Photo: Paul Wade
"What else could bring back a world and an individual's role within it so directly, so intensely, so plainly and so irresistibly? Only letters." - Simon Garfield in To the Letter: A Curious History of Correspondence
So today was one of Winnie's letters.
She writes about it being hot and even though she's writing in October, it feels quite appropriate because it's lovely and warm here today, in Prague, in April.
So much so that I have relocated here to write.
I found myself feeling quite resistant today - resistant to doing things that I ostensibly want to do. I found myself wondering if there is any point in doing this - if anyone finds it useful but me. Which is sort of missing the point, since I am doing this precisely because it is useful to me.
What's been particularly interesting to me over the past few days is a sort of aesthetics that has emerged from these letters. It's not something I ever thought I would emerge from them, but it has, so hey.
Speaking of aesthetics, today's envelope is quite subdued.
At least the front.
Perhaps its less aesthetics than approaches to spectatorship. It strikes me what keen theatre goers Winnie and Jack are - they go to theatre, they go to the cinema and they seem to go a lot.
They seem to have a sense of needing to be on when they go - like Jack wrote last week, about not going because he didn't feel up for appreciating. There's a sense that you don't go if you're in a snit. You don't go if you're not ready to actively participate. You show up and not merely physically.
Today, I was reading Simon Garfield's To the Letter: A Curious History of Correspondence. It was given to me, in relation to this project, and I am trying to take advantage of the time I have available to read it. It's a cultural history of the letter. I have gotten as far as the 14th century and Petrarch.
There's this great excerpt from Petrach, on the importance of his own epistles - he wants people to stop what they're doing and read them, dammit!
I quote "[the reader] should think of me alone, not of his daughter's wedding, his mistress's embraces, the wiles of his enemy, his engagements, house, lands or money. I want him to pay attention to me. If his affairs are pressing, let him postpone reading the letter, but when he does read, let him throw aside the burden of business and family cares and fix his mind upon the matter before him...I will not have him gain without any exertion what has not been produced without labour on my part." (89)
I WANT HIM TO PAY ATTENTION TO ME!
Clearly Petrach didn't have confidence issues.
And why not, to be fair? I am a great believer in reciprocity in all things. And following that logic, we labour should be met with labour. Not unpleasant labour - just as the making isn't unpleasant - but effort, at least.
When, culturally, did the spectator/reader assume a generally passive position? I need the cultural history of something else for that one.
Petrarch's willingness to seize our attention - indeed, his sense that there is seemingly no need to question whether that is even an appropriate thing to do - contrasts again with the hesitancy in Winnie's words.
She doesn't want to bother him with what bothers her.
The structure of this is interesting.
She writes "I should bring my troubles to you about class!" and then added in the "never" with a carat.
That 'never' is so hard to read.
It's hard to know if it's cultural, or if it's specific to this relationship.
Simon Garfield notes that Petrarch assumed his readers were men.
Were women, in letters, to play the same roles they often did at this time in real life? Is this meant to be a sort of decorative letter? A buck you up thing? Make him feel loved, don't trouble him with your trifles, don't forget his life is Serious and yours is not. I can image a little book, "The Epistolary Form for Young Ladies Courting."
Maybe I will have a better sense of this if I get to the end - or at least to the 1940s - in To the Letter. Onwards then. Today, I sign off -
With all my love,