ज्यांना एकांतवास प्रिय होता असे म्हटले जाते अशा एमिली डिकिन्सन आणि जी ए कुलकर्णी यांनी असंख्य पत्रे लिहली आहेत,
मला तर नेहमी वाटते जीएंनी स्वतःच काल्पनिक अशी भिंत आपल्याभोवती उभी केली होती, पण त्यांची अनेक पत्रे त्यांच्या मृत्यनंतर प्रसिद्ध झाल्यामुळे त्या भिंतीला नुसतेच कोनाडे नाहीत तर दरवाजे सुद्धा होते असे वाटते.
एमिली डिकिन्सन यांच्या बाबत न्यू यॉर्कर च्या लेखातील खालील वाक्ये पहा.
Kamran Javadizadeh, The New Yorker, August 21 2024:
"... Two tendencies animate Dickinson’s letters, two ways of imagining what writing might do. On the one hand, and especially as she entered adulthood, writing could feel like a mode of retreat from the world. This way of imagining Dickinson—as an eccentric recluse—became part of her mythology even in life, and it was an image that she played no small part in promoting. In 1869, when Dickinson was thirty-eight years old, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the man who (through the mail) had become her poetic mentor, asked her if they could meet: “if I could once see you & know that you are real, I might fare better.” Dickinson’s response suggested that she preferred a state of slight unreality: “A Letter always feels to me like immortality because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend.”... "
"I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!..."
artist: Rosanna Bruno, "The Slanted Life of Emily Dickinson: America's Favorite
Recluse Just Got a Life!", 2017