A Brill Calendar: February 5

The Noble Art of Letter Writing

Few students of customs and practices on which knowledge and learning relied until deep into the 19th century – and even later – doubt the importance of letter-writing and sustained correspondence for dissemination of conjectures, concepts and knowledge.

In a very different world, savouring already for some two decades the delights innate in despatching digital data with the speed of light to almost any location on the globe, it takes considerable mental empathy to imagine circumstances and working-conditions without telephone & radio, the cradle & nursery for an ‘Information & Communication Age’.

Since documenting observations, asking questions and sharing results with peers are crucial aspects of cultural traditions (all three requiring language, spoken or written), writing letters to kindred spirits was a powerful means to compensate absence in the ‘here & now’ of colleagues & collaborators, be they potential or already dedicated to the common pursuit of information and knowledge. This was certainly true before Gutenberg’s typography.

The premium inherent in a captivating message was incontestable to all concerned: not only for the personal recipient of the document, but also his (or hers) entourage and in-laws, particularly in ages when travelling was cumbersome and often dangerous. Lack of realistic alternatives for written correspondence and necessities to master letter writing put a stamp on scholarly education regardless of discipline. Highly esteemed by their receivers, important epistles tended to be nursed, preserved carefully and protected from decay: occasionally resulting, centuries later, in splendid regalia of scholarly publishing: Collected Correspondences of past-masters in epistolary arts like Erasmus, Grotius, Huygens, or Voltaire.

In this millennium, in which the noble art of letter-writing may experience an eclipse, or even its final Fall, February 5 is as good a day as any to commemorate Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné, born that calendar-day of 1626 in Paris. Her tireless writing to her daughter far away in Provence – sans SMS - is a prime example of the perpetual enchantment this literary genre may evoke.