Quotes from my Blog. Letters

– 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 wish you were inspired to write to me more often, because the need I always have of your letters, as of air to breathe, at this moment is greater than ever…”

– 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 would like to have a talk with you. I am utterly lonely.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Alexei Suvorin (1834—1912), Melikhovo, dated August 1, 1892, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“… we love each other on credit and guess more than we know.”

– Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), St. Petersburg, dated July 12, 1910, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“What a foolish life I have been leading for two and a half months! How is it that I have not croaked with it? My longest nights have not been over five hours. What running about! What letters! and what anger! – repressed – unfortunately! At last, for three days I have slept all I wanted to, and I am stupefied by it.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated Sunday, January, 1872, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“Sometimes I think that the artistic life is a long and lovely suicide, and am not sorry that it is so.”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to H. C. Marillier, dated December 12, 1885, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters”

“You’ve been sparing with words. What’s the matter with you again?”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated March 27, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“For the love of God, please write! It’s all I have left…”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated February 27, 1930, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“She was very kind to me, she was…”

– John Miller (1819—1895), from a letter to Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), Philadelphia, dated October 24, 1854, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″

“Sweetheart, please dont worry about me – I want to always be a help – You know I am all yours and love you with all my heart.”

– Zelda Fitzgerald (1900—1948), from a letter to Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896—1940), Montgomery, Alabama, dated February 1919, in: “Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda. The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald”

“I do not live in my lips, and he who kisses me misses me.”

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

“Your letters are like the visits of angels and are refreshing vessels in the dreary path of life. And I know, as you love me, you will continue to lighten my life with them. I will not ask you to write me daily but hope you will twice or three times a week…”

– Nathaniel Dawson (1829—1895), from a letter to Elodie Todd (1840—1877), dated May 30, 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

“… my ‘acute crisis’ has passed and again I want to see you all, talk to you, visit with you.”

– Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), St. Petersburg, dated July 12, 1910, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“ALL MY LIFE I have been bawled out, balled up, held up, held down, bull-dozed, black-jacked, walked on, cheated, squeezed and mooched; stuck up for war tax, dog tax, cigarette and gas tax, Liberty Bonds, baby bond and matrimony, Red Cross, green cross and double cross, asked to join the G. A. R., Women’s Relief Corps, Men’s relief and stomach relief; I have worked like Hell, soles on my shoes nearly gone, I have been drunk, gotten others drunk, lost all I had and part of my furniture and because I won’t spend or lend all of the little I earn and go beg, borrow or steal, I have been cussed and discussed, hung up, robbed and damn near ruined and in spite of it all, instead of being cut and scraped, butchered and carved by cheap razor blades, the only reason I am happy today is because I use Double-edge – ”

– Carrie Hughes (1873—1938), from a letter to Langston Hughes (1902—1967), Saturday, February 16, 1935, in: “My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926—1938”

“Do you sometimes think of me? And do you think of what will happen to me, to us? Me does not mean anything else …. Will you write to me? Will you tell me everything? Do you want me not to write again?”

– 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 woke last night at 12.30 and heard a taxi drive up and my first thought was that you had come home, exceptionally early…”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated May 30 and 31, 1934, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson.”

“… existence is only tolerable when one forgets one’s miserable self.”

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

“It’s 10:30 A.M. – Raining. I came in at 9:45 just as the letter carrier handed the doorman two letters of yours for me! – There were none yesterday. – So the two today. And I have read them – My Sweetestheart in her element – Faraway still right here. It’s all quite unbelievable for you as for me. You have the mountain – I just feel space – & space beyond space – Mountains seem timeless – creative of moods not withstanding – Space is everything – yet nothing – still tangible – to me – Maybe another form of the mountain. – Another form of all that was & will be. – ”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), New York City, dated May 9, 1929, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“We are so far from one another in the field of our interests and activity – but that’s the very reason why I like listening to you.”

– 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

“Write me if possible more often …. I can’t be in very good spirits now, but your letters do tear me away from worries… and carry me briefly into another world.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Alexei Suvorin (1834—1912), Melikhovo, dated August 1, 1892, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“When I wake up each morning it makes me sad to think I’m going to spend another long day without you.”

– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre (1905—1980), September 17, 1937, in: “Letters to Sartre”, translated from the French by Quintin Hoare

“Memories – they’re like a faded flower. And I’d like to smash them to pieces, at least they wouldn’t hurt any more.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated August 15, 1926, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“Some day you will find, even as I have found, that there is no such thing as a romantic experience; there are romantic memories, and there is the desire of romance – that is all. Our most fiery moments of ecstasy are merely shadows of what somewhere else we have felt, or of what we long some day to feel. So at least it seems to me. And, strangely enough, what comes of all this is a curious mixture of ardour and of indifference. I myself would sacrifice everything for a new experience, and I know there is no such thing as a new experience at all. I think I would more readily die for what I do not believe in than for what I hold to be true. I would go to the stake for a sensation and be a sceptic to the last!”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to H. C. Marillier, dated December 12, 1885, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” by Merlin Holland

“Kiss me, Lover – one darling kiss – I need you so – ”

– Zelda Fitzgerald (1900—1948), from a letter to Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896—1940), Montgomery, Alabama, dated April, 1919, in: “Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda. The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald”

“My realities may be different from what most people call reality, but still they are realities.”

