« Balayer le Coeur avec soin Mettre l’Amour de côté Nous ne nous en servirons plus Avant l’Eternité. » Ce volume réunit plus de cent cinquante poèmes de l’une des plus grandes poétesses du XIXe siècle. Hantée par le néant, Emily Dickinson n’a eu de cesse de questionner la nature, la folie, la foi, l’amour et la mort. Sa poésie, habitée de fulgurances mystiques, joue autant de la gravité que de l’ironie, de l’émerveillement que de la dérision, mêlant sentiments intimes et thèmes universels avec une audace stylistique et rythmique d’une modernité saisissante. Emily Dickinson est née en 1830. Adolescente pleine de vie, sociable et spirituelle, elle se retira progressivement dans son monde intérieur. Elle écrivait depuis son enfance, mais seuls sept de ses poèmes furent publiés de son vivant. Après sa mort, en 1886, quelque deux mille poèmes furent découverts.
Emily Dickinson was an American poet who, despite the fact that less than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime, is widely considered one of the most original and influential poets of the 19th century.
Dickinson was born to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence.
Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime.The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.
Although most of her acquaintances were probably aware of Dickinson's writing, it was not until after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Emily's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that the breadth of Dickinson's work became apparent. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, both of whom heavily edited the content.
A complete and mostly unaltered collection of her poetry became available for the first time in 1955 when The Poems of Emily Dickinson was published by scholar Thomas H. Johnson. Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism of her literary prowess during the late 19th and early 20th century, critics now consider Dickinson to be a major American poet.
Patrick Reumaux si tu lis ça : ton introduction est super irritante et ta traduction est chirurgicale et dramatique. Je suis triste d'avoir acheté cette édition
J’aurais pu mettre 4⭐️ si je n’avais pris en compte que les poèmes en version VO. Mais j’ai enlevé une étoile pour cette abominable traduction ! Heureusement que cette édition était bilingue : très vite, j’ai arrêté de regarder les pages VF et me suis concentrée sur la VO. Je ne crois pas avoir déjà lu une traduction qui malmenait autant l’œuvre originale. Les choix typographiques étaient incompréhensibles et altéraient souvent le rythme des textes originaux.
En ce qui concerne les poèmes, j’en ai apprécié la lecture (mais peut-être pas autant que si je les avais lus à l’adolescence). Les œuvres choisies sont (quasi) toutes en rapport avec la mort.
Je ne comprends pas pourquoi ce n’est pas les mêmes versions entre les poèmes originaux et leurs traductions françaises, ça rend la lecture au mieux désagréable.