What The Letters Of Two Poets Taught Me About Writing
Hundreds of years later, the struggle is just as real, but so are the benefits and the message…
Over the past few months, my good friend Andi and I have been reading the published correspondence of Arany János and Petőfi Sándor. Both great poets and writers of the 1800s without whom Hungarian literature would be far poorer. I went in knowing not what to expect. I grew up with both writers as a child and teenager, but truth be told, as much as I loved to read back then, literature wasn’t really sold to me. It was all about the stories, be that a single-verse poem or a 1000-page novel. The mythological giants behind all of those stories remained hidden in the obscurity of school curriculum.
Decades later, I find myself in an entirely different position, having blogged for roughly twenty years and written a novel myself. I picked up these two writers’ correspondence with genuine interest, and boy was I surprised within just minutes.
Schools often portray renowned writers as demigods of literature, mythical creatures one can only aspire to ever meet in quality, substance, and message.
