Like a cradle-song
Such a comforting line this, from a letter by the German poet Hölderlin. The sky and the air embrace me like a cradle-song.May they embrace you, too. And here is another thought of Hölderlin, on a peaceful state of work; and in another letter, his admiration for a...
Make your soul grow
A warm and wise letter written by Kurt Vonnegut in 2006 in response to one received from a class – and its teacher Miss Lockwood – at Xavier High School. It gives nuannaarpoqian advice to young minds (and to Miss Lockwood), and is here read out charmingly...
Man has a long time to go
Some wise words from Aaron Copland to a young Leonard Bernstein. They maintained a close friendship and correspondence for decades, and I like the advice. It reminds me of a word from a father to a daughter in an American novel: ‘Slow down, Ivy, slow...
Happiness makes one more intelligent
While I’m not sure if this is true, I found it a striking statement, particularly given the context. It’s from a letter written by a husband in 1920s China, who knew or sensed that he would soon lose his life due to a perilous political situation. His...
Calm and contentment
Christian Ludwig seems to have been a wise man, able to look on things with calm and contentment. He lived at a time no less tumultuous, and perhaps in some ways more so, than our own. A reminder to cleave to the good and keep one’s equanimity.Your calm, the...
A scholar’s garden
Pliny the Younger is a delightful correspondent when he isn’t berating you for not having been in touch. His letters have an immediacy and freshness which makes me regret he isn’t around for me to write to. Here he ponders how much land is adequate for the...
Living in the moment
Keats is one of the Great Nuannaarpoqians. He grew up with sorrow, first nursing his mother through tuberculosis and, a few years later, his younger brother, before then succumbing himself. These and other travails did nothing to curb his capacity to grasp moments of...
Clamber through the clouds
What a life-affirming ambition from my third candidate for a nuannaarpoq award, John Keats. He didn’t live long but he did live, squeezing every drop of enjoyment he could out of a life that was beset and ultimately curtailed by illness – his own and...
A date with dates
Pliny the Younger is a favourite correspondent, warm, cantankerous, impatient of news. He gets mad as hell with friends who claim to have no time to write, and tells them roundly not to bother him with excuses about being busy in the Senate or other such nonsense....
Don’t wait too late
This quirky but reasonable injunction correlating wine with life and life with wine comes from a letter Ingrid Bergman received from Erich Maria Remarque, author of the searing All Quiet on the Western Front, about German soldiers in the First World War. A gentle...Yes, sign me up!
