Letters from Far and Near
To a Gas and Electric Lighting Company in Hartford
Gentlemen:
There are but two places in our whole street where lights could be of any value, by any accident, and you have measured and appointed your intervals so ingeniously as to leave each of those places in the center of a couple of hundred yards of solid darkness. When I noticed that you were setting one of your lights in such a way that I could almost see how to get into my gate at night, I suspected that it was a piece of carelessness on the part of the workmen, and would be corrected as soon as you should go around inspecting and find out. My judgment was right; it is always right when you are concerned. For fifteen years, in spite of my prayers and fears, you persistently kept a gas lamp exactly half way between my gates, so that I couldn’t find either of them after dark; and then furnished such execrable gas that I had to hang a danger signal on the lamp post to keep teams from running into it, nights. Now I suppose your present idea is to leave us a little more in the dark.
Don’t mind us--out our way; we possess but one vote apiece, and no rights that you are in any way bound to respect. Please take your electric light and go to---but never mind, it is not for me to suggest; you will probably find the way; and anyways you can reasonably count on divine assistance if you lose your bearings.
S. L. Clemens
Imagine yourself as the writer of Clemens’ letter at the time of the writing.
1. What purpose does the letter writing fulfill?
2. What expectations do you have about your message?
3. How do you feel about sending the letter?
4. Is there anything you refrained from saying in the letter? Why?
Emily Dickinson: Letter to Her Cousins
November, 1882
Dear Cousins
I hoped to write you before, but mother’s dying almost stunned my spirit.
I have answered a few inquiries of love, but written little intuitively. She was scarcely the aunt you knew. The great mission of pain had been ratified—cultivated to tenderness by persistent sorrow, so that a larger mother died than had she died before. There was no earthly parting. She slipped from our fingers like a flake gathered by the wind, and is now part of the drift called “the infinite.”
We don’t know where she is, though so many tell us.
I believe we shall in some manner be cherished by our Maker—that the one who gave us this remarkable earth has the power still farther to surprise that which he has caused. Beyond that all is silence….
Mother was very beautiful when she had died. Seraphs are solemn artists. The illumination that comes but once paused upon her features, and it seemed like hiding a picture to lay her in the grave; but the grass that received my father will suffice his guest, the one he asked at the alter to visit him all his life.
I cannot tell how Eternity seems. It sweeps around me like a sea. . . . Thank you for remembering me. Remembrance—mighty word.
“Thou gavest it to me from the foundation of the world.”
Lovingly,
Emily
Imagine yourself as the writer of Emily Dickinson’s letter.
1. What purpose does the letter writing fulfill?
2. What expectations do you have about your message?
3. How do you feel about sending the letter?
4. Is there anything you refrained from saying in the letter? Why?
(Delia Jenner, British woman, spent two years teaching English in china while her husband worked as a translator at the Foreign Languages press. These are excerpts of letters written to family and friends).
11 Peking
4 October 1963
The State Banquet was very grand. We ate in a huge hall with thousands of other guests and yet were all served at the same time, which must have needed terrific organization. Chou En-lai, who was the host, made a speech and then, towards the end of the meal, Chairman Mao suddenly appeared muffled in a huge overcoat. The excitement was intense. Foreigners—even diplomats—Chinese, Tibetans, and Mongols leapt on their chairs clapping and craning to see.
Everyone I meet afterwards, colleagues, students, and shop assistants, all asked if I had seen Chairman Mao; and when I said I had, their faces lit up with a sort of reflected excitement.
The next day was the great day itself. We had a great view of the parade, which was not military, unlike the Russian October Day Parade. Half a million people were positioned in Tiananmen Square holding coloured paper flowers to form patters visible from the stands. Tiananmen Square is often used for demonstrations and every paving-stone in the square is numbered so that people can get into position quickly.
