, if given away, may “deprive the text of a shade of its meaning or even its literariness.”[7]
However, the deictic field of the original poem is often complexly constructed and requires the translator to work patiently to establish and identify the links between the elements of the text. It is worth noting Dickinson’s deep interest in the topic of space, exhibited by the active use of spatial categories for direct indications and as part of complex metaphors. At the same time, there is a large number of non-obvious deictic constructions or an intentional omission of such, making it difficult to understand the text.
Among the scholars of Dickinson’s poetry, the metaphor of the poem as a riddle is common. It can be said that some of the poet’s works are written directly in this genre, for example, the poem 1332:
Pink – small – and punctual –
Aromatic – low –
Covert – in April –
Candid – in May –
Dear to the Moss –
Known to the Knoll –
Next to the Robin
This can be called a poem of definition that points out some characteristics of an object while inviting the reader to guess what it is. No metaphors or allegories are used, and people familiar with the Amherst landscape would have solved the puzzle easily—this is a poem about a mayflower.
Herbarium assembled by Emily Dickison, circa 1839-1846. 1 volume (66 pages) in green cloth case. MS Am 1118.11, Houghton Library © President and Fellows of Harvard College. License: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ois:hlviewerterms
Another example of a straightforward riddle can be found in poem 884:
An Everywhere of Silver,
With Ropes of Sand
To keep it from effacing
The Track called Land.
Here, Dickinson creates a vivid image of the seashore without naming it—but the description is simple enough for the reader to understand the main theme of the poem.
In such poems, Dickinson does not use the deictic categories of time and person. This decision is dictated by the communicative situation and does not make it difficult for the reader to understand the text in any way. The space of a riddle is a space as conditional as possible, relevant to any reader at any given time; the main purpose of it is to act as a universal indication of the subject being guessed.
However, a much more significant part of Dickinson’s collection is poems in which some clues for solving are missing. Such an effect is achieved by various means that complicate the work of the translator, whose task, metaphorically speaking, is to first “unriddle” Dickinson’s text, and then “riddle” to a new reader once again while not too obviously hinting at the answer, retaining just the right amount of mystery. It seems that the key to successful translation in this case is the exact transfer of pointing gestures that form the space in which the riddle exists. Of course, the translator is required to somehow clarify the original; however, such clarification should take place in a non–symbolic, deictic field. It is the deictic window that should be clarified so that the reader can freely interact with the work. Yet, it is the very means by which Dickinson creates a deictic window that often turns out to be very difficult to translate.
Among these, significant omissions are often used, intentionally leaving blank spaces in the most critical parts of a poem where the readers particularly wait for some clarification. The presence of silence is an important artistic tool, often constructing the poetics of the entire literary work. As Annika Lindskog notes, “the silent ‘something’ still constitutes a presence in the text” [8], often a strong one. This very presence may have the key influence on the perception of the text. The relationship of such silences with the real world is not always apparent; it can refer to something one might have felt but does not say, something not yet formulated or expressed in voiced words, or something which for some reason cannot be named, as well as something transcendent beyond human understanding. In any case, it acts as a means of communication with the reader, who first seeks to fill the existing gap and then comprehends its fundamental impossibility. Dickinson frequently invites her readers to contemplate the incomprehensible. Surrounded by gestures pointing to it, it remains indefinite and, therefore, especially attractive.
