Poetry as Ethical Evasion? Dickinson, Levinas, and Beyond the Dip of Bell Mitchell Gauvin, PhD Candidate (York University)
Introduction Shortly before she died, Emily Dickinson wrote her last letter, a short message addressed to her two cousins Frances and Louisa Norcross (Letter 1046) (1971, 300): Little Cousins, Called back. Emily. Initial readings might infer inflections of a religious transcendence (being “called back” to a higher region). That Dickinson might have sensed her impending death would not have been unusual given her poor health well before 1886, the year she did finally succumb to her sickness. The accruing losses of family and friends between 1882 and her passing would attach some weight to the speculation that Dickinson had death on the mind and was aware her own was imminent, hence this final cryptic message to her cousins speaking of an ascension she anticipated. Yet Thomas Johnson also notes Dickinson’s admiration for Frederick John Fargus’s 1883 novella Called Back (1971, 330), which she had discussed previously in letters to her cousins, such as the following from January 1885 (Letter 962): Loo [i.e.: Louise Norcross] asked “what books” we were wooing now – watching like a vulture for Walter Cross’s life of his wife. A friend sent me Called Back. It is a haunting story, and as loved Mr. Bowles used to say, “greatly impressive to me.” Do you remember the little picture with his deep face in the centre, and Governor Bross on one side and Colfax on the other? The third of the group died yesterday, so somewhere they are again together (1971, 314).
Speculation on the meaning of the phrase “called back” can thus waver between her readerly appetite and her religious observance. The intended meaning matters less in the context of what these interpretations signal: Dickinson as reader and Dickinson as philosopher, her final letter an act of philosophy or that of readerly community with Fanny and Loo (a last communiqué with cousins curious about books). Gnosis | 19.1 (2021)
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