[New-Poetry] sent by (letters)

[Anny Ballardini]

mIEKAL aND to the Buffalo:

'Laundry letters' worth millions
POSTED: 10:31 a.m. EDT, June 4, 2007

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/06/04/britain.letters.reut/
index.html

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- One of the word's greatest collections
of historical letters, including a note written by Napoleon to his
lover Josephine, has been found in a filing cabinet tucked away in a
Swiss laundry room.

The treasure trove of almost 1,000 documents, collected over 30 years
by a wealthy Austrian banker, includes letters written by Winston
Churchill, Peter the Great, Mahatma Gandhi, Alexander Pushkin, John
Donne and Queen Elizabeth I.

One of the rarest and most touching of the collection is a passionate
letter written by an apologetic Napoleon to his wife to be,
Josephine, the morning after a furious argument.

"I send you three kisses -- one on your heart, one on your mouth and
one on your eyes," wrote the chastened lover in a spidery scrawl full
of corrections and crossings out.

The letters, which cover more than 500 years and range across art,
science, literature and philosophy, are to be auctioned by Christie's
in London on July 3 and are expected to raise up to 2.3 million
pounds ($4.6 million).

"It really is an incredibly dense, very carefully researched
collection," Thomas Venning, director in Christie's books department
and a specialist in signed letters, told Reuters.

"To get a collection of letters like this nowadays is really a one-
off, it's almost unheard of."

The owner, Albin Schram, began amassing the archive in the early
1970s, steadily building up one of the largest and most comprehensive
collections outside a major museum.

Though an inveterate collector, Schram wasn't interested in
conservation or display -- the letters were kept in an old metal
cabinet in the laundry room of his villa in Lausanne, Switzerland,
ordered by size rather than author or date.

When he died in 2005, his family barely knew they were there.

Schram's interests spanned Russian poets, Argentine authors, French
philosophers, English politicians and Italian sculptors.

One of the most prized lots, with an auction estimate of up to
120,000 pounds, is a note written by metaphysical poet John Donne to
Lady Kingsmill a day after the death of her husband in October 1624.

Urging her not to presume to contest God's actions, Donne, who was
dean of St Paul's Cathedral at the time, adds: "although we could
direct him to do them better."

"It's an incredibly moving letter to read," said Venning.

"This is one of Britain's greatest poets, a contemporary of
Shakespeare, writing at a very emotional time... Not only that, but
it's exceptionally rare -- there is perhaps only one other John Donne
letter in private hands."

Another lot of interest is a letter written by Ernest Hemingway to
the American poet and critic Ezra Pound in 1925, explaining why bulls
are better than literary critics.

"Bulls don't run reviews. Bulls of 25 don't marry old women of 55 and
expect to be invited to dinner. Bulls do not get you cited as co-
respondent in Society divorce trials. Bulls don't borrow money. Bulls
are edible after they have been killed."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star! 
Friedrich Nietzsche 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20070605/722a00d2/attachment.html