– 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
“your letters make me more and more ‘delirious’ – I think that’s the word for it. What erogenous zones I have left are quivering with hopeless anticipation.”
– Henry Miller (1891—1980), from a letter to Brenda Venus (born 1947), dated September 29, 1980, in: “Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus”
“I am dreadfully sad. I would like to withdraw from the world; I have only sorrowful impressions of it. I would like to collect all regrets and all good-byes. Seeing you again would suffice for me to recover. Rest assured then that my last rays will still be for you.”
– Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), from a letter to Voght, Geneva, Coppet, dated January 27, 1809, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper
“It’s as quiet as the grave here again.”
– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated December 2, 1918, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell
“I’ve wanted to write you for a long time and who knows what impatience stops me in the middle of letters, what exasperation at my poverty of language. In the end, I’m sending you a few lines so you know that I’m here, that I’m alive, and that if I don’t write it’s because I can’t.
My life here is up and down, it’s the usual flow, hope and hopelessness. Desires to die and to live. Sometimes there’s order, other times the chaos devours me. I think right now it’s the latter. Perhaps that’s why I’m writing you.”
– Alejandra Pizarnik (1936—1972), from a letter to her psychoanalyst, León Ostrov, dated December 27, 1960, in: “Three letters from Alejandra Pizarnik to León Ostrov” by Emily Cooke (https://www.musicandliterature.org/)
“You write that you find everything bewildering, in confusion… It is good for things to be confused, very good! It indicates that you are a philosopher, a smart woman.”
– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to his future wife, Olga Knipper (1868—1959), Yalta, dated September 8, 1900, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer
“It’s not consolation that I seek, however, it’s seeing him, and in dreams I tend to have him, and in sensations of his being present in
wakefulness as well, and I go on living from what I receive from both things, and from nothing more than this.”
– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Victoria Ocampo (1890—1979), Rio De Janeiro, Brasil, dated 26 October, 1943, in: “This America Of Ours. The Letters of Gabriela Mistral and Victoria Ocampo”, translated by Elizabeth Horan and Doris Meyer
“When you sit in your study reading a book – think of me. I have been deprived of that happiness for two and a half months now.”
– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to his friend Pavel Popov, from the sanatorium at Barvikha to Moscow, dated December 1, 1939, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis
“‘I would like, oh, I really would like, to be able to swim away in my tears’.”
– Etty Hillesum (1914—1943), probably in a letter to Father Han and friends, from a Westerbork transit camp for Jews, quoiting some woman’s words at the camp, dated August 24, 1943, in: “An Interrupted Life: Diaries and Letters 1941—43. And Letters from Westerbork”, translated from the Dutch by Arnold J. Pomerans
“I would not quit you for all the women in the world. You are the soul of my life, my very existence, and it is all because you love me and have warmed it to life, the bruised and broken ruins of my bosom.”
– Nathaniel Dawson (1829—1895), from a letter to Elodie Todd (1840—1877), Camp Davis, Lynchburg, dated May 11, 1861, in: “Practical Strangers. The Courtship Correspondence of Nathaniel Dawson and Elodie Todd, Sister of Mary Todd Lincoln”, edited by Stephen Berry and Angela Esco Elder
“I love you… I need you. You can help me more than anyone on earth.
Forgive me for the things I do not know, the things I can not fight alone, the things I haven’t understood. You know better than anyone else how stupid and unwise I am, how I must battle the darkness within my self. No one else would help me. No one else would care as you care. No one else would even try to understand. The door is never closed between us… Only the ugly shadow of my self stands in the way now.”
– Langston Hughes (1902—1967), from a letter to Charlotte Mason, in: “The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902—1941, I, Too, Sing, America”, by Arnold Rampersad
“… you are punishing me with your silence, or even by wrenching me out of your heart because of my egoism, because my feelings are only ‘words, words, words,’ ‘literature’; if they were real, I would have proven my love in deeds and not in sighs recorded on paper.”
– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, dated June 29, 1948, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin
“Nothing