style="font-size:15px;"> “So are you black like a little devil? And should I fear you? Oh no, little soul, I don’t fear you. It’s true you have arms which are strong, but you also have arms which are soft, which embrace. I’d long for the latter; then you’d be defenceless; and what would I do with you? I’d forget all the world – for you’d be the most beautiful world of all. I’d pour out the deepest dark around us – until only our eyes would shine like stars. I wouldn’t want to see anything, only my mouth would kiss your body, my mouth would seek that greatest happiness and would find it. You know, I imagine now that you’re my wife, not a little in that word, as I imagine it: one soul, one body! My dear beloved! – you’re mine and I live in you. It’s impossible to change anything in this. We have our world in which the sun doesn’t set.”
– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated May 2, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell
“I do not understand why you call sadness and unhappiness a weakness. Does strength consist in being unable to feel sad?”
– Karolina Pavlova (1807—1893), from a letter to Boris Utin, dated June 30, 1854, in: “Essays on Karolina Pavlova”, edited by Alexander Lehrman and Susanne Fusso
“My tenderness, my happiness, what words can I write for you? How strange that although my life’s work is moving a pen over paper, I don’t know how to tell you how I love, how I desire you. Such agitation – and such divine peace: melting clouds immersed in sunshine – mounds of happiness.”
– Vladimir Nabokov (1899—1977), from a letter to Vera Nabokov (1902—1991), dated June 17, 1926, “Letters to Vera”, edited and translated from the Russian by Olga Voronina and Brian Boyd
“You are the only one in the world who could advise me about ‘me’”
– Kahlil Gibran (1883—1931), from a letter to Mary Elizabeth Haskell (1873—1964), dated August 28, 1924, in: “Beloved prophet; the love letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell and her private journal”
“I feel within myself such a turmoil of thoughts and feelings, that anybody – if he could experience it personally for just one moment – would feel himself being swept away into the whirling spiral of a storm and seized by such a fit of dizziness as to go insane from it or even die. I still succeed in resisting, and I keep steady. I’ll keep steady to the last. And if I should die – don’t be afraid – I’ll be able to die, as a person who knew how to suffer so much.”
– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated February 28, 1930, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani
“Afterwards, when I read your letter the second time, I understood everything, and was immediately sorry, deeply sorrowed as I read your expressions that were replete with sadness and melancholy, I didn’t expect such a letter. I thought the holidays would bring you a little joy. Tis was my wish that I have hoped for you and always will. I wanted you to be happy even if you missed me, that you would have the best memories possible of Christmas […] so that you would not suffer, but that’s not the way it was for you”
– Antonietta Petris, from a letter to her fiancé, Loris Palma, dated 6 January 1949, in: “Love in the time of migration. Lovers’ Correspondence between Italy and Canada, 1948—1957″ by Sonia Cancian
“How thrilled I always am when I catch sight of the disciplined tumult of your handwriting, those magnificent volutes as of an infinite and pulsating sea from the bosom of which your thought emerges sparkling like Aphrodite, as divine and as beautiful. But when, through some excess of kindness or refinement of graciousness as in your letter of this morning, it literally tortures me by arousing in me gratitude I feel I shall never be capable of expressing, then this joy is painful and mingles: ‘The foam of pleasure with tears of pain’”
– Marcel Proust (1871—1922), from a letter to Anna de Noailles (1876—1933), dated Friday evening, 8 January, 1904, in “Selected Letters, Vol. 2: 1904—1909”, translated from the French by Terence Kilmartin
“You old monkey, how dare you say you will kiss me without my permission as much as you like! I never heard of such impudence before! You better not try it, otherwise my revenge will be most terrible.”
– Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine at birth (the future last Empress of Russia, 1872—1918), from a letter to tsesarevich Nikolay Alexandrovich (the future last Emperor of all Russia, Nikolay II, 1868—1918), dated September 23, 1894
“My thoughts are with you all the time too now, especially when I can gather them together in the evening and at night.”
– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated January 28, 1942, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevang
“In the thought that I have you, that you’re mine, lies all my joy of life. By it you give me the greatest happiness I’ve ever wished and which I never got and never really wanted from anyone before. I beam with pleasure, where possible I wish and do only good to others. Because you’re in me, because you’ve dominated me completely, I don’t long for anything else. I don’t have words to express my longing for you, to be close to you… it’s hard to calm myself. But the fire that you’ve set alight in me is necessary. Let it bum, let it flame, the desire of having you, of having you!”
– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated April 30, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell
“Men always find that the most serious thing of their existence is enjoyment.”
– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated January, 1867, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie
“Your letter was delightful – red and yellow wine to me…”
– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas (1870—1945), Savoy Hotel, London, dated early March, 1893, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” by Merlin Holland
“Darling extraordinary egocentric impossible… I do love you.”
– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to David Hicks (1929—1998), dated December 4, 1945, in: “Iris Murdoch, a Writer At War. Letters and Diaries, 1939—1945″
“Over the years of my literary work, I have become weary. I have some justification, but no consolation.”
– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to his friend Pavel Popov, Moscow, dated April 14—20, 1932, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis
“Love
