Эмили Э. Дикинсон. Как катафалк то тельце

Как катафалк то тельце
На отпевание,
Для ветренной сирени
Пчелы  тщеславие
В Усердье и Моралях,
Где праведность одна,
Пророческая гибель,
В кой Праздность и Весна —

           1522

His little Hearse like Figure
Unto itself a Dirge
To a delusive Lilac
The vanity divulge
Of Industry and Morals
And every righteous thing
For the divine Perdition
Of Idleness and Spring      

Примечание переводчика:

Стихотворение написано в 1881 году и послано шестилетнему племяннику Герберту Дикинсону вместе с мертвой пчелой и инстуркцией  — "Для Гилберта отнести учтелю".

После стихотворения письмо заканчивалось строчками "All Liars shall have their part” . Jonathan Edwards и "And let him that is athirst come" .Jesus.
Согласно Джонсону Дикинсон озаглавила копию, посланную Гилберту, " Религия шмеля"("The Bumble Bee's Religion").

Emily in this poem is attacking that religion of busy-ness and hard work.
The dead bee, whose only Dirge was its buzzing when alive, shows the Lilac, which seduced him into working, how vain is the ethic of hard work and moral behaviour seeing that it only leads to death, and when compared with the ‘perdition’ or sin of idly enjoying the spring – a sin which has something divine about it.

As a note to the teacher, the poem is presumably a plea to her not to work Gilbert too hard, as people who tell the lie that hard work is necessary shall have the reward promised them by Jonathan Edwards (and Revelation 21:8).
The key thing, as Jesus said, is to be ‘athirst’ for the divine revelation of the spring.


                Стихи.ру 12 сентября 2016