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“The one thought that pains me is that it seems we shall never in our lives have the opportunity to see each other again. My fate has been tangled and fearsome. Now it is leading me towards silence, and for a writer that is tantamount to death.”
– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to his brother, Nikolay Bulgakov (1989—1966), Moscow, dated February 21, 1930, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis
“Darling I do so love being near you, even when we are so sad as we were both today.”
– Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), from a letter to Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), dated January 12, 1929, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”
“I have some new friends who are very dear to me, but the past seems designed, above all, to disturb the imagination and the heart. The present, which one would lament even more bitterly than the past, cannot erase the trace of it. I leave this almost metaphysical reflection to you, you who are such a fine observer of the soul’s interior and who have eyes which see better within than without…”
– Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), from a letter to Gerando, Coppet, dated October 8, 1800, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper
“… it is high time to beautify myself, not that I have any pretensions at pleasing and seducing by my physical graces, but I hate myself too much when I look in my mirror. The older one grows, the more care one should take of oneself.”
– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated April 23, 1873, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie
“My darling, my sweetheart, when I am away from you in such an apparently unnecessary manner, I love you so much, am so dreadfully homesick for you. I also have the feeling I should be near you, so as to avert any dangers and help you in your discomforts. Dearest if I could spend the rest of my life as your personal servant and nurse I would be happy!”
– Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), from a letter to Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), dated December 26, 1928, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”
“My sweet, I too have no patience for anything, wherever I am I long to be at home so that I can be alone with you, writing to you and reading one of your letters. It is always the same and will be so until we are together.”
– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated September 13, 1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange
“… your letters are always rich to the taste. A charming one has just arrived this morning, & pulled me out of a morass of gloom in which I was floundering.”
– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to Frank Thompson (1918—1889), dated October 22, 1943, in: “Iris Murdoch, a Writer At War. Letters and Diaries, 1939—1945″
“… my dear Darling, how could you leave me so long without a letter? I told you how sad I was. Now this doesn’t mean ‘despondent’ for I am really hopeful to the extent of obstinacy in all matters that interest me enough to be matters of despondency. But I am melancholy. That is the habit of my temper. And the kind soothings that you would be willing to bestow come to me in no shape more pleasantly than even the briefest letter. Wont you after this reaches you, write me so often that it will relax all my impatience for you can have no idea how I have really suffered since the first day that I felt sure that a letter would arrive.”
– John Miller (1819—1895), from a letter to Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), Philadelphia, dated February 16, 1855, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″
“Every line of yours will be an equal source of joy to me in the new year too, and I will not object to any brevity.”
– Gretel Adorno (1902—1993), from a letter to Walter Benjamin (1892—1940), Berlin, dated January 12, 1937, in: “Gretel Adorno and Walter Benjamin. Correspondence 1930—1940″, translated from the German by Wieland Hoban
“I wish you were here – talking would be so much fun – When you feel soaked and soaked with all sorts of things it’s pretty hard to get any of it onto paper – ”
– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1886), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), Loveland, Colorado, dated September 4, 1917, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″
“Beloved, it has turned 12 o’clock midnight while I’ve been talking with you, so good night!!! I am imagining you are with me, I am going to fall asleep in your arms. Be healthy and happy and write a lot to me as soon as you can. With great longing I kiss your eyes, cheeks, mouth…”
– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated Saturday evening, August 8, 1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange
“The autumn brings melancholy.”
– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to Frank Thompson (1918—1889), dated August 15, 1943, in: “Iris Murdoch, a Writer At War. Letters and Diaries, 1939—1945″
“Altho’ I wrote you this morning that I would not write any more today here I am at it again. – The walk to the post office – no letter from you for a change – & caught in a downpour – stirred me up a bit. – I hope no letter means nothing. – I’m in such a state of tension that all sorts of miserable thoughts shoot through my head & I dare not let any of them take hold of me.”
– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated June 25, 1929, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″
“Farewell, I will write to you again tomorrow. Now I am sitting down in my favourite place and then a kiss and another and then?”
– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated September 25, 1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange
“My friend, my angel.
