purpose of my life all were you – in hearing the sound of your voice close to me, in seeing the heaven of your eyes and the light of your glance – the light that was brightening my spirit. Now everything is dead and extinguished, inside me and around me. This is the terrible truth. There is no point in my making it known to you; but it is so.”
– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated March 20, 1929, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani
“I have always translated the body into the soul (dis-bodied it!), have so gloried ‘physical’ love – in order to be able to like it – that suddenly nothing was left of it. Engrossing myself in it, hollowed it out. Penetrating into it, ousted it. Nothing remained of it but myself: Soul”
– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), dated August 2, 1926, in: “The Same Solitude”, translated from the Russian by Catherine Ciepiela
“I gather you don’t want to see me briefly. I feel depressed about this, and about the way we can’t manage, because you are important to me and might one day help me a lot. I can’t spare you, although you say I’m not exactly active. This is gloomy stuff, I’m afraid – your letter made me feel sad and ineffectual, desiring yet not finding in myself a strong full-blooded response of some sort to your fierceness.
I’ll write again before long if encouraged to, and even probably if not encouraged to. My love…”
– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to Brigid Brophy (1929—1995), dated March 18, 1960, in: “Living on Paper: Letters of Iris Murdoch, 1934—1995”
“Silence is painful; but in silence things take form, and we must wait and watch. In us, in our secret depth, lies the knowing element which sees and hears that which we do not see nor hear. All our perceptions, all the things we have done, all that we are Today, dwelt once in that knowing, silent depth, that treasure chamber in the soul.”
– Kahlil Gibran (1883—1931), from a letter to Mary Elizabeth Haskell (1873—1964), dated March 1, 1916, in: “Beloved prophet; the love letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell and her private journal”
“My letters chase after you, but you are elusive.”
– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Alexey Suvorin (1834—1912), Melikhovo, dated August 1, 1892, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer
“When separated from you, it seems time has lost its wings and yet the heart has somehow found a means of breaking the length of this bitter separation.”
– Monti, from a letter to Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), Berlin, dated April 9, 1804, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper
“Listen to me; I love you tenderly, I think of you every day and on every occasion: when working I think of you. I have gained certain intellectual benefits which you deserve more than I do, and of which you ought to make a longer use. Consider too, that my spirit is often near to yours, and that it wishes you a long life and a fertile inspiration in true joys.”
– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), Nohant, dated December 8, 1872, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie
“Happiness, sweet friend, is a solemn thing. And joy is closer to tears than laughter…”
– Marcel Proust (1871—1922), quoting Victor Hugo in a letter to Madame Straus, dated November 11, 1918 (http://www.yorktaylors.free-online.co.uk/)
“… my heart is so constituted that everything it loves and treasures grows deeply rooted in it, and when uptorn, causes wounds and suffering.”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821—1881), from a letter to Maria Dmitryevna Issayeva, dated June 4, 1855, in: “Fyodor Dostoevsky: Memoirs, Letters and Autobiographical Novels”, translated from the Russian by Ethel Colburn Mayne, John Middleton Murry, and S.S. Koteliansky
“St. Ambrose says: ‘It is easier to find men who have kept their innocence than those who have done penance for their sins.’”
– 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
“I reckon that the best thing would be if, when you have read them [notes], you threw them into the fire. The stove long ago became my favourite editor. I like it for the fact that, without rejecting anything, it is equally willing to swallow laundry bills, the beginnings of letters and even, shame, oh shame, verses!”
– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to his friend Pavel Popov, Moscow, dated April 24, 1932, in “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis
“I cannot say much about that which fills my heart and soul. I feel like a seeded field in midwinter, and I know that spring is coming. My brooks will run and the little life that sleeps in me will rise to the surface when called.”
– Kahlil Gibran (1883—1931), from a letter to Mary Elizabeth Haskell (1873—1964), dated March 1, 1916, in: “Beloved prophet; the love letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell and her private journal”
“I love you with all my might – you’ve been so nice, so warm, I have such trust in you, my heart, my dear heart. I hold you tight, as I do in the morning. Near or far, I’m all yours.”
– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre (1905—1980), dated January 25, 1947, in: “Letters to Sartre”, translated from the French by Quintin Hoare
“The more the days go by, the more my anguish and despair grow; and I don’t know what will happen to me tomorrow ….”
– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated March 20, 1929, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani
“My Dear dearest Boy, I want so much to write to you, but it seems I don’t know much to say.”
– Carrie Hughes (1873—1938), from a letter to Langston Hughes (1902—1967), dated March 8, 1935, in: “My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926—1938”
“… nothing is knowable together (everything – forgotten together), neither honor, nor God, nor a tree. Only your body which is closed to you (you have no entrance). Think about it: the strangeness: an entire area of the soul, which I (you) cannot enter alone. I CANNOT ENTER ALONE. And it’s not God who is needed, but a human being. Becoming through another person.”
– Marina Tsvetaeva
