When Emily Dickinson wrote that her Writing was her letter to the world she was almost beingt literal. As an eccentric recluse she chose to communicate with the world at large via her poetry. For me I cannot say the same. I have no desire to live my life alone in one town but rather explore the wider world. By doing that I won't need to write letters to the world I can just visit it.
What I prefer to see my writing as is not a letter to the world as in the here and now but rather as a piece of myself I leave behind. Writer's can claim just as anyone who creates can also claim to be closer then anyone to immortality. Euripedes and Aristotle have been dead for well over two thousand years yet what they wrote has survived. that piece of themselves survives for centuries.
In 1840 archeologists excavating the ruins of Deir el-Medina the village that had been home to the workers building ancient egyptian temples found a huge store of papyri. These are now known as the Ramesside munuscripts and one contains a long verse poem in praise of writing. According to these paragraphs, whereas offering-chapels and families may not survive
a thousand years, a writer is kept alive by his writings. In my next post I will post the verses in full because in truth they do more then I could ever do to prove my point
a thought provoking post, I particularly enjoyed the witty line about visiting places instead of sending letters!
ReplyDeletea very interesting piece - you make your views very clear, especially your desire to visit new places rather than living in a small area.
ReplyDeleteA good look at what someone's writing can be - I agree (as I've said in my post this week) that a writer will be kept alive by their writings, and that it's almost a form of immortality.
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