Approaching The Complexities
The difficulty lies, as William Franke observes, “not so much in the poem itself as in what it points out beyond itself and allows to be sensed or fathomed, but not to be comprehended.”[9] However, it seems that in this case, the primal understanding of a poem is not a rational comprehension but an appreciation of the opportunity to observe the world without completely “unraveling” it; there is a power hidden inside silence and tranquility that cannot be found in action. Dickinson exhibits this thought in the poem 1200, for example, in which she compares her poetical speech to a brook. Verbosity is metaphorically presented as a torrent that turns out to be dry or lacking sense; silence, in turn, appears to have a great value:
Because my Brook is fluent
I know “tis dry –
Because my Brook is silent
It is the Sea –
Indifferent to any manifestation of the time around her, Dickinson was genuinely interested in one only temporal category—eternity as the inevitable and expected outcome of earthly existence. However, eternity belongs to another world and is therefore difficult to express in a poetic word, which is somehow still part of the earthly world. To comprehend the metaphysical processes, the poet frequently prefers to use spatial metaphors; for example, in the poem 228, the disturbing boundary between the worlds is understood as a certain distance:
When It goes, “tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –
Spatial metaphors also turn out to be important for Dickinson’s understanding of the very nature of poetry and her poetic skills. It is arguable that any poem arises from nothing, but in Dickinson’s case, the sense of silence and emptiness in her works are felt especially strongly. Dickinson’s small, isolated texts were rarely written for publication purposes and, therefore, often lack any paratext—most of them have no title and are dated approximately. Her very process of writing poetry, as exhibited in her drafts, is a scrupulous search of adjectives that seem to be semantically and figuratively unrelated to each other. Their primary purpose is to occupy a certain place in the poetic line; it is not exactly a single word or image that is important rather its place in the selected space.[10] This can be seen in poem 1126:
Shall I take thee, the Poet said
To the propounded word?
Be stationed with the Candidates
Till I have finer tried —
The Poet searched Philology
And when about to ring
For the suspended Candidate
There came unsummoned in –
That portion of the Vision
The World applied to fill
Not unto nomination
The Cherubim reveal –
Here, Dickinson contrasts the tactics of philological “casting”—the process of searching and selecting the words most suitable to fill a certain gap—with the phenomenon of a Cherubim, a directly holistic poetic vision that despises the diligent efforts of nomination. As a result of such a creative act, a kind of proclamation occurs, affirming the existence of these words “here” (in the poetic text) and “now” (in the moment of its reading).
The process of poetic translation itself is compelled to use a completely different strategy. The translators of a poem have no opportunity to work with emptiness. On the contrary, they already have a well-organized text at their disposal, often accompanied by a paratext. Therefore, during the process of translation, the poetic text inevitably loses some part of its original aesthetic potential, transforming from a performative art into a purely mimetic art; its mimetic constructions (such as descriptions, metaphors, and comparisons) are translated from one language to another.
It is important to illustrate the possibility of comprehending the nature of poetry within spatial categories with an example of poem 1084. The whole poem is certainly an attempt to understand the process of versification, as well as its final result:
At Half past Three, a single Bird
Unto a silent Sky
Propounded but a single term
Of cautious melody.
At Half past Four, Experiment
Had subjugated test
And lo, Her silver Principle
Supplanted all the rest.
At Half past Seven, Element
Nor Implement, be seen –
And Place was where the Presence was
Circumference between.
Emily Dickinson, Poems: Packet XXXV, Mixed Fascicles. Includes 25 poems, written in ink, ca. 1866. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Houghton Library - (191a) At Half past Three, a single Bird, J1084, Fr1099. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. License: http://www.edickinson.org/terms
The poem begins with a description of an everyday scene: in the early morning, in the pre-dawn silence, one bird cautiously begins to sing. However, as it transforms from stanza to stanza, it gradually moves from certain graphic descriptions to more abstract ones. The words either describe the world in general categories such as ‘Element’ and ‘Principle’ or characterize various ways of knowing the world such as ‘Experiment and Implement.’ While the poem’s end serves as a logical conclusion (the sun rose, and the early bird’s song ended), it also has the potential to be read as some philosophical finding expressed in the most abstract terms: ‘Place,’ ‘Presence,’ and ‘Circumference.’
Within all these complex and shimmering transformations, only time remains consistent, its methodical course indicated at the beginning of each stanza. The bird interacts with the outer world through its presence; its song disrupts its habitual state and modifies it, but it is not able to influence the passage of time. With the time limits being more of an inevitable convention, the “acting” in the text occurs primarily in spatial categories.
