I. Letters

These letters were not written for history. They were intended for specific people.
A mother waits two months for news from her pregnant daughter. An eighty-seven-year-old woman, losing her memory and barely able to hold a pen, writes that she is content and begs her relatives to raise their children well. A seriously ill father sends his son a turkey and two capons for a Shrovetide meal. A young sailor says goodbye to his family before setting sail; the thought that he might be leaving them forever makes him unable to continue the letter.
I. Lettres collects sixty private letters from the years 1716 to 1899, the physical originals of which are held in the Neruda Archives. They originated in different countries, languages, and social environments. They speak of family, work, money, illness, war, separation, hope, and survival – experiences that remain human regardless of the century.
The letters are presented without interpretation and without smoothing out their voices. The transcriptions and translations preserve the repetitions, clumsiness, contradictions, deletions, and damaged parts of the originals as faithfully as possible. Each letter refers to scans and the complete archival record in the Neruda Archives.
In I. Lettres, people speak from the midst of their own lives, unaware that one day we would hear them.