Not so long ago somebody wrote a poem for me. I was quite impressed, and thought about writing one in Old English. Alas, that might be beyond my abilities.
Meanwhile, I remembered reading so much lately about Chat GPT. While it can be used for malicious purposes (vb-thrac, trp-cmal, bc-10dngrs), there are also numerous exciting positive uses (bc-10clst).
Now, I’d be lying if I didn’t first acknowledge the issues, namely that for a while it was inaccessible, at least according to the Cloudflare error message I got.
More precisely, a “timeout” error message seemed to indicate that the server was unavailable.
I then attempted to get nothing less than a “2-page optimistic passionate rhyming Old English love letter” because it’s “unethical / unlawful”, which obviously it is not (unless we use Sharia ethics).
Rephrasing was still unsuccessful.
Alas, I eventually managed, but decided to encrypt the results as well as the original poem.
The above is certainly a “good start”, but where can one find examples of love letters? Luckily, we have a few published resources. There are also quite a few books comprised of letters too long or too numerous to be included here, such as Dangerous Liaisons, Love in the Time of Cholera and Paula. We can still find a few articles on the web with simple examples.
In 2017, Dani Spencer (el-11ll) starts with Jane Austen’s Persuasion.
I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in
F. W.
This was of course Frederick Wentworth to Anne Elliot.
Then, Nabokov’s letter to his wife Vera (lh-l2v).
My tenderness, my happiness, what words can I write for you? How strange that although my life’s work is moving a pen over paper, I don’t know how to tell you how I love, how I desire you. Such agitation — and such divine peace: melting clouds immersed in sunshine — mounds of happiness. And I am floating with you, in you, aflame and melting — and a whole life with you is like the movement of clouds, their airy, quiet falls, their lightness and smoothness, and the heavenly variety of outline and tint — my inexplicable love. I cannot express these cirrus-cumulus sensations.
Nabokov is also known for his slightly pedophilic Lolita.
Then there’s Katherine’s words from The English Patient.
My darling, I'm waiting for you — how long is a day in the dark, or a week? The fire is gone now, and I'm horribly cold. I really ought to drag myself outside but then there would be the sun. . . I'm afraid I waste the light on the paintings and on writing these words. We die, we die rich with lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have entered and swum up like rivers, fears we have hidden in, like this wretched cave. We are the real countries, not the boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men. I know you will come and carry me out into the palace of winds. That's all I've wanted — to walk in such a place with you, with friends, on earth without maps...
This movie and book can also be found on Amazon (w).
Vita SW had an affair with Virginia Woolf and sent her many letters (pr-slcn), such as
Milan [posted in Trieste]
Thursday, January 21, 1926I 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 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 …
Please forgive me for writing such a miserable letter.
V.
This is the stuff that inspired Orlando, while Woolf herself is the subject of numerous controversies.
The plot of Atonement is complicated and the letter is not great in the absence of its context.
…I know I sound bitter, but my darling, I don’t want to be. I’m honestly happy with my new life and my new friends. I feel I can breathe now. Most of all, I have you to live for. Realistically, there had to be a choice — you or them. How could it be both? I’ve never had a moment’s doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one, my reason for life. Cee
Without having read McEwan’s book, was that really that “devastating”?
Levin and Kitty’s “correspondence” from Anna Karenina is short and sweet:
Levin jots down: “W, y, a: i, c, n, b; d,y, t, o, n?”
Kitty responds: “T, I, c, n, a, o.”
It’s Tolstoy(evsky?)’s puzzle (the first letter of every word); “everything had been said in that conversation. She had said that she loved him.”
Henry Miller’s letter to Anaïs Nin (from the Literate Passion collection) makes the cut.
I say this is a wild dream — but it is this dream I want to realize. Life and literature combined, love the dynamo, you with your chameleon’s soul giving me a thousand loves, being anchored always in no matter what storm, home wherever we are. In the mornings, continuing where we left off. Resurrection after resurrection. You asserting yourself, getting the rich varied life you desire; and the more you assert yourself the more you want me, need me. Your voice getting hoarser, deeper, your eyes blacker, your blood thicker, your body fuller. A voluptuous servility and tyrannical necessity. More cruel now than before — consciously, wilfully cruel. The insatiable delight of experience.
HVM
Interestingly, they spent far less time together than they spent writing to each other (i.e., Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin).
Here’s an example of uninhibited (NSFW) writing - from Selected Letters.
