Quotes from my Blog. Letters

– 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 lives on words and dies of deeds.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), St. Gilles, dated August 22, 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“Every year it’s the same thing over and over again…”

– 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

“I don’t understand why you’re not here sleeping next to me. I don’t know why you’re not with me.”

– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Doris Dana (1920—2006), dated December 3, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“… do you understand why I am suffering so on your account, and what the nature of this suffering is? Even when a person is in love, he is capable of crossing the road and observing his agitation from a distance, but there is something between you and me that makes it impossible for me to leave you and look back.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, July, dated 23, 1910, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“Darling, I am thinking so much about you. Every time I wake in the night and every hour of the day. Sometimes I am very miserable to think of our being so parted, then comes your dear letter and comforts me.”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated February 26, 1935, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson.”

“My last words: stay alive, I don’t need anything else”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), in: “A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind Of Marina Tsvetaeva” by Alyssa W. Dinega

“The capacity for taking offense is a quality confined to elevated mind…”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Nikolay Chekhov (1858—1889), Moscow, dated March, 1886, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“Three days ago I was at a Christmas party for the insane, held in the violent ward. Too bad you weren’t there.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Alexander Chekhov (1855—1913), Yalta, dated December 30, 1893, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“… dear soul, let that which secretly binds us never pass away. God, let no-one dare tear it asunder. I’ll guard this secret so that no-one will find it out. After all I won’t harm anyone by loving you so unutterably…

With everyone else I’ve stood as if behind a fence; and when standing with you I want there to be not a hair’s breadth between us. You can have me whole, dear soul, and please give yourself whole to me in the same way.”

– 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

“You must know that you do not take me away from anywhere, that I am already taken away from every place in the world and from myself toward a single one, where I never arrive. (What cowardice to tell you this!)”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Abram Vishnyak (1895—1943), from “Florentine nights. Nine Letters With a Tenth Kept Back and an Eleventh Received”, in: “Readings: The Poetics of Blanchot, Joyce, Kafka, Kleist, Lispector, and Tsvetayeva” by H. Cixous, translated from the French by Verena A. Conley

“I will always be a friend of yours, you ought never to doubt that.”

– Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), from a letter to Benjamin Constant (1767—1830), London, dated January 23, 1814, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper