Can an Email or Text be a Letter?
By FARHA GUERRERO
I am drawn to the epistolary form, and will confess, rather embarrassedly, that my correspondence can often be lengthy, perhaps excessive.
I ‘text’ on my laptop using all ten digits. I often address recipients in emails with “Dear.”
I may have grown up in a time when letter writing was already out of fashion. Although, I have fond memories of handwriting letters as an adolescent and during my first year of undergrad studies, using my electric typewriter, just as email was emerging on the scene.
Almost romantically, about seven or eight years ago, I began to write and post dozens of letters, dipping pen in ink and transcribing words onto beautiful stationery. I even sealed some of the envelopes with heated wax. The experiment was interesting — I received few responses; at most a card or small handwritten note.
Many of the books that dot my library shelves, including those that lie beside my bed, are compilations of letters — collections of written correspondence by people like Kafka, Flaubert, Chekhov, and Cortázar. The latter collection fills five large volumes. Cortázar was prolific in writing letters; an English selection of his correspondence is finally coming out this November.
While sifting through a collection of letters by Kafka, I came across one he wrote to his lover Milena, from August 4–5, 1920, which I quote below. There is something almost eerily familiar about it. He seems delighted by the speed with which a telegram could arrive, but anguished by its message.
Kafka, like many of us, wants what he desires—soon.
He writes:
“Just now, around 10 p.m., I was in the office. The telegram was there—so quickly. I'm almost inclined to doubt that it's the answer to the telegram I sent yesterday, but there it is: dispatched, 4th of August, 11 a.m. It was actually here by seven, so it only took eight hours. One of the consolations inherent in the telegram is that we're close enough, at least in space. I can have your answer in almost 24 hours, and this answer doesn't always have to be: Don't come.
[…]
Milena, it doesn't matter. I myself would not have presumed to dream of seeing you “so soon” again after four weeks. […] I wouldn't have to mention this at all. It's just that I was so happy to find this narrow tunnel leading out of the dark apartment to you. I had thrown myself into it with all my soul, into this passageway, which could (my foolishness immediately says, of course it does, of course, of course!) lead to you, but which instead runs smack into the impenetrable stone of—Please Don’t Come.
So now I have to turn back again with all my soul, slowly return through the passage I had dug so quickly and fill it in. That hurts a little, you see, but it can't be all that bad, since I'm able to write about it in such a tedious manner.
In the end one always finds new tunnels to burrow, old mole that one is.”
— Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena, translated by Philip Boehm.
Curiously, last night, I received an email from Ciarán, the Program Manager at CiTR:
“I'm emailing you as your show currently does not have a mailbox at CiTR, and I'm wondering if you would like one?
Having a mailbox at the station means that you will be able to receive mail…
The only requirement of having a mailbox is that you need to tend to it! Please don't leave mail to pile up over time.”
As I replied yes, my dreamy mind had already begun imagining letters from listeners of The Blue Hour — piling up over time at the radio station.
Related writing
The Longing of Holding Someone's Words in Your Hands — Whistler Writers Festival