The final ‘Circumference’ turns out to be a spatial term as well. Although Merriam-Webster defines ‘circumference’ as “the external boundary or surface of a figure or object,” Dickinson employs its less obvious meaning, referring more to the space inside the circle than to its contour.[11] William Howard notes: “‘Circumference’ occurs [sixteen] times in her poetry but is used only [two] or [three] times in the conventional sense of the word as meaning the perimeter or boundary of a circle. Some other uses conform to the secondary definitions given in the 1849 edition of Webster’s Dictionary: “2. the space included in a circle, 3. an orb; anything circular or orbicular”; as in Milton, speaking of a shield: "The broad circumference / Hung on his shoulders like a moon.’ But in most of her uses of the word, its meaning ranges from the partially to the totally obscure.”[12] Analyzing Dickinson’s use of this term, Sherwood points out that it can refer to an obscure and disturbing empty space while being a borderline between death and life, the earthly world and the heavenly world[13], as in the poem 802:
Time feels so vast that were it not
For an Eternity –
I fear me this Circumference
Engross my Finity –
The space is a scene for both presence and absence, an area where they can peculiarly collide and even blend. Alfred Habegger notes, “Mystery shifts from a vital point of sound to the ungraspable and all-enclosing periphery, ‘Circumference,’ from which light and sound pour in. That’s the ineffable process the poem narrates. But it is one we dull humans never grasp. We end up where we started: in the dark.”[14] However, this silence no longer turns out to be the same silence we observe at the beginning; the very act of singing somehow transforms it. The poem first arises in the silence, fills some space, interacts with and modifies it, and then disappears, leaving the reader to observe what remains—emptiness and mysterious fulfillment at the same time.
Translating The Space
In the context of this poem, the translation of the mysterious ‘Circumference’ is the result of reflection not only on the given individual experience of observing nature but also on the poetic process as a whole.
German literary critic Gunhild Kübler (1999–2021), who explains her experience and the course of her translation in a discussion in The Emily Dickinson Journal, interprets ‘Circumference’ rather literally—as a circle, within the boundaries of which both space and the presence of a bird are located. ‘Circumference’ can also serve as a metaphor for poetry in general. Kübler interprets ‘Circumference between’ as “showing that the place for presence is encompassed by circumference.”[15] As the bird’s place is ‘between Circumference,’ the subject of the whole poem is “the place of the poet with regard to nature. And this is the poem’s answer: the poet has to work with ‘Element[s] and implement[s]’ that can be seen. His business is ‘Circumference,’ whereas the bird’s business is the ‘term’ that—elaborated to a ‘silver principle’—can win the birds’ contest right in the center of all revelation: nature.”[16]
The main idea of the poem is therefore interpreted as an observation on the eternal course of nature made by an attentive artist:
Ein Ort einstiger Gegenwart
In des Umkreisens Mitte.
The vibrant processes of the outer world (including the song of a bird and its disappearance) occur independently of the poet; “the business of the poet’s ‘Circumference’” is therefore to “illustrate in poetry” the miracles he had carefully observed.[17]
It seems that Paul Celan (1920–1970) interprets Dickinson’s text differently. His attention is focused on the very nature of the poetic statement metaphorically expressed by a bird song and its integrity. As Celan understands it, poetry does not disappear back into the primal silence but somehow remains, its constant presence piercing the outer world. In his famous speech “Meridian,” Celan characterizes the art of poetry this way: “I find something as immaterial as language, yet earthly, terrestrial, in the shape of a circle which, via both poles, rejoins itself and on the way serenely crosses even the tropics: I find a… meridian.”[18] This speech was given in 1960, whereas Dickinson’s translations were first published in 1961; it is impossible to certainly conclude what period of time Celan worked on them, but observing the neologism he used to translate the mysterious term ‘Circumference’ (Zwischenkreis), it is possible to consider this as different stages of a same thought, an attempt to identify the peculiarity of the poetry itself. Such a translation is an example of how Dickinson’s silences encourage the translator’s poetic creativity so that new meanings and metaphors rich in interpretation are born.
