A Farewell to Lettera 32 > IDEAS & IDEALS

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In the course of our life there come and go many and various things, people and places, but for unknown and unpredictable divine reasons we can live only with a few of them for long time; long enough to make it very hard and difficult to part with them without warm tears, lingering emotion of sorrow, or at least a few words of affectionate farewell. I am not shedding tears now, but I feel that I am in the mood and situation to say a formal goodbye to my typewriter, Olivetti Underwood Lettera 32 made in Italy.

     No one not in my situation can probably appreciate the feeling of sadness in me at this parting. To this small and simple, but solid machine of iron I owe much of what I am now. I have lived with it for a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young student of English to an old professor of English. With this I typed all of my term-papers required for my M.A. degree at Villanova University in the United States, and returning home I could write more than a hundreds of essays in English published mostly in The Korea Times up to now. With a white blank paper slung across it I have spent so many free, long and agonizing hours, and also have experienced the most rewarding and satisfying moments in my life. My life would have taken quite a different course and shape, if there had not been the meeting with this piece of iron. Like my wife, it has grown old with me.

     From the first time it came to my use I came to like every aspect of this particular typewriter very much. Not only the size and the shape of it but also that of the letters it has caught my fancy and suited my taste: not too large, not too small. And its weight was also very ideal: not too light, not too heavy. Like a loaded pistol ready to be fired in my hand, I felt some solid but comfortable weight whenever I lifted it up to the shelf and took it down for use from it. There was some hidden energy about it to be harnessed by me, danger to be risked, security to be felt, and even peace to be enjoyed. Of course, there had been several other typewriters; bigger, faster, and more efficient, automatic as well as electric, but I always found myself returning to this old-fashioned, slow, manual Lettera 32, whenever I hit upon a good idea to ponder, to express, and to write about, and consequently needed infinite patience, concentration, and silence.

     But the time has finally come, I think, against my will and wish, that I have to take my formal leave of this dear friend of mine before it becomes too late. On the desk in my office, recently, there came to sit a new set of gadget, so-called PC. I did not buy it. It just arrived there one day without my conscious effort to have it. Like the flotsam and jetsam washed ashore during the night by the waves of the sea, it was carried there by the current of the times. The school, to tell the truth, very stingy and grudging in money, has purchased many at a time and distributed them among the professors, and my seniority in the department enabled me to have one before others.

     When the strange and new magic words such as PC, computer, or word processor began to hover in the air first, I thought quite lightly and optimistically that I could do without it. I thought I could live my life to the end only with my dear Lettera 32 as I had done before. Although I was well aware of the fact that I was being surrounded by the young generation of the colleagues who were mightily equipped with this sophisticated up-to-date weaponry, I tried to be obstinately proud of the fact that I was still using a typewriter for the business of writing with not a scintilla of inconvenience.

     The other day, passing by my office and hearing me strike the typewriter keyboard, one of them, out of curiosity, dropped in to confirm the fact. Finding me sitting before a typewriter, he looked puzzled, and looked at me in the face, as if he had confronted a primitive man of the stone age in a cave pounding grain in the stone mortar. In order to console or avoid the embarrassing situation he said that he was very glad to have the chance of hearing the old music being played around by some body with an old instrument yet.

     For some period of time I tried to explain and justify my reason of using a manual typewriter in the time of computer. I admitted the dire need and necessity of the computer in the time of speed, efficiency and convenience, but for a man like me who should think and concentrate more, who does some kind of creative writing, a work of more quality than of quantity, the virtues of this simple and silent machine can not be surpassed. They usually agreed with me, or pretended so by nodding their heads but I could read plainly that they were thinking of another world quite unknown to me. In fact, they were feeling pity for me, as if I were a stupid old man walking in the rain with an umbrella, while they are looking at me through the window of their car.

     Then one day, very unfortunately, I came to realize a very sad as well as fatal reality that  inevitably hastened my eventual severance from the Lettera 32. I dropped in a shop in the downtown to buy a new ribbon for my Lettera 32, but to my great disappontment I could no more buy a new ribbon for it than you could get a black-white film for your camera. They said they stopped selling it long, long ago. I could specially order one, but the price they demanded was exorbitant. They were probably laughing at me from behind when I stepped out of the shop. I felt I were another Rip Van Winkle in Seoul.

     I find that the new thing in front of me on my desk is quite a different one. Unlike the old friend of mine it will not just sit there and wait for me to come to it. With various and strange blinking lights and beeping sounds, and with all the esoteric codes, letters, and pictures, it speaks to me, stares, smiles, winks at me, allures, urges, coaxes, and even threatens me to come to it and touch it. The difference between the two is the difference between beer and cognac, or probably old wife and young mistress. I am afraid I would be completely conquered by the magic and charm of the new love. It is evident that it is already disparaging or scorning my lingering love and wavering attitude towards the old thing. I am afraid that I would miss even the chance of taking a good leave of my dear thing.

     "My dear Lettera 32, I think the time has finally come for me to bid you a formal and affectionate farewell in advance before I become more indifferent to you. Although I hate to do it, like a boy who should leave his dear old folks and home where he was born and grew up, and do not know when or whether he would ever return, but I have to leave you now. But as long as I live, and as long as I continue to write, dear Lettera 32, you will live and be remembered in my mind and memory always, like my dear hometown by the river that I left long, long time ago."
          (February 8, 1996)