The Love of Letters

Letter writing seems to be a thing of the past. Maybe the world moves far too quickly, maybe technology has overtaken them. Whatever the reason the fact remains that in past times letter writing could be a great art. I love biographies and often find that a few quotes from a letter written by the subject illuminates their personality in ways that even the various events of their lives fails to do. 

However, rather then waffle on, here are a few examples of those who have written letters in the past and various quotes from the letters, quotes that I have personally found worth reflecting upon.

First, William Blake, the English poet, mystic and engraver, known to converse with angels, a lovable trait. 

Blake, who spoke with angels

Here is a little excerpt from a letter written to a Bishop of his day concerning imagination, vision and the beauties of nature....(capitalisation is Blake's own)

Everybody does not see alike. To the Eyes of a Miser a Guinea is more beautiful than the Sun & a bag worn with the use of Money has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with Grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way.

An old money bag

Grapes on the vine

Blake had little love of the clergy so may have been arguing with the Bishop. I'm not actually sure of the context, but I will take the opportunity to recite a poem of Blake that comes from his "Songs of Innocence and Experience", and gives voice to his views on what could be called "orthodox religion":-

I went to the Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen:

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,

And Thou shalt not writ over the door;

So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,

That so many sweet flowers bore. 

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tomb-stones where flowers should be:

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

Well, onto Thomas Merton, perhaps a more orthodox religionist than William Blake, being a Trappist monk - though it must be recorded that as far as some doctrinaire Catholics are concerned, he sailed close to the wind at times, if not disappearing over the horizon. Merton was a great letter writer and these have been published in five volumes. In the introduction to the first volume, "The Hidden Ground of Love", Merton's love of letter writing is spoken of........

The scope and variety of his correspondents are staggering. He wrote to poets and heads of states; to popes, bishops, priests, religious and lay people; to monks, rabbis, and Zen masters; to Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans, Orthodox Christians, and Jews; to Buddhists, Hindus, and Sufis; to literary agents and publishers; to theologians and social activists; to old friends and young ones, too. The range and contents of his letters are almost as diverse as the number of his correspondents. He wrote about Allah, Anglicanism, Asia, the Bible, the Blessed Virgin, Buddhism, China, Christ, Christendom, Church, conscience, contemplation, and the cold war; about Eckhart, ecumenism, God, happiness, his hermitage, and his hospital interludes; about illusions, Islam, John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Koran, Latin America, liturgy, the love of God, poetry, political tyranny, precursors of Christ, prophets, psalms, silence, solitude, and sobornost; about technology, Trinity, unity, the will of God, his own writings.

As well as writing to various people of other faiths, he also met with them.

With D T Suzuki

With the Zen Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh

With the Dalai Lama

As a taster, here is a short excerpt from a letter written by Merton to the Buddhist D T Suzuki, and this shows Merton's fundamentally ecumenical heart:-

I want to speak for this Western world.................which has in past centuries broken in upon you and brought you our own confusion, our own alienation, our own decrepitude, our lack of culture, our lack of faith...........If I wept until the end of the world, I could not signify enough of what this tragedy means. If only we had thought of coming to you to learn something..............If only we had thought of coming to you and loving you for what you are in yourselves, instead of trying to make you over into our own image and likeness. For me it is clearly evident that you and I have in common and share most intimately precisely that which, in the eyes of conventional Westerners, would seem to separate us. The fact that you are a Zen Buddhist and I am a Christian monk, far from separating us, makes us most like one another. How many centuries is it going to take for people to discover this fact?

How long indeed before we all seek to learn from each other - rather than to judge each other, each within our own little cocoon of "truth". 

Maybe in another rambling blog I will quote more from Merton, but enough for now. Must finish now with John Keats, a man who died far too young, just 25, yet managed in his short life to write "To Autumn" and various Odes and longer poems, now considered some of the best in the English Canon ( although during his life they often came in for some harsh criticism from the Literary Establishment) I have read a few biographies and one highlight is his relationship with a young lady, Fanny Brawne, to whom he wrote many letters. The excerpt below, however, is not from one of them. Keats was ardent about the source of poetry and wrote the following:-

........at once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously,  I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

"Negative Capability" I will leave for others to ruminate upon, and leave you with a couple of pictures of John Keats and his love, Fanny Brawne.

John

Fanny

So as not to end so abruptly, it has popped into my head to quote a poem, "Call Me By My True Names", written by the Zen Buddhist, Thich Nhat Hanh, a man who met Thomas Merton at one time ( see photo above ).  Hanh is Vietnamese, though forced into exile at one point, and is known for his work with the so called "boat people". He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King in 1967. He now lives in Plum Village in France.

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.