Saturday, November 19, 2011

The Lost Letters

The Lost Letters

Dear Reader,

I stumbled upon a most interesting website called “Letters of Note” that collates letters of some significance or “note”; mostly written by well known, historical figures – but also unknown people - who have corresponded something worth archiving (in the editorial eyes of the website), whatever it may be.

I really like it… Many of the letters do have great historical merit and are rare finds. Others are simply humorous. Some are very revealing and as primary documents, items of great worth for discovery purposes. Take for example the letter between Gandhi and Hitler shortly after the invasion of Poland in 1939. Ghandi’s letter is an appeal from a place of “friendship” to Hitler, for a merciful political approach. It never reached him due to a British intercept.

Then there's the letter between Beat poet and author, Jack Kerouac to the leading actor of the day, Marlon Brando, to write, produce and act a screen adaptation of his influential beat novel, “On The Road” and assume the character based on the life of Kerouac himself. This letter reveals much…

I actually discovered this website, while searching for materials on Kerouac and Brando. I thought that Brando probably would have played a Kerouac character role well - I felt both men were similar in some ways - so I was interested to know whether they had known each other. My search led me to the letter.

The fact that Brando didn't respond would tend to reveal something about himself also, of course… as someone wise once pointed out to me, not responding to such a communication is a response in itself.

Some of the letters are not so grand, but rather, about smaller, more trifling matters, that nonetheless are interesting. Being a tactile and personalised item, you can tell much from a letter… from the handwriting, the phrasing, the deliberation or casualness, the signatures, the type fonts and stationary used – it is all an expression of the individual.

The site has the original letters scanned with transcripts provided below and in most cases, some accompanying brief, explanatory notes. Although I have not perused comprehensively, here are a few favourites thus far:

The site reminded me of how much I like letters and the place I feel the letter still has, in society. Letters have undoubtedly become a lost art in the modern communication spectrum. Their usage, as I understand, continues to decline as vastly more convenient forms to achieve similar ends, take hold ever more. Many are prophesizing the death of postage as we know it. Hard postage is now a bastion of largely undesirable stuff - more commonly the reserve of formal commercial matters, annoying direct marketing campaigns, bills and other financial statements... Personal letters, I suspect, are increasingly becoming common only among the elderly for whom it has always been a way of life.

And yet, perhaps their importance or significance has never been greater. Perhaps in spite of the modern communication landscape (and because of it), it is heightened. For a letter seems, in my view, to have more gravity; it is capable of being far more formal and concentrating than an email - which in the maelstrom of the digital space, can evoke a passive response. It has personality for the reasons I have offered above. It remains a physical experience as well as an emotional and personal one and there is an opportunity to uniquely inscribe a gesture or thought in ways harder and in some cases, impossible, through other forms.

Their now rarity makes the experience of a personal letter a welcome novelty and change – and for this reason alone, people are probably more likely to pay attention to their contents.

This perceived significance is probably well founded, however, as given the lack of convenience involved in preparing, printing and posting a letter, writers are generally going to take more care in thinking about and crafting their contents and subsequently more time to their writing - more than may be applied when the process is instantaneous and a finger’s click away, as with email.

Of course historically, and especially among writers, letters have been considered an art form. Many books have been published of collected letters (I not so long ago purchased a big but good one of George Bernard Shaw’s) and many word men, particularly of the Romantic era, used use it as a modem to express their opinions and exert their style in a different format. Indeed the output of letters from some writers is incredibly prolific.

Several of the Romantic writers such as Byron and Wordsworth used it to critique each others work – frequently and sometimes heatedly – which I think had the effect, like most vibrant creative periods, of “lifting the bar” of the output in a kind of faux combative, collaborative way… when you read some of these you understand the importance they placed on letters and it is well documented that particularly among such writers, vast amounts of time used to go into writing them – sometimes hours or days, for even very short letters, of half a dozen lines or less.

As a valued human communication for centuries, I am sure letters still have an important place and a functional one. They are not only still very meaningful and valuable but probably quite practical and effective for a range of communication purposes, also. I love to receive them, when I do, on the odd occasion. I am going to make it my business to write many more (while a service still exists to deliver them).

Your friend,


NJC

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