Felix Mendelssohn(1809-1847): LETTERS FRUITION AND LIFE

[ronprice]

Felix Mendelssohn(1809-1847) composed letters in his youth, 1819-1830, “filled with both drawings and vivid descriptions of nature, architecture and people.”1  The philosopher Goethe(1749-1832) also included drawings in some of his letters. Goethe’s drawings, in his letters and in other places, are now gathered into six volumes.  This combination of forms, art and prose, was not something readers will ever find in my correspondence. Drawing, painting, what might be called the figurative arts in general, were for the most part not creative expressions in my life.
Letters from the period of my childhood and youth, 1944-1965, and any of my art-work, are non-existent. There are two letters, both written by others to my mother, from this period, but none of the letters I wrote to (i) a pen pal, Hiroshi Kamatu, in Japan, (ii) to a girl in Georgetown, Cathy Saxe or (iii) anyone else whom I can not even recall now.-Ron Price with thanks to 1R. Larry Todd, Mendelssohn and His World, Princeton UP, Princeton, N.J., 1991, p.26.

There was no evidence back then
in those years up to 1965 that
artistic mediums really liked me.
Most of us don’t ever get going
in our early years anyway: seeds
are planted for the future harvest.

So many seeds were planted then
in those two Seven Year Plans,
that Ten Year Crusade and, then,
as the Nine Year Plan began by
my mother and father, my aunt,
my grandfather and uncles and
more Baha’is than I can remember
and a world in gestation: the Kingdom
of God on earth had begun, a new wind
was blowing, rock ‘n’ roll had started
with its new rhythms and blues and tones.

Perhaps the first fruition began in early
October of ’65, ten weeks into maturity,
with the embryo of my pioneering life
taking form, finally taking a rich form
30 years later when a special rendezvous
of the soul, a special inner life, a special
quickening wind, amplified and clarified
my perspectives and the brightest emanations
of Baha’u’llah’s mind became available at last:
that Unerring Balance, that Straight Path, that
source of true felicity, given tangible form,
part of the confirming assistance from another
world in ever-greater measure, part of that
befitting crescendo and those eternal traces.

Ron Price
September 10th 2005
 

[thebuchertrain]

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