"My letter to the world..."

[ellenkushner]

Emily Dickinson wrote her letter to the world/that never wrote to me....

The impulse is there for us, to write up what we have learned about life for others to read after us. I recently recommended to a friend Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (full text here), which I learned about from my beloved Shakespeare teacher, Edward Tayler - he quoted from it often as the crystallization of late Renaissance thinking- Browne was mid 1600s, a good 50 years after Shaks., but his heart was there. It contains such gems as:
For my religion, though there be several circumstances that might persuade the world I have none at all . . .yet, in despite hereof, I dare without usurpation assume the honourable style of a Christian. . . . Neither doth herein my zeal so far make me forget the general charity I owe unto humanity, as rather to hate than pity Turks, Infidels, and (what is worse) Jews; rather contenting myself to enjoy that happy style, than maligning those who refuse so glorious a title.
and
Sect. 11.--Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate, were not a history, but a piece of poetry, and would sound to common ears like a fable. For the world, I count it not an inn, but an hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in.

PART THE SECOND Sect. 4. ...No man can justly censure or condemn another; because, indeed, no man truly knows another. This I perceive in myself; for I am in the dark to all the world, and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud.

Sect. 6.--There are wonders in true affection. It is a body of enigmas, mysteries, and riddles; wherein two so become one as they both become two: I love my friend before myself, and yet, methinks, I do not love him enough. Some few months hence, my multiplied affection will make me believe I have not loved him at all. When I am from him, I am dead till I be with him. United souls are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truly each other; which being impossible, these desires are infinite, and must proceed without a possibility of satisfaction.

My father tells me that writing a "moral testament" is an ancient Jewish (and Muslim) tradition, and sent me to Google for a rich set of examples past and present.

I love this one, from a 12th century Spanish/French Jew to His Son the Doctor:
My son! I command your to honor your wife to your utmost capacity. She is intelligent and modest, a daughter of a distinguished and educated family. ...you [are] bound to treat her with consideration and respect. To act otherwise is the way of the contemptible. The Arab philosopher [probably Al Ghazali, 1058 1112] says of women: "None but the honorable honors them, none but the despicable despises them.".......
Never refuse to lend books to anyone who has not the means to purchase books for himself, but only act thus to those who can be trusted to return the volumes.

And this, by the cult idol Yiddish writer Sholom Aleichem (one of a group who practically invented Yiddish literature in the 19c, and on whose work Fiddler on the Roof was based): Let me be buried not among the rich and famous, but among . . . the workers, the common folk, so that my tombstone may honor the simple graves around me, and the simple graves honor mine, even as the plain people honored their folk writer in his lifetime. ...

So if you've felt the impulse, start now.

You may want to do some revision over the years.

Or, like Sir Thomas at 30, you may want to take a snapshot of all that you have learned and come to believe - and open it again in 30 years, and marvel.

Comments

[suzanna-o.livejournal.com]

This makes me want to read some memoirs. :)

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

Wonderful Sir Thomas Browne! So humane, and his prose is so beautiful. The 12th cent. gentleman is also very wise: thank you for posting the link. Isn't it exciting to discover that someone who lived so long ago can still speak to us now?

Pirke Avot

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

The original has to be the Pirke Avot, the shortest book of the Talmud. Memorable one liners from generations of sages, mostly selected by their admiring students, though still exhibiting full personality. It's intriguing to see the two leading lights of a generation, with the same teachers and the same students, have very different things to say.

[badgerthorazine.livejournal.com]

Wow. This was really fascinating. :-)

[phaedra-lari.livejournal.com]

I write a letter to my ten-years-hence self each year on my birthday about things I've learned, then read the one I wrote ten years prior.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Nice!