Избранное из переводов Эмили Дикинсон. 761

За шагом шаг —
Бессвязный путь,
Я машинально шла —
Прервать — погибнуть — продолжать —
Какая разница —

Остановись —
Что есть — уйдет
Неясное — явить —
Закрыв глаза — нащупать шаг —
Слепою — лучше быть —

761
From Blank to Blank —
A Threadless Way
I pushed Mechanic feet —
To stop — or perish — or advance —
Alike indifferent —

If end I gained
It ends beyond
Indefinite disclosed —
I shut my eyes — and groped as well
'Twas lighter — to be Blind —

                Emily Dickinson


1. "The enigmatic "Blank" could arise from a number of grids: it could be a trackless waste, a benumbed sense, or a sightless passageway; "The threadless way' suggests the mythical labyrinth; the "Mechanical feet" imply that the self is plotting itself on a grid  of machinery; the "push' implies a forward  advance, but one made in numb ignorance."   
                Helen Vendler

 
2. "Dickinson sends this missive from a dread place – perhaps depression, perhaps grief. One of our greatest psychological explorers, Dickinson can burrow so deeply into her psyche that at times she emerges out the other side in a vasty and musical cosmos; other times she is wrecked in some strange or wretched state, and sometimes she is stuck in some endless, mindless mire. This poem comes from the mire.

She has to push her feet along as if they were mechanical contraptions that have to be operated. There is no destination, no point of departure, no sights to be seen along the way. She started in a blank and encounters nothing other than blanks. When she looks ahead she sees an indefinite vista of blanks and so prefers to grope her way along rather than trying to see where she is going. Whether she stops or continues or even dies seems of no matter. She is "indifferent" to her options."

Dickinson's house was a lawyerly one: both her father and brother were lawyers, as were many of their friends (including Judge Otis Lord, a late-life lover of Dickinson). She would have been very familiar with the blanks on legal documents, the space left empty for lack of content. Dickinson here is treading from one blank to another, occupying that region of emptiness."
               
                Susan Kornfield

               
                Стихи.ру 08 декабря 2013 года