Translating "Split the Lark" into Swedish

"Split the Lark—and You'll Find the Music—": Swedish, Portuguese

Split the Lark—and you'll find the Music—Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled—Scantily dealt to the Summer MorningSaved for your Ear when Lutes be old.

Loose the Flood—you shall find it patent—Gush after Gush, reserved for you—Scarlet Experiment! Sceptic Thomas!Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?

(P861)

Klyv lärkan—och du finner musiken—knoppar på rad i silverskal—sparsamt strödda över sommarens morgnaroch ditt öras framtidskapital.

Öppna fördämningarna—lita på floden—våg efter våg för dig väller fram—Experiment i rött! Tvivlande Tomas!Tror du nu att din fugel var sann?

Split the Lark—and you'll find the Music—Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled—Scantily dealt to the Summer MorningSaved for your Ear when Lutes be old.

Loose the Flood—you shall find it patent—Gush after Gush, reserved for you—Scarlet Experiment! Sceptic Thomas!Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?

Like so many Dickinson poems, "Split the Lark" has a simple surface appearance but reveals profound depths of meaning and emotion, especially when read in the context of her letters and other poems. The theme seems to be fairly straightforward—it is about the skeptic's need to find physical evidence of the invisible, as in Thomas's inability to believe in the resurrection of Christ until he could actually touch the scars with his own hands. Dickinson deals with this idea in characteristically drastic fashion through the image of splitting a lark to find the music. A question seems to be implied: Do you need to look inside a bird (and thus kill it) to be able to believe in birdsong?

One of the main difficulties of the poem is to establish Dickinson's attitude to the question. Is this a case where Dickinson is being playful, and holding up an idea for ridicule? Exclamations like "Scarlet Experiment! Skeptic Thomas!," potentially ironic, could be taken to suggest this. At the same time the skepticism of Thomas can be seen to be shared by Dickinson in many of her poems. Frequently she asks for physical evidence, especially of the presence of God, as in the poem beginning

Those—dying then,Knew where they went—They went to God's Right Hand—That Hand is amputated nowAnd God cannot be found—.

(P1551)

There is, however, also evidence of the opposite. The second of Dickinson's so-called "Master letters" begins:

Master, If you saw a bullet hit a Bird—and he told you he was'nt shot you might weep at his courtesy, but you would certainly doubt his word. One drop more from the gash that stains your Daisy's bosom—then could you believe? Thomas's faith in Anatomy was stronger than his faith in faith. God made me—(Sir) Master—I didn't be—myself. I dont know how it was done.

(L233)

In this case Dickinson seems to express belief in faith without physical evidence and to criticize the skepticism of Thomas.

Interestingly, she also seems to refer to herself in the image of the bird in the letter, implying that the addressee is not aware of her own suffering. This connection also reveals a further possible dimension in "Split the Lark," as the lark in the poem could be interpreted as Dickinson or the poet herself, which has been suggested by critics like Reeves (1959) and Cody (1971). Read like this, the poem addresses the same idea as the second "Master letter": the poet/woman asks whether the addressee in the poem ("you") will need sensory evidence to believe in what she says, her "music." This, as it were, personal dimension of the poem is further expanded when one consults the dictionary Dickinson used. In the definitions of some of the central words in the second stanza—flood, gush, scarlet—a potential pervasive blood imagery is revealed. Thus, one of the definitions of "flood" is "menstrual discharge"; "gush" is defined as "a...