Из письма L353 Томасу Хиггинсону

Из письма (L353) Томасу Хиггинсону

Риски Бессмертья, возможно, и есть его обаянье -
Безопасный Восторг ущемлён по части очарованья.

Перевод с английского Сергей Лузан

Оригинал

‘The Risks of Immortality are perhaps its charm –
A secure Delight suffers in enchantment.’

Re.:
A letter (L353) to Thomas Higginson which continues with the words, ‘The Risks of Immortality are perhaps its charm – A secure Delight suffers in enchantment.’

Комментарии к стиху 1112 "The Riddle we can guess"
Непостижимая «Загадка», которую Эмили имеет в виду, в особенности - загадка бессмертия, поскольку этот катрен начинает письмо (L353) Томасу Хиггинсону, которое продолжает слова «Риски Бессмертия, возможно, являются его обаянием - безопасный Восторг страдает в области очарования»

(From Wikipedia)
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (December 22, 1823 – May 9, 1911) was an American Unitarian minister, author, abolitionist, and soldier. He was active in the American Abolitionism movement during the 1840s and 1850s, identifying himself with disunion and militant abolitionism. He was a member of the Secret Six who supported John Brown. During the Civil War, he served as colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first federally authorized black regiment, from 1862–1864. Following the war, Higginson devoted much of the rest of his life to fighting for the rights of freed slaves, women and other disfranchised peoples.

Relationship with Emily Dickinson

Higginson is remembered as a correspondent and literary mentor to the poet Emily Dickinson.

In April 1862, Higginson published an article in the Atlantic Monthly, titled "Letter to a Young Contributor," in which he advised budding young writers to step up. Emily Dickinson, a 32-year-old woman from Amherst, Massachusetts sent a letter to Higginson, enclosing four poems and asking, "Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?" (Letter 260) He was not – his reply included gentle "surgery" (that is, criticism) of Dickinson's raw, odd verse, questions about Dickinson's personal and literary background, and a request for more poems.

Higginson's next reply contained high praise, causing Dickinson to reply that it "gave no drunkenness" only because she had "tasted rum before"; she still, though, had "few pleasures so deep as your opinion, and if I tried to thank you, my tears would block my tongue" (Letter 265). But in the same letter, Higginson warned her against publishing her poetry because of its unconventional form and style.

Gradually, Higginson became Dickinson's mentor and "preceptor," though he almost felt out of Dickinson's league. "The bee himself did not evade the schoolboy more than she evaded me," he wrote, "and even at this day I still stand somewhat bewildered, like the boy." ("Emily Dickinson's Letters," Atlantic Monthly, October 1891) After Dickinson died, Higginson collaborated with Mabel Loomis Todd in publishing volumes of her poetry – heavily edited in favor of conventional punctuation, diction, and rhyme. In White Heat (Knopf, 2008), an account of Higginson's friendship with Dickinson, author Brenda Wineapple credits Higginson with more editorial sensitivity than literary historians have assumed. Higginson's intellectual prominence helped gain favor for Dickinson's altered but still startling and strange poetry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wentworth_Higginson