
Eva Brann
by Eva Brann
Dear —
The dash signifies that you are reading the answer to a question unasked, the reply to a letter unreceived. No one’s written beseeching me to reveal the Art of Being an Essayist. You aren’t the heavy-hearted Mr. Kappus to whom Rainer Maria Rilke addresses his consolatory Letters to a Young Poet (last letter, Paris 1908) or the Dear Friend to whom Mario Vargas Llosa fondly writes his Lettea to a Young Novelist (last letter, Lima 1997). There isn’t likely to be such a suppliant, for an ardent young essayist is an oxymoron, like, say, a “spirited bureaucrat.” “Young poet” has a fine pathos to it, and “young novelist” a sense of high vocation, but “young essayist”—well, it is the faint comicality of the notion that gives me the temerity to range myself as a third in this famous duo, for at least I am way down in a descending order of mundanity. [Read more...]