The line “And Place was where the Presence was / Circumference between” is a striking example of Dickinson’s use of deictic constructions in order to create a special poetic effect. A bizarre discrepancy between a specific pointing gesture and an obscure object is noticeable; in such a construction, the deictic categories of time and place do not really explain anything to the reader. Any rational perception of the poetic statement turns out to be almost impossible, “being replaced with the figurative one, since the reader must imagine the described picture by evoking an image of abstract concepts while concretizing them due to the deictic words.”[19]
Many of these originally vague indications inevitably turn out to be clarified during translation; in this case, the loss of ambiguity in the text is palpable. However, the popular strategy of translators is still not the clarification of the original. Many efforts are put in order to transmit all of the original text’s constructions into new language, hoping to somehow repeat the initial effect. Such, for example, is the work of Lola Gruenthal with the poem 755, full of indistinct definitions, such as:
It was the limit of my Dream —
The focus of my Prayer —
A perfect — paralyzing Bliss —
Contented as Despair — [20]
Gruenthal’s translation is rather sequential, with the use of a definite article instead of a possessive pronoun being the only distinction from original text. Then, she follows with translating “paralyzing” as a participle (lähmend):
Es war der Brennpunkt des Gebets –
Des Traumes Grenzbereich –
Vollkommen – lähmend – Seligkeit –
Gefasst – Verzweiflung gleich –
It can be said that Gruenthal translates Dickinson's images quiet literally. Celan, on the other hand, seems use a completely different approach. Celan transforms “paralyzing” into a whole sentence in which the deictic categories of time and person are clarified, allowing the reader to better comprehend the imaginary space of the poem from which the poet speaks directly:
Es war das Äußerste des Traums,
der Brennpunkt des Gebets;
gelähmt war ich, beseligt, ganz,
und gern verzweifelt stets. [21, emphasis added]
Celan pays great attention to the deictic field of Dickinson’s texts throughout all his translations. He passionately works with different deictic categories, sometimes even by adding constructions not found in the original text. Analyzing only ten poems he left translated, one can still trace some fairly stable and intriguing strategies.
The first of them is the transformation of objects into subjects by paraphrasing one original sentence into two; see, for example, how the definitions in the poem 479,
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –
…
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –,
Turn Celin’s translation into independent clauses:
Es hat das Korn uns nachgeäugt,
wir sahn: die Sonne sank.
Dann hielten wir, da stand ein Haus:
emporgewelltes Land. [22, emphasis added]
A similar technique is the restoration of deictic categories when they are simply absent in the original text. This transforms the nearly timeless, riddle-like space of the original poem into a more concrete one. To re-establish the deictic categories, Celan may use an additional verb, usually a spatial or a motion one, or even turn a verbal noun into a full clause. For example, in the translation of the poem 742, the phrase “The Wind,” which originally occupies an entire line, turns into a spatially specific description of the action “Wind tritt hinzu.” Celan uses this technique again in the poem 755,
The Heaven below the Heaven above —
Obscured with ruddier Blue —
Life’s Latitudes leant over – full –
The Judgment perished – too –
Where Celan turns the noun “Judgment” into the verb “meinen,” referring it directly to the speaker:
Den Himmel unten färbt ein Rot,
den Himmel oben auch.
Das Leben schäumte über, und
was ich gemeint, war Hauch. [23, emphasis added]
As in the stanza we have already considered, the use of the deictic category of the grammatical person allows the reader to point out the localization of the speaker in the space of the poem; in turn, the imaginary space of the poem becomes closer to the reader. It is worth paying attention to another nuance of this translation—clarification of Dickinson’s line “The Heaven below the Heaven above.” The peculiarity of the original word order makes it almost impossible to comprehend the space depicted in the poem. Celan, however, deliberately separates the two “Heavens,” characterizing them separately and thereby providing an unambiguous understanding.
