Dear reader...

I am a bit of a letter junkie and love to read what others have written, especially their personal letters and diaries. I have a book that is a collection of letters shared between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, that chronicles their friendship and its eventual decline as they parted ways over professional differences. There is my collection of letters between Vincent Van Gogh and his brother, Theo. Vincent was financially dependent on Theo and often wrote to ask for money, but he also poured out his most secret desires and fears, his feelings of inadequacy to his loving brother. I recently found a book that is a collection of letters written by Galileo’s daughter, Suor Maria Celeste. They are presented in Italian with the English translation immediately following. There are 124 letters from her to him; he did answer them, but his letters to her have not survived. She predeceased him by a number of years, but while she was living, she was a most loving daughter, and he cared for her a great deal. C.S. Lewis is another intriguing character who was a prolific letter writer. He corresponded with hundreds of people over the years, eventually recruiting Warren, his brother, to help him answer them all.

All of these people lived in an age when one would sit down and pen a letter to the person who was foremost in their mind at the time. Lucky for us there are so many collections that have survived across the centuries. Reading letters written by someone gives you a glimpse inside their heart and their mind. Reading diaries kept by someone takes you further, sometimes into their very soul. Anais Nin and Anne Frank are two diarists that come to mind, yet each is so very different. Anne went back to edit her diary once she learned she would like to have them submitted for publication. Anais wrote with wild abandon; hers was a life so colourful and lusty.

I wonder about our digital age and how those who come after us will find our most profound thoughts, musings, and fears, if they find them at all. I keep mine in my computer. There is no collection of letters under my bed, there are only a few paper journals, mostly musings about science. My intensely personal journals that were in paper format have been destroyed long ago, as part of a purging process, a letting go of past hurts.

The biographers of those who have gone before us, before the computer age, as it were, have access to piles of letters that can be sifted through, organized chronologically, or organized by type. My letters and writings are electronically held, reduced to “1”s and “0”s. I suppose with the right passwords and access to an entire hard drive one could mine for gold, but it is just not the same. But, having said that, I don’t feel compelled to get out my pen and paper. Knowing I could hit the ‘print’ button at any time gives me a sense of security. I could print everything out, then I would have an entire box of letters, ones I could touch and read, over and over again, without the need to sit with a computer on my lap.