Т.В. Артеменко, Е.В. Кривощекова, Е.В. Кравченко, Н.Е. Николаева - Reader in Language and Culture (1098538), страница 12
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She was the second child born toEmily Norcross (1804-1882) and Edward Dickinson (1803-1874), a Yale77graduate, successful lawyer, Treasurer for Amherst College and a United StatesCongressman. Her grandfather Samuel Fowler Dickinson (1775-1838) was aDartmouth graduate, accomplished lawyer and one of the founders of AmherstCollege. He also built one of the first brick homes in the New England town onMain Street, which is now a National Historic Landmark ‘The Homestead’ andone of the now preserved Dickinson homes in the Emily Dickinson HistoricDistrict.Emily had an older brother named William Austin Dickinson (1829-1895)(known as Austin) who would marry her most intimate friend Susan Gilbert in1856. Her younger sister’s name was Lavinia ‘Vinnie’ Norcross Dickinson(1833-1899).
The Dickinsons were strong advocates for education and Emily toobenefited from an early education in classic literature, studying the writings ofVirgil and Latin, mathematics, history, and botany. Until she was ten years old,she and her family lived with her grandfather Samuel and his family on MainStreet. In 1840 they moved to North Pleasant Street, Emily’s windowoverlooking the West Street Cemetery where daily burials occurred. The sameyear, Emily entered Amherst Academy under the tutelage of scientist andtheologian, Edward Hitchcock.Dickinson proved to be a dazzling student and in 1847, though she wasalready somewhat of a ‘homebody’, at the age of seventeen Emily left for SouthHadley, Massachusetts to attend the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.
Shestayed there less than a year and some of the theories as to why she left arehomesickness and poor health. Another reason some speculate is that when sherefused to sign an oath publicly professing her faith in Christ, her ensuingchastisement from Mary Lyon proved to be too much humiliation. Back home inthe patriarchal household of aspiring politicians, Emily started to write her firstpoems.
She was in the midst of the college town’s society and bustle althoughshe started to spend more time alone, reading and maintaining livelycorrespondences with friends and relatives.In 1855 Emily and her sister spent time in the cities of Washington, D.C.78and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the same year her father bought the Main Streethome where she was born. He built an addition to The Homestead, replete withgardens and conservatory. Thereafter he held a yearly reception for AmherstCollege’s commencement, to which Emily made an appearance as the gracioushostess.
In 1856 Emily’s brother, now himself a successful Harvard graduate andAmherst lawyer, married her best friend Susan Gilbert. They moved into theirhome nearby ‘The Evergreens’, a wedding gift from his father. They frequentlyentertained such guests as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Samuel Bowles, editor ofthe Springfield Republican, who would publish a few of Emily’s poems andbecome a great friend to her and possible object of affection in some of herpoems. In 1862 Dickinson answered a call for poetry submissions in the AtlanticMonthly.
She struck up a correspondence with its editor, Thomas WentworthHigginson. He had tried to correct her work, but she refused to alter it, thoughthey soon became friends and it is speculated that Emily also had romanticfeelings for him.Dark times were soon to fall on Emily. In 1864 and 1865 she went to staywith her Norcross cousins in Boston to see an eye doctor whereupon she wasforbidden to read or write. It would be the last time she ventured from Amherst.By the early 1870’s Emily’s ailing mother was confined to her bed and Emilyand her sister cared for her. Around the time her father Edward died suddenly in1874 she stopped going out in public though she still kept up her social contactsvia correspondence, writing at her desk in her austere bedroom, and seemed tohave enjoyed her solitude.
She regularly tended the homestead’s gardens andloved to bake, and the neighborhood children sometimes visited her with theirrambunctious games. In 1878 her friend Samuel Bowles died and another of heresteemed friends Charles Wadsworth died in 1882, the same year her mothersuccumbed to her lengthy illness. A year later her brother Austin’s son Gilbertdied. Dickinson herself had been afflicted for some time with her own illnessaffecting the kidneys, Bright’s Disease, symptoms of which include chronic painand edema, which may have contributed to her seclusion from the outside world.79‘Called Back’: Emily Dickinson died on 15 May 1886, at the age of fiftysix. She now rests in the West Cemetery of Amherst, Hampshire County,Massachusetts.
