style="font-size:15px;"> “Dearest I think of you all the time and wish to share all my impressions and moods with you.”
– Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), from a letter to Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), in flight on Imperial Airways. Flying boat “Scipio’. Between Brindisi and Athens, dated May 25, 1934, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”.
“God knows, I would not have hesitated for a moment to precede or follow you into the fires of hell, if you had given the word. For my heart is not mine but yours.”
– Héloïse d’Argenteuil (1101? —1163/4?), from a letter to Pierre Abelard (1079—1142), in: “The Letters of Heloise and Abelard. A translation of their correspondence and related writings”, translated from the French by Mary Martin McLaughlin with Bonnie Wheeler
“So, Rainer, it’s over. I don’t want to go to you. I don’t wish to want to.”
– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), dated June 3, 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell
“How I love you… How pliant you are, like a stem; lips parting, speaking malicious and destructive words. I, a pliant fatality, isn’t that so? Dear hands, hands from which to drink love. You are entirely like that, something from which to drink love. And I drink, having forgotten everything.”
– Nikolay Punin (1888—1953), from a letter to Anna Akhmatova (1889—1966), dated October 19, 1922 and the diary note of November 2, 1922, in: “The Unsung Hero of the Russian Avant-Garde: The Life and Times of Nikolay Punin” by Natalia Murray
“You’re sweet – I’d like to kiss you wherever you’d like to be kissed most – just now – That’s probably not at all – or all over. – ”
– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated September 14, 1926, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″
“Now it is over. It doesn’t take me long to be done with wanting.”
– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), dated June 3, 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell
“My friend – my friend, I am not well – a deadly weight of sorrow lies heavily on my heart. I am again tossed on the troubled billows of life; and obliged to cope with difficulties, without being buoyed up by the hopes that alone render them bearable. ‘How flat, dull, and unprofitable,’ appears to me all the bustle into which I see people here so eagerly enter! I long every night to go to bed, to hide my melancholy face in my pillow; but there is a canker-worm in my bosom that never sleeps.”
– Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 -1797), from a letter to Gilbert Imlay (1754 -1828), Gothenburg, dated June 29, 1795, in: “The Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay”
“The fate of our letters is an odd one: we write but don’t send them off.”
– Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), St. Petersburg, dated July 12, 1910, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin
“My love, I don’t know how to answer your questions about where we could go. What I want most is your happiness!”
– Doris Dana (1920—2006), from a letter to Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), dated April 22, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena
“I don’t know where to begin – so I’ll begin where I shall end – with my love for you…”
– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to her husband, Sergey Efron (1893—1941), she had heard nothing since the Summer of 1919, dated July, 1921, in: “Marina Tsvetaeva. A Life In Poems” by Rolf Gross
“What can I tell you? Where shall I begin? There is so much I need to say, but I’ve got out of the habit of talking, let alone writing.”
– Sergey Efron (1893—1941), from a letter to his wife, Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), she had heard nothing since the Summer of 1919, dated July 1, 1921, in: “Marina Tsvetaeva. A Life In Poems” by Rolf Gross
“What? Life and death? An anxiety worse than either. And which, I confess, prevents me from savouring beauty at the moment. How to find enjoyment in the world, when one sees it in a wounded flight, like on a fine morning, when one starts to realize that one has been deceived, that the being whom one loves is going to die. All that is too sorrowful and I want to divert myself with your books if the open wound from the divine arrow is curable.”
– Marcel Proust (1871—1922), from a letter to Anna de Noailles (1876—1933), dated 1905, Night of Saturday to Sunday (http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.com/)
“[…] I want to sleep with you, fall asleep and sleep. That magnificent folk word, how deep, how true, how unequivocal, how exactly what it says. Just – sleep. And nothing more. No, one more thing: my head buried in your left shoulder, my arm around your right one – and that’s all. No, another thing: and know right into the deepest sleep that it is you. And more: how your heart sounds. And – kiss your heart.”
– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), dated 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell
“I am living – sleeping and working – in your room as it seems to keep me more in touch with you darling.”
– Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), from a letter to Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), dated October 13, 1933, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”
“love is… a reddish little spark in the sombre and mute ocean of Eternity, it is the only moment that belongs to us…”
– Ivan Turgenev (1818—1883), from a letter to Pauline Viardot-Garcia (1821—1910), dated 1848, in: “One Less Hope: Esdsays on Twenntieth- Century Russian Poets” by Constantin V. Ponomareff
“I thank you with all my heart for your letter and press your hand cordially …. Write when you are in the mood. I will answer with the very greatest pleasure.”
– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858—1943), Melikhovo, dated November 26, 1895, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer
