Portrait in a Convex Mirror: Seeing Dickinson in Contemporary Spanish-Language Poetry

Abstract:In the Spanish-speaking world, there are four primary ways in which authors have sought, like Thomas Wentworth Higginson, to take Emily Dickinson by the hand as they try to understand her, eager to communicate her strength to others who are distant from her in space and time and language. Listed in order of closeness and level of interpretation, these four methods or interactions are translation, conversation or dedication, reinterpretation, and influence. This essay studies examples of each and in tracing these varieties of literary transmission explores an important facet of what Dickinson meant when she spoke of circumference.