“More than kisses, letters mingle souls”

John Donne, the great English poet, once said, “more than kisses, letters mingle souls.” Amen to that, JD!

​Chi Luu, a computational linguist, beautifully summarizes the history of letters and how although they began by performing a public, professional function and eventually became the private language of women describing their lives and inner most thoughts, in a style that is conversational and spontaneous. In this way, letters are the true reflections of the inner thoughts of an era and purely demonstrate the language and mores of that time.

Luu cites a letter Jane Austen wrote her sister Cassandra in 1801:

I have now attained the true art of letter writing, which we are always told, is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth; I have been talking to you almost as fast as I could the whole of this letter.

I love this concept and hope we can get back to this. We dash off emails and texts (I'm the worst offender) but now that we have technology, it can push us to be even more creative, thoughtful and patient in mingling with other souls.