Celan pays special attention to the spatial categories, striving to organize Dickinson’s confusing pointing gestures into a picture that is, if not more rational, at least easier to comprehend. This solution is especially significant for poem 742, whose original ending is very difficult to interpret clearly:
What Plan
They severally — retard — or further —
Unknown —
Celan, in turn, presents to the reader an accurate spatial metaphor:
Ein jeder: wem bahnt er den Weg und wem
steht er entgegen?
To understand something means to be clearly aware of the spatial categories in which this phenomenon exists; it seems that Celan adheres to this very attitude when working with Dickinson’s poems. A telling illustration of this thesis is his translation of the poem 1052, in which Dickinson expresses confidence in her own knowledge through a mysterious metaphor:
I never spoke with God
Nor visited in Heaven –
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the Checks were given –
Thomas Johnson points out the possibility of interpreting “Checks” through the colloquial meaning of “train tickets” generally accepted at that time [24], which, together with the use of the word “spot,” introduces into the poem the idea of a not-so-vast space but of a one-directional movement toward a specific goal. Celan, on the contrary, understands it through the topic of topography and orientation in space, translating it as “als hätte ich / die Karte schon gelesen.”
Another notable aspect of Celan’s strategy is the active use of vocative expressions. They can also be found in his translations even when absent in the original text; for example, in the poem 1732, where the impersonal statement “Parting is all we know of heaven” turns into an expressive exclamation, clearly highlighting both the speaker and her addressee at the same time:
Abschied, das ist, was uns,
du Himmel, an dir wissbar ist
Not only Celan uses this technique; Kübler adheres to the same strategy, translating the mysterious “Circumference between” as an accurately localized “In des Umkreisens Mitte;” or, for example, in the translation of poem 25, for it originally contains only one verb (“I’m”):
Im Baum – hüpft eine Brise –
Und ich bin eine Rose! [25]
Describing such translations of Celan, Timothy Bakhti characterizes them as a desire to “straighten out” Dickinson’s poetry [26]; however, it is obvious that they are more than just banal simplifications of the texts. At first glance, it may seem that Celan transforms an original text quite radically; such a conclusion could be made after a simple line-by-line comparison. Paradoxically, it is such a difference that turns out to be one of the ways to preserve some of the original effects of the poem or at least reestablish a similar effect in a new language environment. It can be assumed that when translating Dickinson’s texts, which build communication with the reader in bizarre ways, the translation of an exclusively symbolic part of the text can deprive the poem of its original ability for productive communication, leaving it mysterious and completely closed simultaneously. Working with the deictic field, sometimes even by adding new elements to it, allows the translator to reenact the situation of the original text in front of the new reader, thereby preserving the text’s emotivity, and, with it, the meaning.
Conclusion
These considered examples of Dickinson’s translations into German are only particular cases of a poetic text’s reception in which the imaginary space plays an important role, appearing to the reader through a complex system of omissions, hints, and pointing gestures. A classical translation of the symbolic field is not of great interest; instead, the work of the poet-translator in the deictic field is. This work has a significant impact on the translation, as translators attempt to not only transfer the images presented in the original work but also invite a new reader into the very space of the translated text. The reader-translator then begins to actively reinterpret and reimagine the original poem, using sometimes surprising poetic means such as additional deictic constructions. When considered with great attentiveness, the imaginary space can become a place where the author and the reader can meet, allowing readers to observe the processes ongoing in the text from a new perspective and, in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “enjoy the cloven flame whilst it glows on our walls.”[27]
Notes
[1] All Dickinson poems in this article and their numbering are from the “Complete Poems” edition edited by Thomas Herbert Johnson: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2015).
[2] Marshall Brown, “Negative Poetics: On Skepticism and the Lyric Voice,” Representations 86 (2004): 134, emphasis added.
[3] Justus Buchler, Charles Peirce’s Empiricism (London: Routledge, 1939), 208.
