Love Letters: "I was born to be yours" (Sarah Bernhardt)

     Thanks to modern technology we have begun to loose the art of writing love letters. Nevertheless, Marlow & Co. published an anthology of passionate letters, conceived and compiled by Michelle Lovrie, in 1994. Some exerpts of these passionate letters follow:

        "Carry me off into the blue skies of tender loves, roll me in dark clouds, trample me with your thunderstorms, break me in your angry rages. But love me, my adored lover." Sarah Bernhardt, French actress, to Jean Richepin, French writer, in 1883.

       "A something in your eyes, and voice, you possess in a degree more persuasive than any woman I ever saw, read, or heard of...that bewitching sort of nameless excellence." Laurence Stern, Irish writer, author of Tristam Shandy, to Eliza Draper, March 1767.

     "I will whisper something into the ear of your heart..."  Ellen Louisa Tucker to Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist and poet and her future husband, December 1828.

     "I have told my passion, my eyes have spoke it, my tongue pronounced it, and my pen declared it;...now my heart is full of you, my head raves of you, and my hand writes to you." George Farquhar, English writer of comedies, to Anne Oldfield, an actress, around 1700.

     "You are my largesse, my intoxicating superfluity!" Richard Wagner, German composer, to Judith Gautier, novelist, September, 1876.

     "I kiss you firmly a hundred times, embrace you tenderly and am sketching in my imagination various pictures in which you and I figure, and nobody and nothing else." Anton Chekhov, Russian writer, to Olga, his wife, August 21st, 1901.

     "I tremble for what we are doing. Are you sure you shall love me forever? Shall we never repent? I fear and I hope."  Lady Mary Pierrepoint to Edward Wortley Montagu, her future husband, on the eve of their elopement, August 15th, 1712.

      "I have now taken of the kernel of your life and planted it in mine." Margaret Fuller, American writer and critic, to James Nathan, April 19th, 1845.

      "...I kisse your letter. I am sure the poore paper smarts for my Idolatry, which by wearing it continually neere my brest will at last bee burnt and martyrd in those flames of adoration it hath kindled in mee." John Dryden, English poet, critic and dramatist, to Honor Dryden, his cousin, May 1653 or 1655.

      "You have lifted my very soul up into the light of your soul, and I am not ever likely to mistake it for the common daylight." Elizabeth Barrett, English poet, to Robert Browning, her future husband and fellow poet, August 17th, 1846.

      "I have made it my honour and my religion to love you desperately." Marianna Alcoforado, a Portuguese nun, to Noël Bouton de Chamilly, Count of St. Leger (later Marquis of Chamilly), 1668.

        "Only three things are infinite: the sky in its stars, the sea in its drops of water, and the heart in its tears."

Gustave Flaubert, French writer, to Louise Colet, August 9th, 1846.

      "When one sins against love, one woulds oneself," Susette Gontard to Friedrich Hölderlin, German poet, in 1798. She was the wife of a banker, he, the tutor of her children, and after three years of a passionate love affair, they parted. When he heard of her death in 1802, he went insane.