Ambigüedad y ambivalencia en un poema de Emily Dickinson

Abstract

This paper focuses on the way Emily Dickinson wields ambivalence and ambiguity so as to generate a multiplicity of meaning. More specifically, the paper illustrates, her use of ambiguity in her poem “I felt a Funeral in my Brain,” whose last climactic line “And Finished Knowing then” provides varied interpretations both on her experience of death as an epistemological act as well as on her larger philosophical premises. The ambiguity and ambivalence inherent in the last line offer a gamut of possible readings that range from a nihilistic stance to a mystical transport. The English construction —“Finished Knowing”— presents two opposed meanings, equally coextensive: it simultaneously signifies both attainment of a higher knowledge as well as the total lack of it. In addition, this article also deals with the difficulty Dickinson’s poem presents to translators, particularly in those languages where there is no equivalent construction to preserve this ambiguity as is the case of Spanish. On different occasions, various translators, such as María Manent (1973), Ricardo Jordana & María Dolores Macarulla (1989), and Margarita Ardanaz (1987) have been compelled to provide a solution and take a stance in a translation where the vortex of meanings can no longer be sustained. This paper contends that in the final elucidation of the dilemma, the translator will ultimately have to take into account the underlying philosophical foundation on which Emily Dickinson’s work rests, and which is essentially religious and mystical in nature.