An Immortal Love Letter

"Clara Viebig" is a brilliant German novelist. In her youth this woman of letters loved a young man who did not understand the meanings of her lofty spirit; his love for her was, more or less, a sharp craving of the body. And when she could not find in him — he whom she loved — this loftiness of spirit, she wrote him this splendid letter, in which the personality of the chaste girl, jealous of her dignity and her honor, shone forth. This utter chastity moved the young man; he came to esteem her character and to believe in her, until at last he married her...

I have loved you with a love beyond human imagining; I have loved you with all the purity of my soul, all the innocence of my heart, all the freshness of my spirit, and with all the dreams of nobility, dignity, pride, and loftiness with which the imaginations of maidens teem at their first acquaintance with feeling and their first acquaintance with life!

I did not look upon you as a human being; I looked upon you as a demigod.

And so I adored in you an ideal that I never ceased to seek — rising above myself, freeing myself from certain base instincts within me, and desiring to possess a kind of spiritual loftiness by which I might show other girls the way. Do you take me for one of those who ask nothing of life but money, and seek nothing beyond pleasure and enjoyment?

For this reason I withheld myself from you, and set a distance between your material desires and me, and would not grant you a single kiss that might disfigure our relation in my eyes and make of us two lovers like the rest of mankind.

Yes, I wanted to raise our love above every bodily suspicion, every material aim, every animal pleasure, however small, and however innocent and naive and trifling others might consider it.

I wanted to keep myself, until after our marriage, clear of every stain, pure of every defilement, worthy of your respect, your esteem, and your love.

My limbs tremble at the mere recollection of what happened yesterday! You forced your way into my house without asking my leave, then confronted me with your base, abominable desire, and said to me, your wandering eyes glittering: If you truly love me, then give me the proof!

Yes, you demolished my hope in you, and set me between two courses with no third: either to grant you myself, a maiden, as proof of my love for you, or to hold fast to my dignity, my honor, and my ideal — and lose you forever.

And when I wept and pleaded, and implored you to wait until we should marry, your fury rose and you said that your father, the rich old man, refuses to marry you to a poor girl like me; that it is not in your power to remain chaste in your relation to me, and to be patient until God takes your father to Himself, so that you become free and marry me!

That is what you said; that is what I heard from you, word for word; and my anger blazed and I was beside myself, and I could do nothing but drive you out, crying aloud and weeping.

You went away resentful of me, spite and hatred gnawing at your breast, as though you had never known me — and as though I had never been, in your eyes, in your senses, and to your body, more than a female you desired, whom you coveted possessing for a moment and then casting aside.

And yet I forgave you, and believed that this reckless, foolish behavior was a passing whim of yours; but you came back to me this morning madder than you had been, pressing your demand, seeking the same proof... The proof?!

The proof of love! That is all that occupies your imagination, excites your nerves, and kindles in you the instincts of cruelty, of thirst, of defiance. But why do you seek the proof in the body and not seek it in the spirit? Why do you seek it in shame and not seek it in honor? Why do you seek it in my humiliation, and not seek it in helping me to keep my dignity?

I have bidden farewell to life for your sake; I have renounced gaiety and youth to please you; I have made of my house a convent in which I have cloistered myself, for fear that some man might come near me and jealousy stir in your heart.

You ask a material proof of my love for you, and I am ready to give it to you — but after marriage, and on condition that you give me, from this moment, by your patience, your fidelity, and your chastity, an ideal proof of feeling that you love me for myself and not for my body, for my spirit and not for this mean vessel of flesh that must one day go to feed the dust! And know that I am a poor, humble girl who owns nothing of this world's goods but her chastity; and if the man she loves and trusts will not guard that chastity, who then can guard it?!

Do not kill your love! Ask of love no proof but fidelity in the shadow of honor; otherwise you yourself will come to loathe this love, and you will loathe the woman who yielded to you in trifling with it — you will turn away from her and cast her off, and never think of making her your wife!