Brev.

Jag tänkte att vi kunde ha en tråd där vi kan posta utdrag ur brev, som vi vill dela med oss av.


Här är ett utdrag från ett brev från D. H. Lawrence till Edward Garnett, daterat 3 juli 1912:

"Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the snivelling, dribbling, dithering, palsied, pulse-less lot that make up England today. They've got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is that watery it's a marvel they can breed. They can nothing but frog-spawn - the gibberers! God, how I hate them!"

(Det är väl ett bra exempel på vad som menas med 'ord och inga visor' )

D.H. Lawrence hade nog lite gammalisraelitiskt profetblod i sig , kapabel till en stark och uthållig vrede man annars inte ofta skådar i vårt tidevarv. Det finns misantropiska och närmast genocidala rader av honom som väckt åtskillig indignation bland bleksiktiga litteraturforskare.
Brev ("den minst lögnaktiga formen av litteratur" har någon sagt, men jag minns inte vem, Kafka kanske?) läser jag alldeles för lite av, ofta är det svårt att få tag på gedigna utgåvor, för dyrt framför allt. Män som Voltaires eller Goethes brev finns förstås i vetenskapligt-kritiska utgåvor på universitetsbiblioteken, men man skulle ju gärna ha alla de dussintals volymerna tillgängliga hemmavid...läsa vill jag göra liggande.

Ur ett brev från D. H. Lawrence till Aldous Och Maria Huxley, 15 augusti 1928:

"My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage-stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest, stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness."


W. Somerset Maugham (publicerat i Sunday Times, 25 december 1955):

"I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to the universities go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene...They are scum."


Edna St Vincent Millay i ett brev till Arthur Davison Ficke, 24 oktober 1930:

"It's not true that life is one damn thing after another - it's one damn thing over and over."
(Jämför Elbert Hubbard: "Life is just one damned thing after another" (Philistine, december 1909).)

Virginia Woolf rynkade vid flera tillfällen i brev fisförnämt på näsan åt Joyces Ulysses, här ett yttrande i brev till Lytton Strachey 24.e april 1922:

"Never did I read such tosh. As for the first two chapters we will let them pass, but the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th -- merely the scratching of pimples on the body of the bootboy at Claridges."

En otacksam gammal benget var hon, som om jag inte minns fel läste manuskriptet till Ulysses under kriget men avböjde att tillsammans med sin make ge ut den på Hogarth Press: utan Joyces text skulle hon förstås inte kunnat skriva Jacob's Room och Mrs. Dalloway på det sätt de nu kom att gestalta sig.

Ur ett brev från Edith Sitwell till Geoffrey Singleton, 11 juli 1955. Hon skriver om Virginia Woolf.
"I enjoyed talking to her, but thought nothing of her writing. I considered her 'a beautiful little knitter."

Ur ett brev från Virginia Woolf till Ethel Smyth, 22 juni 1930:
"As an experience, madness is terrific...and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about."

Ett telegram från G. K. Chesterton till hans fru:
"AM IN MARKET HARBOROUGH. WHERE OUGHT I TO BE?"



"A writer's ambition should be...to trade a hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years' time and for one reader in a hundred years."
(Arthur Koestler i New York Times Book Review, 1 april 1951.)

"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."
(Salman Rushdie i Weekend Guardian, 10 februari 1990.)

"The Khomeini cry for the execution of Rushdie is an infantile cry. From the beginning of time we have seen that. To murder the thinker does not murder the thought."
(Arnold Wesker i Weekend Guardian, 3 juni 1989.)

"The PC is the LSD of the '90s."
(Timothy Leary i Guardian, 1 juni 1996.)

"A genius with the IQ of a moron."
(Gore Vidal yttrar sig om Andy Warhol i Observer, 18 juni 1989.)

"Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit."
["And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness."]
(Alcuin, Letter 164.)

Ur ett brev från Goodman Ace till Groucho Marx:
"TV - a clever contraction derived from the words Terrible Vaudeville...we call it a medium because nothing's well done."

Ur ett brev från Raymond Chandler till Charles W. Morton, 12 december 1945:
"If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come."

Ur ett brev från Jane Austen till Fanny Knight, 23 mars 1817:
"Pictures of perfection as you know make me sick and wicked."

"Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated."
(G. K. Chesterton i New York Times, 1 februari 1931.)

"If you can't annoy somebody with what you write, I think there's little point in writing."
(Kingsley Amis i Radio Times, 1 maj 1971.)

"Without the possibility of suicide, I would have killed myself long ago."
(E. M. Cioran i Independent, 2 december 1989.)

"I do nothing, granted. But I see the hours pass - which is better than trying to fill them."
(E. M. Cioran i Guardian, 11 maj 1993.)

"If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him."
(James Baldwin i New Yorker, 17 november 1962.)

Självmordsbrev:

Nicolas-Sebastien Chamfort (1741-1794):
"And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead."

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935):
"When all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one."
(Som en förespråkare för "rätten att dö", begick hon självmord m.h.a. kloroform, istället för att leva med cancer.)

