Letters of great people

Letters of great people

(Tribuna, 15. august 1920)

For now I put the question whether one may publish the letters of great people aside, because it is of no significance. It is less about whether we have or have not  the right to look into the private life of great people, it is first and foremost about what value intimate messages and remarks can have for us. Only then will I answer the other, secondary question.

Often one can hear the phrase: being personally acquainted with an artist is dangerous, for one gets disappointed easily. Someone who can inspire other people with his music, poems, paintings, certainly must be a strange person and surely has absurd peculiarities, he is either greedy like a hamster, timid like a hare, crude like a rafter, dirty and unshaven, almost grimy, wears a nightcap and loves his parrot fervently.

The same man who has such a passionate relationship with eternity, truth, and action, should wear a nightcap? Yes, my dear Miss, artists do not always look like Waldemar Psilander, unfortunately or thankfully. And if you are disappointed by an artist, an artist as a person, an artist whose significance we know by the indisputable reports of his work, then this is your fault alone because you judge the artist like a bank clerk and do not know that the difference between an artist and a non-artist does not show in his humanity, but in what he owns. A non-artist only owns  what he has: ten thousand kroner, stock, a pretty nose, two healthy hands. On the other hand, an artist also owns that what he currently has not. An artist can work with his yearnings, wishes, and imaginations, the whole world. If you are disappointed by an artist, dear Miss, then only because you did not know how to find him, and don’t know how grotesque and strange the human soul is.

Or isn’t it grotesque that the great moralist of the “human comedy”, Balzac, who understood so much about beauty and elegance, was a stout, ugly paunch, always sloppily, even untidily, dressed, a man who had to be constantly watched out for by his friends so that he would not do something stupid, silly, embarrassing? Or that our own sweet, dreamy Dvorak was a country-bred person of robust nature and certainly not of a dreamy nature? Or that Maupassant was a cranky, desperate and distrustful loner, who for 30 years was tormented by an inferiority complex and who for 30 years burnt all his novels because he thought they were not perfect? Or that Napoleon, the abominable, brave Napoleon, the master of the world, was a little, weak, mean man who was afraid in the dark?

One could continue this list forever. That is why we are so interested in the private life of great people: We are not content with the creation, with the works, we want to know where it is rooted in, we want to explain the inner act that precedes the creation. Even more so because each great artistic act is by itself inexplicable and new, because an artist does not say what is, but he says what is not -and by saying it, it becomes.

Since Shakespeare wrote Hamlet the world knows about the indecisive person who cannot decide between being and not being, Since Dostojewski created Myschkin the world knows the noble, inept but entirely good person, the wonderful person, the idiot and saviour of men. Since Bozena Nemcovas “grandmother” we know the prudent, vivid, rural soul of an old woman. Since Zola’s Nan we know what a prostitute of the Paris demimonde is.  Of course a Hamlet existed also before Shakespeare and a Myschkin before Dostojewski, and before Galilei the earth turned and before Galvani there was currency. But the world did not know it, the world did not know currency, it was without it. The world did not count on it and did not suspect that it was there. Just like it did not know about Hamlet before Shakespeare and about Onegin before Puschkin. This is what an artist owns: his exclusive view of the world. His ability to see something for the first time, to see something new.

Of course we ask ourselves; Oh boy that’s so easy, why didn’t I know about this earlier?  Why and by what did he, of all people, discover this? And we are greedily grasping for letters, expose the humanity, devour the pages: How did he discover it? Through which pain? Which wishes? Which sickness? Which tensions? The letters complement the creation, like a map completes the world. We, the non-believer, who are not content with a miracle but need a tangible explanation, seek reasons, logical clues, in letters.

Biographies are something entirely different. Entirely differently interesting. Stendhal's biography of Napoleon rather contains the thoughts of the writer about Napoleon, than painting a picture of this man himself. It is a piece of art in itself. We do not expect art of letters, we expect humanity of letters.

The thoughts of great people about great people are certainly worth knowing and precious. However, if it is about intimate insights into the life of great people, reports "without claim on artistic value" that are written with the sole purpose to be interesting to the world, are pure misunderstanding. The world may not be interested in Frl. Lola Setelikova, who considers it appropriate to write in details about what Milan Stefanik did, where he went, why he did not marry, and what he says when he is visiting someone. Those pure facts have to be uninteresting, if they are lacking a deeper insight into the inner, a motivation and explanation. It is not about telling secrets to the world, but about enriching someone through deeper understanding. It is about a logical connection between the world of the insignificant and the world of the chosen.

As long as we are not so perfect that the word alone is sufficient for our faith and understanding, and as long as, like Thomas, we have to put our fingers into the wounds to convince ourselves that they are there and deep, we have a right to this logical connection.