[4] Leo Hickey, The Pragmatics of Translation, (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1998), 131.
[5] Judith F. Duchan, Gail A. Bruder, and Lynne E. Hewitt, Deixis in Narrative: A Cognitive Science Perspective (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2012), 131.
[6] Duchan, Bruder, and Hewitt, Deixis in Narrative, 131.
[7] Jenan Alhamli, “The Translation of Deixis in the Literary Genre,” December 15, 2020. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347272396_The_Translation_of_Deixis_in_the_Literary_Genre.
[8] Annika J. Lindskog, Silent Modernism: Soundscapes and the Unsayable in Richardson, Joyce and Woolf (Lund: Lund University, 2017), 21.
[9] William Franke, “‘The Missing All’: Emily Dickinson’s Apophatic Poetics,” Christianity and Literature 58, no. 1 (December 2008): 61–80, 68.
[10] Richard B. Sewall, The Life of Emily Dickson, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 235.
[11] Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “circumference,” accessed April 16, 2024, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/circumference.
[12] William Howard, “Emily Dickinson’s Poetic Vocabulary,” PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 72, no. 1 (March 1957): 225–48, 238.
[13] William R. Sherwood, Circumference and Circumstance: Stages in the Mind and Art of Emily Dickinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 220.
[14] Alfred Habegger and Gunhild Kübler, “Reading Emily Dickinson for Translation into German: A Dialogue,” The Emily Dickinson Journal 16, no. 2 (2007): 53–80, 73.
[15] Habegger and Kübler, “Reading Emily Dickinson,” 72.
[16] Habegger and Kübler, “Reading Emily Dickinson,” 72.
[17] Habegger and Kübler, “Reading Emily Dickinson,” 74.
[18] “The Meridian—Paul Celan,” The Stammering Collective, accessed February 13, 2024, https://www.thestammeringcollective.org/file/the-meridian-paul-celan.
[19] Veronika Prokopenya et al., “Deixis Am Phantasma as a Background Element and Its Influence on the Processing of Poetry,” The Russian Journal of Cognitive Science 8, no. 3 (September 30, 2021): 46–59.
[20] The Lola Gruenthal translations follow the Diogenes edition: Emily Dickinson and Lola Gruenthal, Guten morgen, Mitternacht Gedichte und briefe: Zweisprachig (Zürich: Diogenes, 2011).
Interesting notes by Gruenthal can also be found in the archive of Leo Baeck Institute: Max and Lola Gruenthal Collection; AR 25164, box 3, folder 17; Leo Baeck Institute, Center for Jewish History, New York.
[21] All of the Celan translations of Dickinson follow the Suhrkamp edition: Paul Celan and Beda Allemann, Gesammelte Werke in fünf bänden (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), Vol. 5, 382–401.
[22] Celan, Gesammelte Werke, 385, emphasis added.
[23] Celan, Gesammelte Werke, 390, emphasis added.
[24] William Howard, “13. Dickinson’s I Never Saw a Moor,” The Explicator 21, no. 2 (October 1962): 24–27.
[25] All of the translations by Gunhild Kübler can be found in the 2015 edition of Sämtliche Gedichte: Emily Dickinson and Gunhild Kübler, Sämtliche Gedichte Zweisprachig (Munich: C. Hanser, 2015).
[26] Timothy Bahti, “Dickinson, Celan, and Some Translations of Inversion,” Poetik der Transformation (1999): 117–27, 119.
[27] Ralph Waldo Emerson et al., The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 2, Essays: First Series (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1971), 184.
Maria Bobokhonova
Maria Bobokhonova is a junior at Moscow State University studying German, Literature, and Theatre and Performance. Her research is particularly interested in the ways that literary texts are being perceived and interpreted – from translations to film and theatre adaptations. She loves exploring the world and communicating with young researchers around the globe. She spent her last semester abroad in the University of Rostock (Germany), where she completed research on German contemporary theatre.