Petrőczi Éva: Holt költők társaságában. A Puritanizmuskutató Intézet és a Medgyesi Pál Puritán Kiskönyvtár emlékére - Nemzet, egyház, művelődés 9. (Sárospatak, 2014)

Emily Dickinson, the Poetess-Queen of the Webster Dictionary To Tamás Magay, the eternal lexicographer-theologian

PETRŐCZI ÉVA: HOLT KÖLTŐKTÁRSASÁGÁBAN

o doubt: every poet - if he or she is a real one - must be a “fetishist” of the WORDS. (With capital letter, of course, figuratively!) As, among numerous other ones, in the case of Emily Dickinson, the sprout of Puritan New England. Though her Puritanism proved to be an eccentric, a revolting one. But even with some typically Puritan gestures, first of all with her openly manifested passion for order and system which can be witnessed in her works (10. kép). In the case of the English-Dutch William Ames (Amesius)308 and his greatest Hungarian follower, Pál Medgyesi309 this continuous interest in and practice of order and system can be witnessed in their long-effective and long-used handbooks of homiletics, 7he Marrow of Theology by Ames and Doce nos orare by Medgyesi. The name of one of these two “system-creators” could have been known by E. D., as after the death of William Ames, the famous professor of systematic theology. His family and his personal library - and also his great works - found their final home in America where the real cult of the Amesian oeuvre began.

Emily Dickinsons first dictionary-nearing sentences can be found in a letter to a school-friend, Abiah Root (later: Root-Strong!), dated from May 7,1845: “My plants look finely now, I am going to send you a little geranium leaf with this letter, which you must press for me. Have you made a herbarium yet? If not, it would be such a treasure to you; most all the girls are making one. If you do, perhaps I can make some additions to it from some flowers growing around here.”310

We learn from the book of Judith Farr and Louise Carter,311 that gardening and the creation of a herbarium was an everyday pastime of the girls of New England. But Dickinson’s herbarium, the digital facsimile of which312 is — even at the first sight — very different from the average, the amateurish ones. E. D.’s herbarium, into which she pressed over 400 specimens, was - with great probability — more meticulously constructed than any other botanical albums composed by the girls from her generation. It can be partly

308 Haller, William 1947,75, 79,105; Bartók István 1998,163-165,227-230,247-249.

309 Petrőczi Éva 2007/11.

310 Dickinson, Emily 1931,5.

3,1 Farr-Carter 2004.

3'2 From Harvard University Houghton University Library, Ms Am 1118.

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