The most beautiful love letter...
I recently read a love letter...
...or rather, a declaration of love, so beautiful, that my eyes watered as if those thoughts were meant for me. The text belongs to Liviu Rebreanu, and was dedicated to the one who would become his wife - Fanny Radulescu. The two met on the Otetelesanu terrace in Bucharest, a place heavily frequented by the artists of the time. In 2012, Rebreanu wrote the following lines, thinking of the actress and writer with whom he would link his destiny:
"Many think that he is boasting saying: "Here is my heart! I'll give it to you... I don't need the dance.... I'm not afraid of the torments of jealousy, I don't care about the chills of love! I avoid one thing: not to be banal! I would like to suffer, to want to gnash my teeth, pull my hair out of my head and fall asleep with my eyelashes soaked in tears! That way, at least, I would know that I am alive, I would understand, perhaps, what it means to love... But the days pass, forever the same, dry and boring, and my life drains away just like the life of a useless gas... I cannot have a love; I can only have love. But these loves rise quickly, flicker for a moment and then disappear, disappear forever, as if they were some dreams that you forget as soon as you wake up from sleep..."
Oh, I also thought that I could not love, and I imagined that the fault was not in me, but in them, in the women who do not deserve to be loved!... But today I know and understand that love is made for the humble, like those the proud will never be able to love... The proud imagine that they do not need a heart, they only want to conquer, always to win; they believe, finally, that even in love, success is everything. Maybe their wishes will come true, maybe their appetites will be satisfied, yes... but, alas, they will never know love.
Because love demands obedience, a blind obedience, like faith. In love, you will never be convinced, you will never wait for proof. Everything that is not obedience and devotion is not love. You have to live a long time, you have to suffer a lot, you have to understand a lot for your heart to be able to receive love. The ambitious, the proud, the impudent and ungrateful cannot know what love is and, thus, most of us only begin to understand love at the age of fifty, then, therefore, when it is too late,...
Life confused me, humiliated me; life pleased my voice. Thus, I stopped saying that they don't deserve to be loved, but shout everywhere: I know how to love because I learned to cry, to sigh and to resign myself!
Today I would also like not to love, I would like to be proud, ambitious, conquering again... From this you can see that I am in love! If I could sing from the syrinx, I would take you to a glade bathed in moonlight, a glade where human pride has not yet hatched, and I would whisper in your ear the song of the beloved. Then maybe you too would understand that love does not know what the world calls "being loved".
I love you because you love me: this is an exchange, but it is not love. I love you because I love you, and nothing more; I love you only because I love you; this is where love begins. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for loving you: this is the song of love. The man in love doesn't say: I love you because you're ugly; nor: I love you because you are good. The man in love says: I love you even though you're blind, even though you're pretty and I'd love you even if you were blonde or ugly.
Poetry, some say, has forged love. Poetry made songs, statues, verses out of the simple and natural feeling that used to be love, it made fools out of people who, by the way, were a bit on the verge of madness, it made gourmands out of people who were hungry until then. I say that there is no poet, musician, painter or sculptor greater than a lover. In order for the artist to understand the great poetry of suffering, he must first have been in love. Poets did not make love, but love made poets! And I, who happily read in the stars and take pleasure in laying down letters next to letters on paper, I can swear that in our humble letters all the secrets of love of the starry sky are written.
He who understands the life of the stars also understands human love! Love does not know the words faithful and unfaithful. You love another, I'll say I don't love you: this is not a love song. The man in love never says: you cheated on me. Love doesn't ask you to account for the kisses you gave that you didn't give to others. Love does not search your past and does not search your present. The future is her hope: the future is her selfishness. The hopeless hope, the uncomforted comfort are her balm, which is as sweet as suffering, as love.
You love, you suffer, you live: here is the triad of love. Kisses quench your thirst, but tears awaken great, exhausting and dear longings in your soul, which you cannot quench even with kisses. Tears dripped from the eyes, the eternal source of love; from love dripped song, poetry, beauty, the eternal source of tears.
A bead of tear, trembling timidly on the lover's eyelid, is a greater and more precious treasure than the kisses and hugs of all the women in the world... Oh, vanitas, vanitatum vanitas! says the prophet. All the sufferings are in vain... And yet, for these vain nothings, for these impenetrable desertions, I would be able to give everything I have most precious in the world, I would even be able to give my life...
I don't know if what I'm doing is good or bad, but I feel that, of all the deserts in the world, I have chosen the most beautiful one, which is the most beautiful because it is the most vain of all."
