Some Writers Are Marked by This

Dietrich Bonhoeffer says some authors are marked by hilaritas (see below), while one might also say other authors are marked by gravitas and others by conservitas (I made that one up) or by liberalitas (that one too). But I’d like to record Bonhoeffer’s understanding of hilaritas because he points to examples like Luther and Karl Barth:

… as optimism about one’s own work, as boldness, willingness to defy the world and popular opinion, as the firm conviction that they are doing the world good with their work, even if the world isn’t pleased with it, and a high-spirited self-confidence.

From Letters and Papers from Prison, 319 (a letter to E. Bethge, March 9, 1944).

Some write in order to prove the tradition as right; others write to break free from the tradition. Some write to explore what to think while others already know what they think before pen is put to paper. Bonhoeffer likes hilaritas because it has the confidence to draw bold lines regardless of what the “world” thinks.