Quotes from my Blog. Letters

“You and I never believed in our meeting here on earth, any more than we believed in life on this earth, isn’t that so?

I kiss you… on the lips? on the temple? on the forehead? Of course on the lips, for real, as if alive.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), the letter she wrote after he died, dated December 31, 1926-February 8, 1927, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“I’ve been carrying around a pile of letters I wrote to you. It’s a lot of writing, because except for my travel days I write to you every night. I shouldn’t load you down like that, but though I’m thinking about you the entire day, at night my memory of you becomes so intense that I can’t do anything else but write to you. It’s like a compulsion.”

– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Doris Dana (1920—2006), dated December 5, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“Your letter, my dear, was received this morning, and I assure you the expressions of sympathy and love running through its pages but add to the deep love I bear you.”

– Nathaniel Dawson (1829—1895), from a letter to Elodie Todd (1840—1877), Manassas Junction, dated September 2, 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

“Treasure, my beloved, you only ever write very little about yourself now. I beg you, write to me about everything, don’t spare me, because I want to be your trusted friend.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Prague, dated March 12, 1942, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevang

“I want only to have company and I want to have somewhere to go ‘home’ to; and where else but to you can I go ‘home’?”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated March 25, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“… My problem is that I have nothing external; all heart and fate.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Vera Merkurieva (1876—1943), dated August 31, 1940, in “A Captive Lion. The Life Of Marina Tsvetaeva”, by Elaine Feinstein

“Do you ever really miss me dearest one, or do you just think of me as a bit of the past?”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated June 18, 1934, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”

“Come back, come back, I cry and cry.

Tell me to come join you and I’ll come…

Where will you go?

What will you do?”

– Arthur Rimbaud (1854—1891), from a letter to his Paul Verlaine (1844—1896), dated July 4, 1873, in: “I Promise to be Good. The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud”, translated from the French by Watt Mason

“Why is it that only my silence means something, and necessarily something bad? But it really doesn’t matter; it always has and always will be this way.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to his Aunt Asya, Moscow, dated January 14, 1936, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“I always like you to write just as you feel. Such letters are pleasant even in their sadness as they convince me of your love and confidence. I love to be sad at times. It is a pleasure to think of sad things. Never let the fear of affecting me control your feelings. I always wish them to be outspoken. I am always candid with you and tell you what I feel and think. Your letters are a comfort and a solace, even one line. If you saw me nightly kissing your miniature, you would know that I was in love. I think last at night and first in the morning of my God and you, my dear…”

– Nathaniel Dawson (1829—1895), from a letter to Elodie Todd (1840—1877), Manassas Junction, dated September 2, 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

“What is it to forget a human being? – It is to forget what one suffered through him.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Abram Vishnyak (1895—1943), dated 1922, in: “Florentine nights. Nine Letters With a Tenth Kept Back and an Eleventh Received”, quoted by H. Cixous, in “Readings: The Poetics of Blanchot, Joyce, Kafka, Kleist, Lispector, and Tsvetayeva”, translated from the French by Verena A. Conley

“… I am completely and irrevocably knocked off balance, because I am so tired that my mind and nerves are shattered. I am saying straight forward: I would prefer your society to anyone else’s, if I were at all capable of social intercourse. I can do two things: I can write, in order not to die of hunger, and I can play bridge, in order not to be left with my or others thoughts. …I’m like a victim of shell-shock. To sit in one place for more than an hour is real torture. I, you understand, have become incapable of conversing. If only I could quit the appalling profession of émigré writer, I would again become a human being. But I don’t know how to do anything. … The trouble is that I am flying upside down.”

– Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich (1886—1939), from a letter to his friend, Arkady Tumarkin, dated October 23, 1936, in: “Vladislav Khodasevich in the Emigration: Literature and the Search for Identity” by Pavel Uspenskij, in: The Russian Review. 2018. Vol. 77. No.1. Pp. 88—108.

“I think our life together will be like these last four days – and I do want to marry you – even if you do think I ‘dread’ it – I wish you hadn’t said that – I’m not afraid of anything. To be afraid a person has either to be a coward or very great and big. I am neither. Besides, I know you can take much better care of me than I can, and I’ll always be very, very happy with you – except sometimes when we engage in our weekly debates – and even then I rather enjoy myself. I like being very calm and masterful, while you become emotional and sulky. I don’t care whether you think so or not – I do.”

– Zelda Fitzgerald (1900—1948), from a letter to Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896—1940), Montgomery, Alabama, dated February, 1920, in: “Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda. The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald”

“But I cannot write further, I must tell you quickly that I love you, that I embrace you affectionately. Give me news of yourself… Enough, I can no more. I love you; don’t have black ideas, and resign yourself to being bored if the air is good there.”

– George Sand (1804—1876), from a letter to Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), Nohant, dated July 8, 1874, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“Somehow I feel that what is ailing me is that as you left that something which was between

us – something really holy – & which gave me strength – was not quite that for you anymore.”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated July 5, 1929, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“It is my best friendship ever; he is the cleverest, the most sociable, the most ancient, the most strange, and the most genius of all people in this world.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Lyudmila Chirikova (1895—1995), dated April 4, 1923, referring to Prince Sergey Volkonsky (1860—1937), in “Writing as Performance: The case of Marina Tsvetaeva” by Dr. Alexandra Smith

“I don’t need anything anymore when I work: I need only you. If I receive a letter from you today, I will immediately be well. I believe that, even if I should die, if a letter arrived, I would rise from the dead. I am so alone, so alone and you cannot imagine the kind of evenings I spend. As soon as it gets dark, anguish overcomes me …. Write to me! Answer somehow to all the love I have for you…”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated October 11, 1931, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“I miss you as much as ever, but you seem horribly far away and I cannot imagine you getting back or at any rate not the same person.”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated July, 1934, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson.”

“Beloved, come to me often in my dreams. No, not that. Live in my dreams. Now you have a right to wish and to fulfill your wishes”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), the letter she wrote after he died, dated December 31, 1926-February 8, 1927, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“Yes, you must be cold.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Alexei Suvorin (1834—1912), dated March, 19, 1892, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“I feel certain that you have already detached yourself from me with your mind and with your heart – and I have become just like anybody else, from whom you are far away and to whom from time to time you give an indifferent thought – then everything dies inside me. I feel my soul and my breath falling apart; every light goes out in my brain, and my hand falls on the paper, motionless as a stone. Help me, help me.”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated October 11, 1931, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“Please write if anything interesting occurs. I am lonesome here, really, and if it were not for letters I might even hang myself, learn to drink the poor Crimean wine or marry an ugly and stupid woman.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Grigori Rossolimo (1860—1928), Yalta, dated October 11, 1899, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“Another gray & threatening morning. – I’m downstairs. It’s seven. – The sleeping potion gave me sleep. – Till six. And then I lay in your bed wondering will a letter come. And what will it bring me. Peace or torture?”