Friday, July 5, 2013

feeling feelings

source.)
The power of real love is simply incredible. It truly transcends it's boundaries, such as distance... and sometimes, it is with this same distance that it becomes a stronger, more powerful emotion. The love between Virginia Wolf and Vita Sackville-West was one that probably faced many of these boundaries (they were both women, Vita was married to a man). This excerpt, from a letter Vita made for Virginia on her way to Persia for four months with her husband, is probably one of the most simple, but undoubtedly beautiful letters I have ever come across. Her heartache for her lover is so evident, so strong, that she could only express it in the most direct way possible. 

" I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn't even feel it. And yet I believe you'll be sensible of a little gap. But you'd clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this—But oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don't love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don't really resent it." 
(from Letters of Note.)

To love a person with this same intensity... 

No comments:

Post a Comment