My heart is so oppressed, I cannot write with precision – You know however that what I so imperfectly express, are not the crude sentiments of the moment – You can only contribute to my comfort (it is the consolation I am in need of) by being with me – and, if the tenderest friendship is of any value, why will you not look to me for a degree of satisfaction that heartless affections cannot bestow?”
– Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 -1797), from a letter to Gilbert Imlay (1754—1828), Sweden, dated July 1, 1795, in: “The Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay”
“… look, she has not written to me for three days; and she leaves me in the depth of this loneliness without even that echo of life which would be heard in a letter from her. I wait for it every morning, to take from it strength to last and live, through the day, at least until the evening, when the anguish assaults me with fiercer strength, until it suffocates me”
– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated March 22, 1929, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani
“I certainly don’t feel any inhibition about asking for your heart. I ask for it shamelessly and need it…”
– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to Brigid Brophy (1929—1995), dated 1963, in: “Living on Paper: Letters of Iris Murdoch, 1934—1995”
“I have become anxious and fearful, I keep expecting disasters and I have become superstitious.”
– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to Vikenty Veresayev (1867—1945), Moscow, dated July 22—28, 1931, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis
“Be – yes, we can and are allowed to do so. To be – be there for another. Even if it is only a few words, alla breve, one letter once a month: the heart will know how to live.”
– Paul Celan (1920—1970), from a letter to Ingeborg Bachmann (1926—1973), dated October 31-November 1, 1957, in: “Correspondence: Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan”, translated from the German by Wieland Hoban
“I do not want you to forget me entirely. I often think of you, but with a feeling of pain. It seems you loved me enough to have the courage to love me more. I had, it seems to me, so many ties to you, that you should forgive me some of the faults which might cause your impression of me to be impaired… but it is my fate to love more than I am loved. In all feelings except the feeling of love, my heart has given more than it has received. Oh well, one must again do without you. I derive some pride from this disposition of my soul, but no pain. (…). I still need a few years to suppress my heart entirely.”
– Germaine de Staël (1766 -1817), from a letter to Madame de Pastoret, Coppet? September 10, 1800, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper
“I’ve loved everything, I knew how to love everything except the other, the other who was alive. The other has always bothered me; it was a wall against which I broke, I didn’t know how to live with the living. Hence my feeling that I was not a woman but a soul. […] You simply have loved me… I told you: there is a Soul. You said: there is a Life.”
– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Konstantin Rodzevich (1895—1988), in: “Marina Tsvetaeva: The Double Beat of Heaven and Hell” by Lily Feiler
“From your silken hair to your delicate feet you are perfection to me.”
– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas (1870—1945), Courtfield Gardens, Kensington, dated May 20, 1895, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” by Merlin Holland
“I have only you in this world. I only have you, and I love only you.”
– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Doris Dana (1920—2006), dated April 6, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena
“You know not what it is to bear thro’ weary years a shattered heart with its vacant chambers, its extinguished fires, – its dethroned image, – its broken shrine: with its silent hopelessness, – its terrible struggles, – its anguished longings: with its sad memories, – its humiliating present, and without a future. You know not what it is to live, with the spring of life broken; to live on and on amid the scattered debris of all that you valued in life; to have existence, but to spend it “among the tombs” of every thing that made it a blessing. You know not what it is to have your pure name spoken by polluted lips; to have your high and cherished honor assailed by mouths whose very breath was infamy; – and to have your grief, that sacred thing, – so deep as to be powerless even to throb out an appeal for mercy, denied the last poor privilege of decent privacy.”
– Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), from a letter to John Miller (1819—1895), Colalto, dated October 13, 1854, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″
“I feel that without you, although I try very hard to resist, I am dying. I am dying because I no longer know what to do with my life; in this horrible loneliness there is no more sense for me in living – neither value nor purpose. The meaning, the value, the 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