The International Reception of Emily Dickinson (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The International Reception of Emily Dickinson Margaret H. Freeman (bio) Mitchell, Domhnall, and Maria Stuart, eds. The International Reception of Emily Dickinson. New York: Continuum, 2009. $150. Emily Dickinson attracted an international following almost as soon as her poetry was published. That fact contributed to the founding of the Emily Dickinson International Society in 1988. Its first conference (Washington, DC, 1992) focused on Translating Dickinson in Language, Culture, and the Arts, attracting scholars and translators from fifteen different countries. A special issue of the Emily Dickinson Journal (1997, 6.2) followed, based on the translation workshops featured at that conference. It is timely and appropriate that Domhnall Mitchell and Maria Stuart's edition of The International Reception of Emily Dickinson extends those early explorations into how different cultures and nations have experienced Dickinson, and how our understanding of the poet is enriched by appreciating the responses to her poetry of readers from multi-linguistic and cultural communities. Creating an international bibliography that documents a comprehensive and cumulative record of translations, scholarship, and artistic works influenced by a particular writer is an incommensurably difficult task. Continuum Press' idea of creating a series of international "Receptions" based on contributors' research and knowledge of their own national, cultural, and historical situtations is therefore nothing short of inspired. Adding Dickinson to this series makes sense. Mitchell and Stuart are to be commended for their contribution to this way of seeing Dickinson through other perspectives and other eyes. Their volume sets the framework for further research. After a brief introduction by the editors, the volume comprises contributions from twelve Dickinson scholars representing eighteen different countries, discussing the history of Dickinson reception, questions of translation, and how Dickinson's writings have been expressed through other art forms. The fascinating [End Page 103] result of these detailed explorations, for this reader, turns out to be how other cultures and nations have responded to Dickinson's poetry—through translations, transformations into other artistic media, general interest articles, university and school studies—and how those experiences shaped the creativity of their own poets, scholars, and artists. The individual chapters provide an extensive and comprehensive resource for scholars interested in exploring the ways in which Dickinson's writings have been disseminated; their influence on general readers, poets, and artists in a particular country or linguistic community; and the ways Dickinson's reception has been affected by nationally oriented social, educational, and political situations. The dissemination of Dickinson's oeuvre in other countries occurs in two ways and through several avenues. First is the question of whether she is being read in English or in translation. Second is the extent to which she is known both within and without an educational setting, experienced through the various arts and more generally in popular media, understood in terms of her own life and cultural influences, or perceived through the lens of politics, religion, or gender. The authors of each chapter vary in their focus on these issues. Though this can be attributed to the contributors' own experiences and backgrounds, whether as poet-translators or scholars or both, nevertheless the chapters provide details that provide illuminating insights into the various languages and cultures discussed. From a linguistic perspective, the most illuminating details occur in the chapters on the Low Countries (Marian de Vooght) with Dutch, Frisian, and Flemish; Norway (Domhnall Mitchell), with its two language registers reflecting either the social elite (bokmål) or everyday spoken dialect forms (nynorsk); or Japan (Masako Takeda), with its mixed system of logographic kanji Chinese characters and the phonographic hiragana and katakana of Japanese syllabary. Issues regarding the quality of available translations reflect Dickinson's syntactically difficult and idiosyncratic poetic style, not to mention the problems of understanding and interpretation faced by all readers, and these issues inform the content in each chapter in important ways. Many of the chapters reflect the historical changes in Dickinson's reception, from her introduction through the earliest edited editions of the poems to an increasing awareness of the scope of her achievement through the later Johnson and Franklin editions. Documentation of various translations and their historical effects are especially strong in the chapters on Francophone Europe and North America...