– Etty Hillesum (1914—1943), from a letter to Osias Kormann, dated 1943, from a Westerbork transitional camp for Jews, in: “An Interrupted Life: Diaries and Letters 1941—43. And Letters from Westerbork″

“My dear Darling,

I don’t know what to call you. I am tired of Madam; & “my dear Friend” would sound very sweetly in some cases, but very unmeaningly toward you. Do tell me what I shall say; or else encourage a poor suffering lover, who has brought away from all his visits to you new arrows of uneasiness & distress, to call you what he pleases, as it is only one more way of candidly telling you the truth.”

– John Miller (1819—1895), from a letter to Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), Philadelphia, dated January 20, 1855, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″

“You’re in my blood. I can’t do anything without you because you live inside me.”

– Doris Dana (1920—2006), from a letter to Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), dated April 22, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“I do not write to you and you do not write to me, and time is passing. And rather swiftly. But it is not in my power to change anything.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), in a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, dated April 3, 1935, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“I have wanted for several days to write you a long letter in which I should tell you all that I have felt for a month. It is funny. I have passed through different and strange states. But I have neither the time nor the repose of mind to gather myself together enough.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated October, 1869, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“I thought about how much I would want for us to die together… With one condition: to be in the same coffin. Of course, you would have to approve of giving up silence forever… I would have so much to say to you, so many things…”

– Emil Cioran (1911—1995), from a letter to Friedgard Thoma, quoted in her autobiography “Um nichts in der Welt”, translated from the Romanian translation by Christina Tudor-Sideri

“Do you know what I want – when I want? Darkness, light, transfiguration. The most remote headland of another’s soul – and my own. Words that one will never hear or speak. The improbable. The miraculous. A miracle.

You will get, Boris (for in the end you will surely get me), a strange, sad, dreaming, singing little monster struggling to escape from your hand.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), dated July 26, 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“Dearest I think of you all the time and wish to share all my impressions and moods with you.”

– Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), from a letter to Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), in flight on Imperial Airways. Flying boat “Scipio’. Between Brindisi and Athens, dated May 25, 1934, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”.

“God knows, I would not have hesitated for a moment to precede or follow you into the fires of hell, if you had given the word. For my heart is not mine but yours.”

– 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

“So, Rainer, it’s over. I don’t want to go to you. I don’t wish to want to.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), dated June 3, 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“How I love you… How pliant you are, like a stem; lips parting, speaking malicious and destructive words. I, a pliant fatality, isn’t that so? Dear hands, hands from which to drink love. You are entirely like that, something from which to drink love. And I drink, having forgotten everything.”

– Nikolay Punin (1888—1953), from a letter to Anna Akhmatova (1889—1966), dated October 19, 1922 and the diary note of November 2, 1922, in: “The Unsung Hero of the Russian Avant-Garde: The Life and Times of Nikolay Punin” by Natalia Murray

“You’re sweet – I’d like to kiss you wherever you’d like to be kissed most – just now – That’s probably not at all – or all over. – ”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated September 14, 1926, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“Now it is over. It doesn’t take me long to be done with wanting.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), dated June 3, 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“My friend – my friend, I am not well – a deadly weight of sorrow lies heavily on my heart. I am again tossed on the troubled billows of life; and obliged to cope with difficulties, without being buoyed up by the hopes that alone render them bearable. ‘How flat, dull, and unprofitable,’ appears to me all the bustle into which I see people here so eagerly enter! I long every night to go to bed, to hide my melancholy face in my pillow; but there is a canker-worm in my bosom that never sleeps.”

– Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 -1797), from a letter to Gilbert Imlay (1754 -1828), Gothenburg, dated June 29, 1795, in: “The Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay”

“The fate of our letters is an odd one: we write but don’t send them off.”

– Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), St. Petersburg, dated July 12, 1910, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“My love, I don’t know how to answer your questions about where we could go. What I want most is your happiness!”

– Doris Dana (1920—2006), from a letter to Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), dated April 22, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“I don’t know where to begin – so I’ll begin where I shall end – with my love for you…”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to her husband, Sergey Efron (1893—1941), she had heard nothing since the Summer of 1919, dated July, 1921, in: “Marina Tsvetaeva. A Life In Poems” by Rolf Gross

“What can I tell you? Where shall I begin? There is so much I need to say, but I’ve got out of the habit of talking, let alone writing.”

– Sergey Efron (1893—1941), from a letter to his wife, Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), she had heard nothing since the Summer of 1919, dated July 1, 1921, in: “Marina Tsvetaeva. A Life In Poems” by Rolf Gross

“What? Life and death? An anxiety worse than either. And which, I confess, prevents me from savouring beauty at the moment. How to find enjoyment in the world, when one sees it in a wounded flight, like on a fine morning, when one starts to realize that one has been deceived, that the being whom one loves is going to die. All that is too sorrowful and I want to divert myself with your books if the open wound from the divine arrow is curable.”

– 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