"Rosalind Sigurd" is a brilliant Swedish novelist — but she was blind...
A dreadful affliction made her live in a darkness of despair... but a great love arose in her life and lit her life with the radiance of joy.
Who would have believed that the blind woman would be granted the love of a devoted young man?!
But it is love — the great human love that oversteps the laws of convention and custom..
And here is "Rosalind," the woman in love, in this letter to her beloved, describing her tormented self and the happiness of love that floods her.
Who told me that you love me?!
Your eyes? But I am unable to see in them the flame of love and its light!!
Yet I am certain that you love me, and I feel in your love a tenderness, an affection, a faithfulness, and a devotion that make me feel I am the happiest woman in the world.
Who would believe that a woman like me could be happy...? Can a blind girl, who sees neither the light nor people nor life, be loved by the sons of light and life!
I am dark; I live in a pitch-black gloom — and you love me in my darkness, my gloom, my blackness. What man are you, then? And of what metal of men are you? I am blind and disfigured, and you never cease telling me that I, in my darkness, am more bewitching and more wonderful than the most beautiful woman who carries beneath her radiant brow the most marvelous of eyes!!
Am I truly beautiful, as you say — or do you say this out of mercy and pity?? And woe to me from your mercy and your pity, if your words be mercy and pity! Yet I feel that you are sincere, and
within me a deep voice calls to me: you are beautiful and bewitching, and worthy of life and of love.
What makes me trust your words with such trust? No sooner do I once doubt you than this confidence returns to me, calling: do not despair; believe him; you are beautiful, wonderful; he loves you for your beauty.
If only I could see myself in the mirror and make certain of my beauty... But I am alone in my darkness, alone before the perplexity of my soul...
No — I am not alone, and I am not in darkness! She whose heart lives in the light lives wholly in the light. She who lives in the happiness of love is not alone on the roads of life..
How wonderful it is, the way I feel your love within me, in all my body! And you — who are you? What are you like, my beloved? And what can your precious frame be like, my treasure? What, I wonder, is the color of your face? The color of burnt gold — or is it the color of roses in the gardens?
What secret lives in your eyes? How do you laugh? How do you look? How do you weep... do you weep? How do you laugh?
I would love to open my eyes, for one single moment, to see you — and then die... But I shall never see you, to all eternity...
And yet you live in every drop of my blood... You are in my body, my thought, and my imagination... and you are in my sight like waves of light, pouring over my eyes, drawing them toward the light.
I am not blind...
I am not blind...
I see with your eyes; my soul dawns with the light of your love, and my spirit shines with your paradises... How can I say I see nothing, when you are before me and I feel every line of your body? And how can I say I am blind, when you love me?! And how can I envy people the light, when you flood me with light?!
You are everything to me, my beloved. You are the great miracle that healed the blind girl to carry her to the worlds of light. I kiss the ground beneath your feet, my beloved, and I weep for my happiness... I weep for my joy... I weep because I have been healed of my blindness... and I shall never be blind again. Take me in your arms... and look at me... gaze into my eyes.
O light of my eyes...
The young man married the blind novelist a week after receiving this letter.
"Madame de Genlis" was famed for her chastity and her aloofness from men. It is told of her that she punished her librarian because he had placed books written by men and others written by women together on a single shelf..