Not wishing a church service, a gathering was held at TheHomestead. She was buried in one of the white dresses she had taken to wearingin her later years, violets pinned to her collar by Lavinia.Indian SummerThese are the days when birds come back,A very few, a bird or two,To take a backward look.These are the days when skies put onThe old, old sophistries of June,A blue and gold mistake.Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,Almost thy plausibilityInduces my belief,Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,And softly through the altered airHurries a timid leaf!Oh, sacrament of summer days,Oh, last communion in the haze,Permit a child to join,Thy sacred emblems to partake,Thy consecrated bread to break,80Taste thine immortal wine!I Cannot Live Without YouI cannot live with you,It would be life,And life is over thereBehind the shelfThe sexton keeps the key to,Putting upOur life, his porcelain,Like a cupDiscarded of the housewife,Quaint or broken;A newer Sevres pleases,Old ones crack.I could not die with you,For one must waitTo shut the other's gaze down, -You could not.And I, could I stand byAnd see you freeze,Without my right of frost,Death's privilege?81Nor could I rise with you,Because your faceWould put out Jesus',That new graceGlow plain and foreignOn my homesick eye,Except that you, than heShone closer by.They'd judge us -- how?For you served Heaven, you know,Or sought to;I could not,Because you saturated sight,And I had no more eyesFor sordid excellenceAs Paradise.And were you lost, I would be,Though my nameRang loudestOn the heavenly fame.And were you saved,And I condemned to beWhere you were not,82That self were hell to me.So we must keep apart,You there, I here,With just the door ajarThat oceans are,And prayer,And that pale sustenance,Despair!Fire and IceSome say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.From what I've tasted of desireI hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo say that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.Summer ShowerA drop fell on the apple tree,Another on the roof;A half a dozen kissed the eaves,83And made the gables laugh.A few went out to help the brook,That went to help the sea.Myself conjectured, Were they pearls,What necklaces could be!The dust replaced in hoisted roads,The birds jocoser sung;The sunshine threw his hat away,The orchards spangles hung.The breezes brought dejected lutes,And bathed them in the glee;The East put out a single flag,And signed the fete away.Walt WhitmanBorn on May 31, 1819, Walt Whitman was the second son of WalterWhitman, a housebuilder, and Louisa Van Velsor.
The family, whichconsisted of nine children, lived in Brooklyn and Long Island in the 1820sand 1830s. At the age of twelve Whitman began to learn the printer's trade,and fell in love with the written word. Largely self-taught, he readvoraciously, becoming acquainted with the works of Homer, Dante,Shakespeare, and the Bible. Whitman worked as a printer in New York Cityuntil a devastating fire in the printing district demolished the industry.
In1836, at the age of 17, he began his career as teacher in the one-room84school houses of Long Island. He continued to teach until 1841, when heturned to journalism as a full-time career. He founded a weekly newspaper,Long-Islander, and later edited a number of Brooklyn and New Yorkpapers. In 1848, Whitman left the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to become editorof the New Orleans Crescent. It was in New Orleans that he experienced atfirst hand the viciousness of slavery in the slave markets of that city.On his return to Brooklyn in the fall of 1848, he founded a "free soil"newspaper, the Brooklyn Freeman, and continued to develop the uniquestyle of poetry that later so astonished Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In 1855,Whitman took out a copyright on the first edition of Leaves of Grass, whichconsisted of twelve untitled poems and a preface. He published the volumehimself, and sent a copy to Emerson in July of 1855. Whitman released asecond edition of the book in 1856, containing thirty-three poems, a letterfrom Emerson praising the first edition, and a long open letter by Whitmanin response. During his subsequent career, Whitman continued to refine thevolume, publishing several more editions of the book.At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman vowed to live a "purged"and "cleansed" life.
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