EUROPA 2008 - LETTER

LETTER The United Nations have proclaimed the period from 2005 to 2008 “years of literacy”. The emphasis is on actions like the so called invitation of many years to the millions of children across the world to participate in the competition for the best written letter. The goal of this noble competition is the development of thought and skill of writing, love for writing letters and spreading of and atmosphere of international friendship. Why a letter? The letter illustrates the total sum of centuries-old values of a people, but the letter is also an intimate expression of communication. From the very beginnings the letter (in the wider sense, as a grapheme) is a system of pictures, shapes, signs and their combinations produced for the purpose of memorizing and informing. The purpose of the first visual representations was to preserve the memory about an event, point out the magical meaning or demonstrate a mythological or religious motif. By the frequency of its application, increasingly for the transfer of the message to a distance, visual representations in different milieus schematise in different ways and pass through numerous phases (like pictograms, ideograms, etc.), resulting nowadays with the prevalence of the sound, i.e. phonetic letter. The technique of recording signs and the material used to be written on changed in the course of millenniums. Parallel to carving in stone, cutting in clay, wood, metal, wax and the like, writing emerged as well, i.e. drawing graphic signs with coloured material (by the help of a brush, feather and other similar writing implements) on wood, leather, paper... In ancient Assyria and Babylonia letters were written on soft clay slates with slate pencils pressed into clay. The slate pencils had protruding wedge shaped signs. After pressing the slates with slate pencils the slates were dried on a fire or in the sun. To protect them these slates were inserted into small boxes also made of baked clay with the addressee’s name previously cut in. The free opening of the box was pasted with clay where the sign of the sender was pressed in and then all of this would be dried again. In order to get the letter the addressee had to break the box. Starting from the ancient Egyptians, letters were written in colours on a surface of animal or plant origin. The text was written only on one side of the parchment (animal skin) or papyrus (leaf made of papyrus plant fibres) that used to be coiled inward and thus made a scroll in the shape of a cylinder. Such a letter was wrapped with a ribbon whose ends were connected with a waxed signet-ring; to get to the contents the ribbon and the seal had to be torn apart. Ancient Romans used wooden slates coated with wax as the surface for writing. They wrote letters with sharpened metal or bone sticks (stylus). The slates would then be stacked one upon the other. They were closed on the top and bottom by a wooden slate on each side with punched holes through which lengthwise and crosswise a ribbon would be dragged through, tightened, bound and a seal pressed on the ribbon’s ends. Though Europe had learned all about the manufacturing of paper already in the 13th century, on account of the rather low level of literacy of the European peoples, its use was not customary; in greater measure it was parchment that was used. The Renaissance brought about the blossoming of literacy, literature and art so that correspondence of all kinds was increased and parallel to it the need for paper increased, as paper was a lighter and a more pliable surface than parchment. Different from earlier letters in the shape of a long scroll, (rotulus), since the 16th century more and more frequently letters on square or rectangular sheets emerged, being folded on all four sides inward until the desired form was achieved. The outer sheet was left clean so that after folding it represented a kind of cover; on it the address of the addressee could be written. Those places where all the ends of the letter paper covered each other the sender would press a seal. This was the time when sealing wax started to be used. It was the Chinese who invented sealing wax; it arrived in Europe via Portugal and Spain. In the 16th century the usage of sealing wax spread considerably and the French pioneered its usage: in their abundant correspondence the concern for the safety and secrecy of the forwarded letters was very much expressed. In 17th century France postage for the conveyance of letters was introduced, depending on the weight and distance. It was the addressees who were charged for the postage. At that time there was also the attempt introduced of charging postage indicated on the paper cover of the consignment. In Paris the first letter boxes were set up and they were emptied three times a day. Austria was the first country in Europe that passed the Postal Law (in 1837) in which the institute of the so called postal secret was introduced, i.e. the obligation of the post to refuse giving any data about the out-letter consignments to unauthorized persons. The desired secrecy of correspondence was made significantly easier by the introduction of the letter cover in England around the 1830s. The first hand-produced covers were, on account of a great demand, very soon exchanged for those industrially produced. Postal administrations very soon started issuing their own covers, i.e. simple, cheap covers, sometimes with a printed stamp. England was the first to introduce this practice as they issued their first postal cover in the year 1840, i.e. in the same year when they released the first postage stamp. In Croatia, at that time within the frame of the Austrian Empire, the stamp started to be used as a postal charge since the year 1850 and the covers were introduced ten years later. Except for the material, technical, historical and similar characteristics of a letter, its essence is the record whose contents is the result of human activity, the creative reflective process, This can only be the message directed at an individual or a group. Such letters express feelings and thoughts (personal letter, parting letter, love letter, editor’s letter) or they can report, beg, negotiate, demand, accuse (official letter, discharging letter, threatening letter, invitation letter, peace letter, letter of intent) or there are letters published in the public media and they express the attitude about an issue of general significance (open letter). The letter also developed into a separate literary prose intended for publishing that emerged at the time of the Humanism and Renaissance. There are novels written in the form of a letter (e.g. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther; O. Fallaci: Letter to a Child Never Born). Letters of correspondence of individuals very often, besides personal significance and original ideas, also contain precious scientific or historical data (e.g. the valedictory letter of Petar Zrinski from Wiener Neustadt from the year 1671). Starting from the 20th century, in accordance with the technical development, letters more frequently come in the form of e-mail messages. In terms of the nature of the media, they spare the time both at work and for private purposes and they can save someone’s life; when they are only a forwarded animated prank, they still signify communication because somewhere out there, or at the end of the world, someone thinks precisely about us. Dunja Majnarić Radošević