Lately I’ve been dipping into my volume of Emily Dickinson’s poetry before going to bed, so this seemed to be a good time to borrow After Emily: Two Remarkable Women and the Legacy of America’s Greatest Poet by Julie Dobrow. This book explains in great detail what happened to Emily’s poems and letters after her death, as well as why they were published and are now housed in such haphazard ways, all of which originated with the two women alluded to in the title, Mabel Loomis Todd and her daughter Millicent Todd Bingham. As a reader, one rarely realizes the impact that outside influences can have on an author’s literary legacy. Although we would almost certainly be aware of ED’s poetry, it would very likely not be in its familiar form without Mabel and Millicent. I enjoyed this dual biography of dedicated, passionate, fallible women. Oh, and I got the shock of my life when I saw the photograph of Emily’s brother Austin: he bore a truly astonishing resemblance with actor Jim Carter, who is probably best known for his role as Mr. Carson in Downton Abbey.
P.S.: I swear if I ever read the words “camphorwood chest” again, I’m going to SCREAM!
Tant qu’à lire sur Emily Dickinson, pourquoi pas emprunter Les Villes de papier de Dominique Fortier? J’aime beaucoup l’écriture de cette auteure (qui est également une consœur traductrice) et la variété de ses projets. Elle constitue ici une espèce d’herbier partagé en insérant, parmi de courtes vignettes évoquant la vie d’Emily Dickinson, des fragments de sa propre autobiographie. Un fil conducteur y apparaît à contre-jour : la quête d’un chez-soi, d’un espace à la fois réel et intangible où déployer ses ailes. Le papier, tout passe par le papier : les villes, les maisons, les fleurs, les châteaux, les êtres, le peuple, la vie… J’ai déjà commencé à lire la suite de ce roman, Les Ombres blanches, et j’ai très très hâte de mettre la main sur la toute nouvelle parution de DF, La Part de l’océan.
Une citation qui me semble de circonstance, en ce mois de septembre, et qui trottera dans ma tête en marchant parmi les feuilles mortes…
L’automne n’a pas besoin de nous. Il se suffit dans ses ors et ses bronzes somptueux. Il en a tant qu’il jette ses richesses par terre, dans un éclat de rire. Il sait, lui, que l’été est bref et que la mort est longue.
Since I reluctantly had to sign up to Netflix for a month because of the large project on which I’m working at the moment (it’s a long story), I decided I might as well “make the most” of my subscription by watching as much content as I could — which is how I came to spend a couple of hours of my Friday evening in front of The Pale Blue Eye. I love Edgar Allan Poe, and have frequently enjoyed by fiction that features historical characters as amateur sleuths; it can be done very well, as in Stephanie Barron’s series with Jane Austen, for example. However… this was absolutely terrible. Stilted acting, an unconvincing premise, ridiculous accents and, perhaps worst of all, mispronounced French despite having an actual French person in the cast (the woefully underemployed Charlotte Gainsbourg). Truly the stuff of nightmares!