Robert E. Howard (1906-1936):
"All fled--all done, so lift me on the pyre;
The feast is over, and the lamps expire."
(Han var en psykiskt instabil människa som sköt sig när hans mamma blev liggande i koma.)

Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931):
"They tried to get me - I got them first!"
(Begick självmord genom att dricka lysol.)

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941):
"I feel certain that I'm going mad again. I feel we can't go thru another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices."
(Hon dränkte sig.)

Sara Teasdale (1884-1933):
"When I am dead, and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain drenched hair,
Tho you should lean above me broken hearted,
I shall not care.
For I shall have peace.
As leafey trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough.
And I shall be more silent and cold hearted
Than you are now."
(Självmordsbrev till hennes älskare som övergav henne.)

Ur ett brev från Noël Coward till T. E. Lawrence, 25 augusti 1930:

"Dear 338171 (May I call you 338?)."
[Thomas Edward Lawrence (of Arabia) även känd som: - 352087 A/c2 John Hume Ross (RAF), 7875698 Trooper T.E. Shaw (Tank Corps) and 338171 A/c Shaw (RAF)]


"My theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever after."
(F. Scott Fitzgerald i ett brev till the Booksellers' Convention, april 1920.)

"Sack the lot!"
[On government overmanning and overspending.]
(Lord Fisher i ett brev till The Times, 2 september 1919.)

"Never contradict. Never explain. Never apologize."
(Lord Fisher i ett brev till The Times, 5 september 1919.)

"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is clearly Ocean."
(Arthur C. Clarke i Nature, 8 mars 1990.)

"The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board...If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies."
(William Faulkner i Paris Review, våren 1956.)

"A writer should never write about the extraordinary. That is for the journalist."
(ur ett brev från James Joyce till Djuna Barnes.)

"The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'"
(Ur ett brev från Sigmund Freud till Marie Bonaparte.)

"I started out very quiet and I beat Mr Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr de Maupassant. I've fought two draws with Mr Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody's going to get me in any ring with Mr Tolstoy unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better."
(Ernest Hemingway i New Yorker, 13 maj 1950.)

"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it."
(Ernest Hemingway i Paris Review, våren 1958.)

"What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order."
(P. D. James i Face, december 1986.)

"I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism."
(P. D. James i Paris Review, 1995.)

John Donne (1572-1631) arbetade ett tag som sekreterare till den mäktige statsmannen Sir Thomas Egerton. Han gjorde emellertid 'misstaget' att förälska sig i dennes niece, Anne More (dotter till Sir George More). De rymde och gifte sig. Saken blev inte bättre av att hon var minderårig. Hennes rasande fader såg till att John blev arresterad för att ha gift sig med en minderårig, utan hennes förmyndares medgivande. Han fick givetvis sparken från jobbet som sekreterare. I fängelset skrev han till sin unga hustru ett modfällt brev, vilket han avslutade lite vitsigt med "John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done" [detta är en ledtråd till hur hans efternamn uttalades]. Han behövde emellertid inte stanna i fängelset speciellt länge. Men John och hans snabbt växande familj fick för det mesta leva i fattigdom de kommande fjorton åren.

"It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four."
(Ur ett brev från Samuel Butler till Miss E. M. A. Savage, 21 november 1884.)

"I am not at all the sort of person you and I took me for."
(Ur ett brev från Jane Carlyle till Thomas Carlyle, 7 maj 1822.)


"What is hope? nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of."
(Ur ett brev från Lord Byron till Thomas Moore, 28 oktober 1815.)

"Love in this part of the world is no sinecure."
(Ur ett brev från Lord Byron till John Murray, skickat från Venedig 27 december 1816.)

"The reading or non-reading a book - will never keep down a single petticoat."
(Ur ett brev från Lord Byron till Richard Hoppner, 29 oktober 1819.)


"In Anna Karenina and Onegin not a single problem is solved, but they satisfy you completely just because all their problems are correctly presented. The court is obliged to submit the case fairly, but let the jury do the deciding, each according to its own judgement."
(Ur ett brev från Anton Tjechov till Alexei Suvorin, 27 oktober 1888.)

"You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it."
(Ur ett brev från Gustave Flaubert till Louise Colet, 14 juni 1853.)

"Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry."
(Ur ett brev från Gustave Flaubert till Louise Colet, 14 augusti 1853.)

"The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerfull; one must sense him everywhere but never see him."
(Ur ett brev från Gustave Flaubert till Mlle Leroyer de Chantepie, 18 mars 1857.)

"Books are made not like children but like pyramids...and they're just as useless! and they stay in the desert!...Jackals piss at their foot and the bourgeois climb up on them."
(Ur ett brev från Gustave Flaubert till Ernest Feydeau, november/december 1857.)

"Human life is a sad show, undoubtedly: ugly, heavy and complex. Art has no other end, for people of feeling, than to conjure away the burden and bitterness."
(Ur ett brev från Gustave Flaubert till Amelie Bosquet, juli 1864.)