In the parade students and children carried paper flowers and balloons, acrobats and dancers performed, and peasants and workers carried huge samples of their work—for example, a thermos flask about thirty feet high. Balloons and doves were released at intervals and the doves always flew up towards Chairman Mao’s stand before scattering in all directions. Whether this was due to training or the wind I cannot say. Everything was over at noon and we drove home through streets crowded with laughing, waving people dressed in their holiday best.
Apparently, the parade in 1950 took seven hours. Everyone wanted to take part and many insisted on stopping to look up at the leaders on the reviewing stand. Things are now much more streamlined, but some people complain that it’s not spontaneous enough. I enjoyed watching it very much, but I don’t know if I could have stood seven hours of it.
In the evening we went back to the square to see the fireworks and the dancing. We wandered amongst a huge crowd of more than a million people. The sky was constantly being lit up by the most fantastic display. The fireworks were shot up from four points around the square, but they managed to co-cordinate them perfectly. Afterwards, lots of little white parachutes which had carried some of the fireworks floated down and the children tried to catch them.
Then people gathered in huge rings to watch the dancers. We strolled from one ring to another looking. One group we watched was from the National Minorities Institute. The Mongols’ dance was very fierce; both men and women stormed around in leather boots carrying bows and arrows. The Korean girls in the long silk gowns were more graceful, but a little dull. Best of all were the dancers from Sinkiang. This dancing was clearly a stage in courtship; the boys moved around twirling their mustaches and rolling their eyes at the smiling girls, who tossed their long plaits and pretended not to notice.
In the next circle soldiers were dancing with cardboard swards. They didn’t seem very militaristic, as they were highly made up in traditional Chinese style with bright red cheeks and their dancing was more like acrobatics. Chinese soldiers don’t look sinister anyway. They wear unpressed khaki uniform cut like an ordinary Chinese suit. Their caps are also of soft cotton cloth. Shoes are not standardized, but are usually of cloth.
21
Peking
18 December 1963
Last week we meet the Italian wife of a British businessman, who had been taken to a concert where some African music was performed. One of her Chinese hosts turned to her and asked whether it wasn’t rather like Italian music. She said “Nonsense, the Africans are barbarians; we are the most civilized people in the world.” She told this story against her host, whose ignorance of Western music she felt was terrible, but I don’t suppose she realized how awful an impression she must have made on him.
Today has been very windy and therefore very dusty. It’s ages since it has rained and Peking is becoming very much like a desert. Even the tarmac usually has a thin layer of sand blowing over it and where the pavement is not paved the ground really does look like sand.
I have been getting my students to tell me how millet, rice, wheat, and other crops are growing in their part of the country. They come from many different provinces and all believe strongly in their own local method, so even the lazier and more timid ones spoke English with great energy as they argued over it.
Liang, the class monitor, told me about his father. A soldier in the People’s Liberation Army, he was killed in the Huai-Hai battle in 1948, so is classed as a revolutionary martyr. Liang was only a child when he joined up and doesn’t remember him well, but says he often got drunk and hit his children. It is refreshing to hear that revolutionary martyrs were not all saints! After his father left home, Liang’s mother and sisters tried to make their living by spinning. They were often hungry and Liang used to go out begging, but this only lasted until communist cadres came to the village and helped the family. Liang was one of the first boys from his village to go to university; he learnt to ride a bicycle to get to the county town to take the entrance exam. He is one of the most intelligent and knowledgeable students in the class, but he’s not very patient and his English isn’t as good as it should be.
One student has written a play in Chinese based on an Irish story I told her, and she is getting students from all the different classes to act it for the New Years party. Each student is to speak his part in the language he or she is learning. There will be Hausa, Portuguese, Turkish, Swahili, Bengali, Tamil. Urdu, Pushtu, Esperanto, Italian, English, and goodness knows what else. I’ve asked her why she’s fixed it so that probably no one in the world could understand all of it, but she just laughs.
Imagine yourself as the writer of Delia Jenner’s letter from China.
1. What purpose does the letter writing fulfill?
2. What expectations do you have about your message?
3. How do you feel about sending the letter?
4. Is there anything you refrained from saying in the letter? Why?