Nikola Tesla: THE LAST TESLA’S LETTER TO HIS MOTHER
This is Nikola Tesla’s last letter to his mother.
Wednesday, November 18…
My dear mother, I feel sad and dreary when I think of you. I don’t know how, but I feel that you are not well. wish I could be beside you now mother, to bring you a glass of water. All these years that I had spent in the service of mankind brought me nothing but insults and humiliation. This morning I woke up early, just before the dawn, because I had heard something that I have been hearing through my dreams for quite some time now. I heard this voice that sang some beautiful chant, lament or even prayer in Moorish. When I came to my senses I realized that this voice came from everywhere and it was impossible to determine whether it was from within. I am afraid of loosing my mind. I cannot confide this to Doctor Lionel because I don’t trust him anymore. I heard that he visiteqMr. Edison two weeks ago…
Thursday, November 19…
Again my thoughts are of you, Mother, and again I feel that same restlessness and sorrow. I will write to the Patent office to speed up the realization of my public experiment for one week. I have to go back home, to my homeland, to You. I know now for sure that you are not well because once again I have heard that lamenting voice, but this time I was wide awake. I still haven’t lost my sense.
Friday, November 20…
I didn’t write to the Patent office, one of their agents came and I told him about my intentions in person. He said he was sorry, but the dates could not be changed because all the congressmen have already determined them. I went down to the Waterfalls and told the boys to prepare the turbines and wait for my call tomorrow.
have decided to provide the mankind with the gift it deserves and to retourn to Europe, to You, Mother. Governments here are the same as the ones back home. I have realized now, at the very end, that the mankind depends on governments and the individual cannot change the world on himself. But that strange voice still bothers me. I know it is connected to You, my experiment, with something transcendental.
Saturday, November 21…
Dear Mother, I leave for Yugoslavia tomorrow. Miss Nora went to the Port and bought me the ticket for Lisbon. From there I will go by train to Zurich, and then straight home. It will take me approximately ten days, no more than two weeks, to get home.
Today I have entered the Congressional office building and at the middle of the congressional session asked for couple of minutes of their time. They weren’t very happy about it but they let me. I asked for the telephone to call the laboratory at Niagara falls. The boys over there activated the turbines and the Congress hall was lit up with my power, ten times stronger than the regular one, as I promised it would. I didn’t care about their reactions at all. I instantly left the hall, because I didn’t do all this for them, but for the mankind. In that very moment, when I was looking at the lightning bulb to shine with “my” wireless electricity, I realized that I wasn’t the maker of all this.
I felt that someone or something was carrying it from Niagara falls to the Congress hall and that the law I thought I “invented” actually always existed. I was just the vessel blessed with inspiration to formulate and explain it to the mankind.
Instead of triumph and happiness, some empty sorrow emerged. I realized that I had missed something big in my life. As If I had left something unrecognized completely. Some formula was within the grasp of my understanding and I have failed or didn’t want to clarify it. That has to be connected to that Moorish lament, I am sure of it now…
Sunday, November 22
This letter will never get to you, Mother. I don’t know why I write it to you when you cannot read it…rest in peace Mother and please forgive me for choosing paths that had lead me away from you. I cannot even be there for your funeral. I read the telegram that informed me of your death and despise people who weren’t ready to understand two years ago that electricity can be transferred without wires. Now, they have seen it but they won’t use it for centuries to come because someone burned my downtown laboratory to the ground, with all of my formulas and writings in it. They suspect of Mr. Edison.
I became so indifferent, I cannot even recognize myself. I would maybe feel sad before but not any more because I am now sure that someone is keeping “my” patents under control, that my” discovery isn’t “mine” at all and finally, that mankind was not ready for it. I know that someone is overseeing everything and has a plan of their own, which is probably why I am indifferent.
My ship for Lisbon leaves at 11 o’clock. The car is waiting outside.
I will lay this letter on your grave, when I arrive at our village’s graveyard. I believe in something that I have never believed at. I believe that I am still a part of you, and that my life is not over for good. I now feel sorry for avoiding Turks because they sang similar laments I heard before dawns. I now realize that they knew about this things a lot more than I ever did.
All those years spent in selence were in vain. Please mother, pray for me over there if you can, sing the Moorish lament for the lost soul of your poor ignorant son…
IMPORTANT: The authenticity of this letter has never been confirmed…