Translating Dickinson Serially, or Interpreting the Mysteries of Her "Minor Nation" in the Light of Certain Related Poems

Translation into Finnish	Rückübersetzung
Lintujen kesän perästä	The birds' summer gone
vuorossa ruohikon	the turn of the grass's
heimonvähäisemmän	minor nation's
säveä messu on.	unobtrusive mass / it / is
Näe palvelusta ei	To see / there / is no ordinance
ja siunaus toistetaan	and the grace is rePeated
niin verkkaan että tiedostuu	so slow that / one / becomes aware
vain yksinolostaan.	only of / one's / solitude
Kumminta kuulla on	Strangest [Most spectral] / it / is to hear
kun hohkaa elokuu	when August is burning low
ja keskipäivin kuoro tuo	and at noontide that canticle
jo unta ennakoi.	is already presaging repose
Hehkeyskin täyteä	Even the glowing beauty
armosta yhäti	in the fulness of grace still
enteellisesti korostuu	is ominously enhanced
piirteissä luonnon nyt.	in nature's countenance now

According to Emerson, America's great Romantic philosopher and the thinker who most influenced Emily Dickinson, the Romantic artist, whether a poet or a painter, was to go to Nature for his craft. In it alone would the poet realize both his means of expression ("nature offers all her creatures to him as picture-language") and his true calling as an artist; it is him, the "Sayer," who alone can "articulate" every natural fact and, by doing so, make it "reappear a new and higher form." Similar rules applied to the fine arts, which surely were to "plant gardens lined with lilac trees" but, in doing so, also to reach for a higher, "Transcendental" truth. "In landscapes," Emerson specifies, "the painter should give the suggestion of a fairer creation than we know. The details, the prose of nature he should omit and give the spirit and splendor."¹

We may well say that, especially as a nature poet, Dickinson, too, was a Romantic artist, who strove to "paint" (however, in words) views in which the Spirit, immanent in all Nature, shone through the material landscape.² In these "paintings" even her method, developed over the years, was that of the Romantic artist: first carefully (or even "scholarly") to study the diversity of the natural world and then—or often simultaneously—to look in (or beyond) it for the idea(s) uniting it into a more or less coherent "plan."³ Technically this dual and often dualistic effort is carried out both as analysis of her natural perception, through (mostly metaphoric) description, and as synthesis thereof, through elliptic vocabulary and syntax, often performed within the very same poem. Since a poem was for her, primarily, a cognitive act, an act of "circumference," she did not hesitate to avail herself of (and often also rudely to exploit) all the resources of her native tongue.⁴

Dickinson's artistic process is best exhibited and understood if we examine her successive "exercises" with some natural motif, resulting in a whole series of thematically and technically related poems.⁵ Her "outdoors sketchbook," so to say, contains a good number of such exercises: on the aubade of birds (e.g. P783, P1084), on the frog in its pond (P288, P1359, P1379), on the robin on its bough (P500, P1463), etc. P1068 belongs to a similar series (see Appendix). I try here to demonstrate the advantages a Dickinsonian translator may derive from its existence.

There are, of course, many other studies of New England's Indian summer which Dickinson made, these being only the ones related to the cricket (and / or the insect world) as indicator of the universal "plan" inherent in nature's metamorphosis. What we, first of all, learn from these sketches is the reason for Dickinson's interest in the "Unnoticed" "population" (P1746) of the grass. These "Creatures," whether nameable or not, are both "faithful" and "final" (P1766); they are "The most important population," as they most innocently enjoy the summer's ecstasies (P1746); but they are also there to close the season and sing its elegy (P1775) when all the other creatures have already deserted. It is only in this context that we fully understand the cricket's thematic portent...