PART I
PHOTO
An image, from 1857, of a woman who may well be Emily Dickinson, the greatest poet in American history, and one of the greatest in world history, with an unparalleled range of subject, a powerful and legendary diction, and a bold, radiant form. The image was discovered in the Amherst College Special Collections and has been the subject of intense scholarly debate and study.
QUOTES
Neruda: #14 from 20 poemas de amor y una canción desesperada, in his Obras Completas, 1957, published by Losada.
On Dickinson: the complete works of Emily Dickinson now exist in two separate editions, the first edited by Thomas H. Johnson, published in 1951, and a more recent edition, in 1998, edited by R. W. Franklin. Dickinson’s poems have different numbers in each edition. This quote is from poem #1069 in the Johnson edition, and #1125 in the Franklin edition. Both editions are published by Harvard University Press.
The quote from Kafka is aphorism #14 in the series of numbered aphorisms, each of them on separate sheets of paper, and found among the writer’s papers. I read it in the Shocken edition, 1970, in the book The Great Wall of China: Stories and Reflections.
Frank Cushing was an American anthropologist who traveled to New Mexico with John Wesley Powell in the late 1800s, and decided to stay with the Zuni. He lived in their pueblo from 1879 to 1884 and received the name “Medicine Flower.” The quote is from his book Zuni Fetiches, written in 1883, and published by the Smithsonian Institution.
PART II
PHOTO
Émilie du Châtelet, born in 1706, was the daughter of a courtier of Louis XIV and was educated in languages, science, and mathematics. She was the translator of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica into French and was a formidable physicist in her own right, even correcting some of Newton’s errors. She had a husband, and many lovers, among whom was Voltaire. The pair lived together for a number of productive years at her chateau in Lorraine.
QUOTES
Yu Xuanji was a courtesan and Taoist teacher in China in the 9th C. This verse is taken from the book Women in Praise of the Sacred, 1994, edited by the poet Jane Hirshfield and published by HarperCollins.
Li Qingzhao was a poet and artist in China in the early 12th C. Her work is now celebrated wherever poetry is read and studied. This quote is also from Women in Praise of the Sacred.
Emily Dickinson’s letter to her sister is from 1864, during a spell of years in which Dickinson wrote in what can only be called a torrent of genius. It is in her Selected Letters, 1958, Harvard University Press.
Rabia el-Adawia was a Sufi saint of the 8th C. This quote is from the 2015 edition of The Way of the Sufi, by Idries Shah, published by the Idries Shah Foundation in London.
PART III
PHOTO
Mary Wollstonecraft, born in 1759, began an independent life at the age of nineteen after suffering for years in a household ruled by an abusive, irresponsible father. She was a writer, translator, and original thinker, and in 1792 published her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, an extraordinary, decisive advance in thinking about woman’s rights and human rights. She had two children out of wedlock and married both of the men who had fathered her children.
QUOTES
Nobuko Katsura was a modern Japanese poet and a specialist in haiku. She died in 2004. This poem is taken from the book Love Haiku, 2015, translated and edited by Patricia Donegan with Yoshie Ishibashi, and published by Shambhala.
The verse from ancient Sumer is probably by Kubatum, a priestess. The lines, according to Jane Hirshfield in Women in Praise of the Sacred, celebrate the devotions of Kubatum’s marriage to the king, in a sacred rite recalling the marriage of Inanna and Damuzi.
Hakim Sanai was a Sufi poet who lived in Afghanistan in the 12th C. The line is from his book The Walled Garden of Truth, 1974, Octagon Press, translated by David Pendlebury.
“Thunder: Perfect Mind” is a long poem found in the Nag Hammadi Library, 1988. The poem is translated by George W. MacRae, in the revised edition of these Gnostic scriptures edited by James M. Robinson, and published by Harper and Row.
PART IV
PHOTO
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was born around 1651 in Mexico. She grew into a beautiful young woman of lustrous intelligence and turned down many marriage proposals in order to devote herself to a life of study. In 1667, she began her life as a nun, assembled thereafter a considerable personal library, and studied both theology and the poets of the Golden Age in Spain. She was a poet, scholar, dramatist, and passionate defender of the right of women to seek knowledge, write verse, and practice philosophy. She is celebrated as the first published feminist in the New World.
QUOTES
Ikuyo Yoshimura is a prize-winning contemporary Japanese poet, a professor of English, and head of the Evergreen circle, a group whose writers compose haiku in English. This quote is from Love Haiku.
Shakespeare’s line is from Act 1, scene i, of Measure for Measure.
Nawab Jan-Fishan Khan was a warrior and Sufi sage who lived in the 19th C. This quote is taken from The Way of the Sufi, by Idries Shah, the 20th-C Sufi scholar who is a descendent of Jan-Fishan Khan.
The Dickinson quatrain is #1235 in the Johnson edition and #1245 in the Franklin edition.