So often you say that it can’t finish with something good and the end would be a rescue. I confessed you long time ago:
If you will be ever so unwell that violent end will become for you the only way we’ll do it together, and I’ll be the first of us – before your eyes. I don’t believe in these escapes and deny whole their nature. But I would be completely another case. I will accept it, my favorite little dolly, as part of your fate, from which I cannot be separated. And after doing that, you may and you have to stay, because then me become you, and you will want with it among the people
lightly and pleasant. And any new of your lives, which will replace the memory, will not be a betrayal, but joyful transformation of your fidelity. And what a exultation, when I’ll take you across faith in suicide immediately into that true, in the eyes of which suicide shows up as idolatry. Let me be in the union with you.”
– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter (“note”) to his future second wife, Zinaida Neigauz (1897—1966), dated January 27, 1931, in: “Suicide and Love” in Boris Pasternak’s Ideology: The New Discovered Letter” by Konstantin Polivanov
“I am feeling such a dreadful longing for you, dearest, just to be near you and to hear your voice and see your lovely dear face…
I love and love you and think of you all the time so tenderly and with so much real passion…”
– Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), from a letter to Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), Milan station, dated April 30, 1928, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”
“I’m going to stay here another week. And you’ll come, right? Be honest. You’re being brave. I hope you mean it. Trust me, I will be on my best behavior.
I’m yours. I’m waiting.”
– Arthur Rimbaud (1854—1891), from a letter to his Paul Verlaine (1844—1896), dated July 7, 1873, in: “I Promise to be Good. The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud”, translated from the French by Watt Mason
“… you won’t rest easy, not until you save the soul from which you may hang and depend. Even if it only means saving him from himself, and with more reason if he has no enemies except for those within himself. Why should you want anything other than to make a man happy, a man to whom you gave happiness and who taught you to receive happiness from his hand? All the rest will mature in him, for you, because of him, with him, by way of him.”
– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Victoria Ocampo (1890—1979), Argentina, dated April, 1938, in: “This America Of Ours. The Letters of Gabriela Mistral and Victoria Ocampo”, translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth Horan and Doris Meyer
“My Own Boy, Your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red roseleaf lips of yours should have been made no less for music and song than for madness of kissing.”
– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to Alfred Douglas (1870—1945), Babbacombe Cliff, dated January, 1893, in “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters”
“There is so much in life that does not lend itself to definition, analysis, even translation into human language. This has been true of much, very much, of my life in recent years.”
– 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 beloved one, I don’t know why I waited so long before saying I loved you. I just wanted to be sure and not to say easy, empty words. But it seems to me now love was there since the beginning. Anyway, now it is here, it is love and my heart aches. I am happy to be so bitterly unhappy because I know you are unhappy, too, and it is sweet to have part of the same sadness. With you pleasure was love, and now pain is love too. We must know every kind of love. We’ll know the joy of meeting again. I want it, I need it, and I’ll get it. Wait for me. I wait for you. I love you more even than I said, more maybe than you know. I’ll write very often. Write to me very often too.”
– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Nelson Algren (1909—1981), dated May 18, 1947, in: “A Transatlantic Love Affair. Letters to Nelson Algren” (https://archive.nytimes.com/)
“So your poor leggies have again hurt you, very naughty of them – I wish I were there to have rubbed them at least!”
– Tsesarevich Nikolay Alexandrovich (the future last Emperor of all Russia, Nikolay II, 1868—1918), from a letter to his future wife, Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine at birth (the future last Empress of Russia, 1872—1918), dated August 3, 1894
“You claim that my letters are more beautifully written and better composed than yours, but that’s not true. Haven’t you noticed how in a few words you can usually deal with a matter, whereas I need so many?”
– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated September 25, 1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange
“I’m writing to you because I don’t have anyone to send these lines so they’ll be read, and yet unread because unanswered. So it’s like a stone falling into the water. It’s like talking to myself, feeling sorry for myself, cheering myself up.”
– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated September 9, 1918, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell
“I feel such terrible pangs when you write how much you want me, and I also feel I have rather cat-and-moused you by saying one time I was coming, and the next time not, and so on.”
– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated October 21, 1927, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”
“There are different ways of being busy. Mine is unnatural. It is a blend of the darkest disquiet, which I suffer from because of trivialities that I shouldn’t be busying myself with, of complete hopelessness, of neurasthenic fears and of helpless endeavours. My wing has been broken.”
– 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
“Sometimes I have the feeling that there is a great mass of unspoken words between us which here and there threatens to rear itself into a wall between us.”
