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  • "The World Holds A Predominant Place In My Affections": Emily Dickinson's Letters to Abiah Root by Cuihua Xu
  • Cuihua Xu (bio)
Xu, Cuihua 徐翠华 我重今生:狄金森致鲁特书信集Wo Zhong Jin Sheng: Di Jin Sen Zhi Lu Te Shu Xin Ji (The World Holds A Predominant Place In My Affections: Emily Dickinson's Letters to Abiah Root). Shanghai, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2016. 240 pp.

The World Holds A Predominant Place In My Affections: Emily Dickinson's Letters to Abiah Root (我重今生:狄金森致鲁特书信集), published by Shanghai People's Publishing House in 2016, is a collection of my translation of the twenty-two letters Emily Dickinson wrote to Abiah Root. Scholars fluent in both languages can read the English texts on the left page and their corresponding Chinese translation on the right. This format offers a chance for Dickinson scholars to evaluate the translation in relation to the original text.

The idea of translating these twenty-two early letters to Abiah Root came after I translated half of Dickinson's poems into Chinese, which led to my awareness of the significant connection between these adolescent letters and her poems that were written after 1858. This is one of the very first endeavors in China to present translations of Dickinson's letters in a book form. It illustrates the thematic connections between Dickinson's correspondence and her poems.

The book contains two interpretive essays. The first essay, "Approaching Emily Dickinson," aims at helping Chinese readers understand Dickinson the poet in the context of New England's natural environment and the culture of her time. The second essay, "Dickinson's Twenty-Two Letters to Abiah Root: A Window through which Dickinson the Person and Dickinson the Poet Can Be Known," presents the connection between the twenty-two letters and her poems.

The second essay is divided into two parts. Part one demonstrates the image of Dickinson presented in her letters to Abiah Root. Evidence from the letters written between 1845 and 1854 demonstrates several aspects of young Emily Dickinson's personality. Her own frequent illnesses and the deaths of those close to her (the death of Sophia Holland struck her most severely) intensified her sensitivity. As a teenage student, Dickinson was ambitious and competitive, making the best use of her study time whether she was at home or school or in good or poor health. She loved school and her teachers, even when she was terribly homesick. She thought seriously about life, death, and religion and keenly discussed these matters with her friends. Those friendships dwindled as a result of different life choices.

Part two argues that the views Dickinson expressed in these early letters were later continuously expressed in her poems. In her later poems, her views on [End Page 139] death, religion, time, and life choices (often intertwined) were quite in agreement with those she expressed to Abiah Root.

In general, my essays and translations aim at promoting Dickinson's works among Chinese readers. [End Page 140]

Cuihua Xu

Cuihua Xu is Associate Professor of English at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in Guangzhou, China. Her published essays include "A Scrutiny into Chinese Translations of Emily Dickinson's Poetry" in the Emily Dickinson Journal (2013), "Emily Dickinson's 'I know some lonely Houses off the Road'" in The Explicator (2016), and "Approaching Emily Dickinson" (2011) and "Different Reading Interests Leading to More Possibilities" (2015), which appeared in the Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin.

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