The disappearing art of writing letters and Obama´s victory tweet

(Edelfelts portrait of Pasteur)

Letters have always been essential sources for historians and biographers. As a matter of fact, well written letters are fascinating reading for anybody.

One prolific and – fortunately – excellent letter writer, was the Finnish painter Albert Edelfelt (he was a Finnish-Swede, whose mother tongue was Swedish), who for many years lived and worked in Paris in the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century. Many of Edelfelt´s letters were published already in the 1920´s in several volumes.

As an example, below is an excerpt from a letter dated 14 April, 1886 in which Edelfelt writes about an encounter with the famous French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur. (Edelfelt became a recognized name in Paris especially after having painted a very well received portrait of Pasteur.)

“Yesterday I was in the Luxembourg gardens drawing, and as it was very close, I went over to see the old man Pasteur, partly to say hello, partly to see our rabies smitten people from Helsingfors (Helsinki). The old man, surrounded by about 100 sick people, who were just about to be vaccinated, asked me to come to his private chamber. He was extremely upset about a swinish article published in the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and the attacks in l´Intransigeant and Conseil municipal.´Why, why do they attack me? What have I done to them. I am not a murderer who kills people for fun. I do my best, I work for the benefit of others, and there is not a lowness which is not thrown on my face´, he groaned.”

(my own free translation from Swedish)

What an interesting insight into the not wholly problem free life of a great scientist a letter by an artist can give!

This brings me to a larger question: The art of letter writing has (almost) disappeared. What will future historians do when there are no letters to study about our age and time? The problem is discussed in this interesting Newsweek article.

The revered Library of Congress seems to think that collecting millions of tweets will fill the void:

Here's Librarian of Congress James H. Billington: "The Twitter digital archive has extraordinary potential for research into our contemporary way of life."

Tweets, he said, provide "detailed evidence about how technology-based social networks form and evolve over time. The collection also documents a remarkable range of social trends."

Fred R. Shapiro, an associate librarian and lecturer at the Yale Law School, told The New York Times, "This is an entirely new addition to the historical record, the second-by-second history of ordinary people."

Whether tweets should be embraced as representative of ordinary people is an open question. One can argue, however, that 55 million tweets a day -- Twitter says that many are sent worldwide -- is a reasonable cross-section of opinion.

The library expects future historians to study such momentous tweets as Barack Obama's about winning the 2008 election and those by eyewitnesses in war zones and natural disasters.

To be frank, I am not convinced about the historical importance of Obama´s victory tweet. But maybe I am just too old to understand these new things ….