It's good news that this touching letter is to go on display where it belongs. Unless there's a dramatic discovery, that will be it - the last Keats letter to appear on the market. They are of course beyond price, in whatever form, but to see the actual sheets of paper on which Keats wrote adds an extra dimension and enlivens them with yet more vitality.
The letters have been my bedtime reading in recent weeks, and with all of them (except the most formal) you feel the physical act of writing (as well as the quicksilver mental activity) coming through with quite extraordinary force. Partly it is the punctuation - especially that liberal scattering of dashes, then and now the best punctuation for spontaneous writing. I wonder if this is itself a product of writing with a dip pen - the dashes marking the points at which the pen must be dipped. Certainly the use of dashes - which was also standard in printed fiction - seems to have died down with the coming of the fountain pen. Is this a theory? Does it hold water? Or even ink?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Have you ever tried Byron’s letters and journals? He’s wonderfully mercurial and a great advocate of dashes, plus a good deal saucier than 'Johnny Keats'.
ReplyDeleteDashes are v common on the web - easy to see on the screen compared the semi-colon, comma etc - apparently.
ReplyDeleteThinking about it some more, I suppose they convey a sense of pace about the writing. That's why they suit letters, diaries, journals. It's the sheer dash of pen.
ReplyDeleteOh yes Byron another great dasher (and not v kind about poor Johnny K). They are wonderful things - dashes - a pity, Brit, they usually come out as mere hyphens in screen fonts, tho you can use 2 or 3 in a row of course --- I sometimes think the world would be a better place (no it wouldn't - Ed)if punctuation was limited to dashes of varying lengths - supplemented by question marks - and the odd full stop. Who needs more?
ReplyDeleteI'm an avid dasher too - I often have to go through my work and cut some dashes out - but perhaps I shouldn't!
ReplyDeleteKeep on dashing Kate - and I forgot to mention that other indispensable sign, the exclamation mark!
ReplyDelete"Talking (Exclamation) Points":
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/fashion/exclamation-points-and-e-mails-cultural-studies.html