Papa's response

I got a thank-you email from my French Papa (in the blue shirt here), who got his gift of antiques. (In a moment of charity, my boss gave me a ddeok-sal/떡살, or rice-cake mold with flower patterns, to send along with the two objects I'd purchased, but I took no pictures of it, sadly.) Here's just the first paragraph of that email, which goes on for several more paragraphs as Papa talks about family matters, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren (Papa just turned 87). My translation follows:

Mon Cher KEVIN

La surprise a été totale, et j’ai été profondément touché de ce superbe cadeau d’autant que j’aime les antiquités comme tu le sais, surtout pour l’histoire qu’elles racontent, c’est merveilleux cadeau, on a tellement besoin de connaître le passé pour bâtir son avenir et donner un sens à sa vie, sinon la vie n’a pas de sens, et je m’inquiète beaucoup pour les générations qui montent car les nouvelles techniques de communication, laissent peu de places à l’écrit durable, et pourtant tous nos petits enfants sont avide de savoir le pourquoi et le comment de ces objets Je leur rappelle souvent un extrait du LAC de LAMARTINE poète écrivain du XIX° «  Objets avez-vous donc une âme qui s’attache à notre âme et la force d’aimer »

Translation:

My dear KEVIN:

The surprise was complete, and I was deeply touched by this superb gift given how I love antiques, as you know, especially for the stories they tell. This is a marvelous gift; we have such a need to be familiar with the past in order to build the future and give meaning to our lives. Otherwise, life has no meaning, and I worry about upcoming generations as the new techniques for communicating leave little room for [the type of] writing that lasts, yet all our grandchildren are avid to know the why and the how of these objects. I often remind them of an excerpt from LAC de LAMARTINE, poet-author from the 19th century: "Objects, do you thus have a soul that attaches itself to our own and to the strength to love?"*

In the package I sent, I had supplied Papa (Pierre) with a French-language explanation of the objects (with thanks to my boss for providing almost all of that info—in English, of course). Last I checked, back in 2018, Papa was losing his vision, so I imagine Maman, his wife (Jeanette), read the explanatory letter to him. If you read French, there's a deeper explanation of Lamartine's sentiment here. Basically, if we take the time to "interrogate" the objects around us, we discover they are receptacles for stories by the mere fact of being a part of history in an "if these walls could talk" kind of way. Questioning leads to deeper understanding, and the significance of an inanimate object becomes all the richer the more we discover about it. In this sense, an object can be said to be imbued with a "soul." It's on this level, Papa is saying, that he appreciates the antiques he's received. Me, I'm not nearly that deep—I'm just sorry I destroyed his original ladle.

Anyway, Papa is making a case for more permanent means of self-expression; these days, with everything being electronic and thus easy just to turn off or delete, it's all ephemera. I doubt that, as society lurches forward, we'll ever return to the days of correspondence written by hand. In my own life, I can't remember the last time I wrote anything at length by hand. It doesn't help that my penmanship is terrible. As for this blog, well, after I'm gone, the blog will likely wink out of existence at some point, all those moments lost in time, like tears in rain. We can strive for permanence, but in the end, impermanence always wins. The French say Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse. "Everything passes, everything breaks, everything wearies."

__________

*Why I'll never be a pro translator: I can totally see this last part being translated completely differently: "Objects, do you therefore have a soul that attaches itself to our own and forces it to love?"* A lot depends on whether la force translates to the noun phrase "the strength" or to the verb phrase "forces it." This is an important difference, although I don't think it affects the spirit of what the poet is saying. Either way, we're talking about the romantic idea of how an object's history gives it a sort of soul. See above for further explanation.