Emily Dickinson, Poets' Poet: First Versions in Spanish (Juan Ramón Jiménez, Gilberto Owen, Ernestina de Champourcin)

Abstract:This paper focuses on the first three Spanish versions of Dickinson's poetry. They were linked from the start, as the cult of the poet was passed on by word of mouth in the Spanish-speaking world, like a secret sap that brought together those who fed on it. Dickinson's first translator was the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, who included versions of three of her poems in his Diario de un poeta recién casado (Diary of a Newlywed Poet, 1917). It was through Jiménez that Dickinson became known to the Mexican poet Gilberto Owen, who would publish his own translations in 1934 in the cultural supplement of the newspaper El Tiempo in Bogotá, and to the Spanish poet Ernestina de Champourcin, the author of the first selection of Dickinson's poems published as an independent volume (Obra escogida [Selected Works], 1945), in collaboration with Juan José Domenchina. These translations are marked by the fact that their three authors are poets; rather than being a professional exercise, they are the result of an intimate dialogue, an homage, or even a strategy by means of which Jiménez, Owen, and Champourcin attempted to revive in their own voices the singular emotion aroused by such a different poet.