Booklover — Lost Art

Column Editor: Donna Jacobs (Retired, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425) <donna.jacobs55@gmail.com>

When was the last time you put pen to paper, wrote a letter to a friend, addressed an envelope, placed a stamp on that envelope, and dropped the letter into a mailbox? Can you even remember? Letter writing is a lost art — one that saddens me, as I was once an avid letter writer. The hard lesson learned is this art form requires willing participants and these participants have succumbed to the modern communication technology of email, text/emojis and the occasional phone call.

Why the commentary on letter writing? It comes from an increasingly difficult task of finding the reading matter necessary to fulfill the quest of reading one piece of work by each author who has become a Nobel Laureate in Literature. Two years ago, I discovered and read Correspondence, the compilation of letters exchanged between the Nobel Laureate Nelly Sachs and the poet Paul Celan (pseudonym for Paul Anstschel). It was an intimate, yet decidedly different, experience than one would have had if one had been able to read her poetry.

With less than 30 authors left, reading opportunities are becoming slim and the quest to find an available work in English is akin to being on the search for ancient treasure in an Indiana Jones movie. However, I recently obtained a library card for Clemson University and now have a new catalog available for me to explore. The search by author produced a couple of books. One with this intriguing title: The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell. Volume 1. The Private Years 1884-1914 . edited by Nicholas Griffin. Upon receipt of this 553page book, I wondered what awaited me. A quick look at the Preface gave me a clue: “I don’t know how many of Russell’s letters are currently in the Russell Archives, but forty to fifty thousand is a reasonable guess, and the number grows every year. While a number of them are perfunctory ... many thousands are interesting, revealing, amusing, or in other ways valuable as part of a record of his life; and many are masterpieces. The most difficult and time consuming task in editing this section of Russell’s letters, therefore, has been choosing which ones to include.” (And for me — which ones to read.) Can we even get our head around forty to fifty thousand letters in edition to his proliferative resume of over 60 books and two thousand articles? That pen must never have left his hand.

Earl (Bertrand Arthur William) Russell was born in Wales in 1872. He was awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature “in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.” His letters from the private years reveal these attributes, which is fortunate for me in my quest. Griffin organizes this volume in such an intriguing and thorough fashion that one becomes completely immersed in the minutiae of Russell’s daily life. There is a Preface and Introduction: Some Family Background followed by 6 chapters: 1) Childhood and Youth (1884-93); 2) Engagement (1893-4); 3) “A Life of Intellect Tempered by Flippancy” (1895-1901); 4) New Crises (1901-2); 5) “The Long

Task of Thought” (1903-11); and 6) New Love (1911-14).

So you might ask, what was his subject matter, style of writing, form of writing? (When not composing letters.) Was it literary fiction, politics, novels, creative, mystery, science fiction, non-fiction, or poetry? The Nobel accolades were given to an author who is renowned in the field of the philosophy of mathematics, just to name one. But what one gleans from Russell’s letters is the intensity by which he approached ALL aspects of the human condition. From the man who delivered such works as The Principles of Mathematics, three volumes of Principia Mathematica with coauthor A.N. Whitehead and The Problems with Philosophy comes this voluminous archive of letters that are simply love letters. Love letters filled with passion of every form — passion for life, passion for art, passion for thought, passion for intellect, passion for many women and passion for philosophy and mathematics.

As I was reading, I placed so many tabs in the book that choosing representative quotes to share became quite a task. Enjoy — as they all “differ by a completely special difference.”

To Alys in 1893 (his first wife — written while they were courting. For context, Alys had Christian beliefs and Russell was agnostic):

“I am afraid it is almost necessary we should have a good deal of discussion on theological questions: I am sorry because I shall unavoidably appear in a rather brutal light as I am so utterly out of sympathy with Christianity. It would be no use at all hoping that I shall ever believe that God is a Person: no reader of metaphysics could I think be brought to such a view: it is almost as much discredited in Philosophy as Circle Squaring in Mathematics.”

To Alys in 1894 (Russell’s grandmother did not approve of his relationship with Alys and did everything in her power to come between them. These quotes come from a several page letter written after a particularly bitter argument with his grandmother about their relationship that was headed to engagement.)

“My Dearest Alys, It is a horrid necessity to have to collapse into letters again and I have hardly realized our parting enough yet to imagine the necessity .... I have had the scene with my Grandmother: it didn’t happen the way I had hoped and was I fear rather a failure, though I said all I had contemplated saying and said nothing beyond my intentions.” (several pages later) “My Darling — I have got thy letter and it is heavenly. I don’t know what to say. It seems such an age since it was necessary to find words for the expression of love, that none of them seem good. And yet thee has found lovely words for it: I wish I could too.”

[To Louis Couturat) in 1898 (Griffin mentions that most of the communication between Russell and Couturat is too technical for inclusion.)

“There are one or two questions that I will not discuss in my reply, which will concern itself exclusively with the empirical nature of the Euclidean axioms. The first relates to the antinomy of the point. What constitutes the antinomy is that, not only are two points different, but they differ by a completely special difference, different from the difference between two other points, and that this difference is what constitutes distance. This difference must, therefore, be the difference between two positions, and yet two positions, in themselves, have only a material difference. The difficulty does not depend entirely on a Leibnizian theory of identity. As for the circle of definitions, these are definitions in the philosophical sense, that is to say, definitions which give what truly constitutes the defined object, and not merely some verbal definition.”

To Helen in 1902 (Russell had several female friends with which he exchanged letters. He was writing while staying at 14 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London)

“This place is singularly beautiful. Alone at night in my study at the top of the house, I see far below me the busy world hurrying east and west, and I feel infinitely remote from their little hopes and fears. But beyond, borne on the flowing tide of the river, the seagulls utter their melancholy cry, full of the infinite sadness of the sea; above, Orion and the Pleiades shine undisturbed. They are my true comrades, they speak a language that I understand, and with them I find a home: rest and peace are with the calm strength of Nature.”