– Marie Bader (1886—1942), in a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated December 24,1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange
“What beautiful verses you sent me! Their rhythm is as soft as the caresses of your voice when you mix my name with your tender chirping. Allow me to find them the most beautiful of your verses…”
– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to Louise Colet (1810—1876), in: “Rage and fire: a life of Louise Colet, pioneer feminist, literary star, Flaubert’s muse” by Francine du Plessix Gray
“Your letter has just been put into my hands (Friday morning). I read it & lay it down & answer it at once, for at the close of the week I am never so much my own master as at the beginning & as I can only write a short letter now I will postpone a more full reply till Monday.”
– John Miller (1819—1895), from a letter to Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), Philadelphia, February 16, 1855, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″
“I kiss you on the abdomen – a long long fervent kiss – ”
– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated June 23, 1929, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″
“Let’s hope that fate, at least one more time before I close my eyes forever, might want to be kind to me and lead you back to me, so that I may get back one reason for living, which now is missing completely.”
– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated March 14, 1929, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani
“Most dear little being,
I miss you. I’ve received all your little letters safely, and you’re very sweet to have been such a good correspondent. But it really grieves me to feel you so glum, there far away, and to be glum myself here.”
– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre (1905—1980), Paris, dated 5 July, 1939, in “Letters to Sartre”, translated from the French by Quintin Hoare
“I have LOVED more than anyone, a presumptuous phrase which means ‘quite like others,’ and perhaps even more than average person. Every affection is known to me, ‘the storms of the heart’ have ‘poured out their rain’ on me. And then chance, force of circumstances, causes solitude to increase little by little around me, and now I am alone, absolutely alone.”
– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated 25 November, 1872, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie
“I can’t explain why you don’t write to me.
I haven’t done anything to you, I haven’t wanted anything from you. I really don’t know. That I nevertheless write to you is because of memories…
I have nothing more than memories – well then, so I live in them.”
– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated September 2, 1918, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell
“Of course I can’t help thinking much of the future – Winters & summers. – Every-
thing. But above all – Always you – US. – You come first. – And have come first even when you believed you didn’t – & perhaps I made you feel you didn’t. – ”
– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated June 23, 1929, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933
“I miss you, you know. I miss your lips, your hands, your whole warm and strong body, and your face and your smiles, your voice. I miss you. But I like missing you so hard because it makes me feel strongly that you are not a dream, you are real, you are living, and I’ll meet you again… I kiss your dear face, your sweet lips with the most loving kisses.”
– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Nelson Algren (1909—1981), dated Friday, May 23, 1947, in: “A Transatlantic Love Affair. Letters to Nelson Algren” (https://archive.nytimes.com/)
“Last night I lay and complained bitterly to myself and longed for someone to come and take these cares off my shoulders.”
– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated September 28, 1927, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”
“… there is nothing more irksome or less poetic, one may say, than the prosaic struggle for existence which takes away the joy of life and drags one into apathy.”
– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Lydia Mizinova (1870—1939), Yalta, dated July 11, 1893, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer
“I am in such a state of tiredness that I have – one could say aphasia – a kind of agraphia, and I don’t want to tire your beautiful eyes trying to decipher these meaningless hieroglyphics.”
– Marcel Proust (1871—1922), from a letter to Anna de Noailles (1876—1933), dated 1912 (http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.com/)
“… if I am more passionate than other people, that is just my pain, my suffering. Forgive me if I was in the way.”
– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated July 16, 1917, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell
“I cannot force myself. To write to you means to make a difficult and unnatural gesture. There would be something artificial about it – a lie, in your opinion – and that would cause me pain. It would not be a letter to you but a manufactured product.”
– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, September 20, 1911, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin
“Dear little being,
I’m not going to write you a long letter, though I’ve hundreds of things to tell you, because I prefer to tell you them in person…”
– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre (1905—1980), Albertville, dated July 27, 1938, in: “Letters to Sartre”, translated by Quintin Hoare
“Reconcile yourself to the idea that my letters to you will become frequent (although I repeat that this won’t last long, probably). I’m not much of a master when it comes to letters: you struggle and struggle, the words won’t come off the pen, and I can’t express my thoughts properly…”
– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to his brother Nikolay Bulgakov (1898—1966), Moscow, February 21, 1930, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis
“I owe the best days of my life and my deepest-felt emotions to literature.”
– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to his brother, Alexander Chekhov (1855—1913), Melikhovo, dated January 21, 1895, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer
“Dearest, I feel old, withered, as if my vitality had ebbed. Love me all the same please.”
– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated October 3, 1927, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”