My sweet little whorish Nora I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter. I am delighted to see that you do like being fucked arseways. Yes, now I can remember that night when I fucked you for so long backwards. It was the dirtiest fucking I ever gave you, darling. My prick was stuck in you for hours, fucking in and out under your upturned rump. I felt your fat sweaty buttocks under my belly and saw your flushed face and mad eyes. At every fuck I gave you your shameless tongue came bursting out through your lips and if a gave you a bigger stronger fuck than usual, fat dirty farts came spluttering out of your backside. You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.
This was JJ. It turns out single women can smell married men (sa-smell). Just putting this out there.
Luckily, there’s also a compendium of letters on “In Good Taste” (igt-fll).
They start with the Song of Songs from the Bible (bst-sos):
Behold, you are beautiful, my love;
behold, you are beautiful;
your eyes are doves.
Not a bad quote, but Once Upon A Time in America (1984: Andrea, Santi Abad) is more fun + longer, and so are other readings on Youtube (Integrity Music, BibleProject, ESV Bible Audio Video).
Hindu culture has far less inhibited expressions of love and sexuality; a tamer one is the letter from Rukimini to Krishna in Bhagavata Purana.
Oh Most Beautiful One of all the Worlds, I heard about Your qualities. For all who listen and whom You have entered through the openings of their ears, You thus remove the distress of their bodies. To those who have eyes, the sight of Your beauty constitutes the complete fulfillment of their life’s purpose. Therefore I have without any shame devoted my mind to You Acyuta!
I can’t help feeling that a lot is lost in translation.
12th century Héloïse wrote to Pierre Abelard, who had fathered her son.
But if I lose you, what is left to hope for? What reason for continuing on the pilgrimage of life, for which I have no support but you and none in you except the knowledge that you are alive, now that I am forbidden all other pleasures in you and denied even the joy of your presence which from time to time could restore me to myself?
Their love was doomed after her father paid a gang to have him castrated.
A translation with better chances of being accurate dates back to 1790s.
A few days ago I thought I loved you; but since I last saw you I feel I love you a thousand times more. All the time I have known you, I adore you more each day; that just shows how wrong was La Bruyére’s maxim that love comes all at once. Everything in nature has its own life and different stages of growth. I beg you, let me see some of your faults: be less beautiful, less graceful, less kind, less good…
We have a meme-like image and even advice for this Napoleon’s letter to Josephine.
It’s still unclear who’s the Immortal Beloved, but Beethoven letter is dated 1812.
Even in bed my ideas yearn towards you, my Immortal Beloved, here and there joyfully, then again sadly, awaiting from Fate, whether it will listen to us. I can only live, either altogether with you or not at all.
What longing in tears for you — You — my Life — my All — farewell. Oh, go on loving me — never doubt the faithfullest heart
Of your beloved
L
Ever thine.
Ever mine.
Ever ours.
Unsent, published posthumously.
John Keats (poet) wrote to Fanny Brawne in 1819 (ind-10bst).
My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you - I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again - my Life seems to stop there - I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving - I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you.
Is it me, or it doesn’t quite rhyme? Still, a romantic.
Emily Dickinson wrote to Susan Huntington on June 11, 1852.
When I look around me and find myself alone, I sigh for you again; little sigh, and vain sigh, which will not bring you home.
I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider… every day you stay away — I miss my biggest heart; my own goes wandering round, and calls for Susie… Susie, forgive me Darling, for every word I say — my heart is full of you… yet when I seek to say to you something not for the world, words fail me… I shall grow more and more impatient until that dear day comes, for til now, I have only mourned for you; now I begin to hope for you.
A 1998 infrared technology study revealed that much of Dickinson’s work had been deliberately censored to exclude the name "Susan". At least 11 of her poems had that obliterated dedication.
In the 19th century we have Charles Darwin’s to his first cousin, soon to be his wife, Emma Wedgwood.
How I do hope you shall be happy as I know I shall be. My own dearest Emma, I earnestly pray, you may never regret the great and I will add very good, deed you are to perform on the Tuesday: my own dear future wife, God bless you...
Darwin thought that the pros for marriage were “constant companion” and “better than a dog anyhow” while the reasons for celibate included “conversation with clever men at clubs.”
Oscar Wilde’s letter(s) to Lord Alfred Douglas dates back to 1890s.
My Own Boy,
Your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red rose-leaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing. Your slim gilt soul walks between passion and poetry. I know Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly, was you in Greek days.
It’s worth noting that Wilde had many lovers, many underaged even by today’s standards, he probably didn’t write them such letters and this relationship resulted in his downfall.
An 18th century president, John Adams debated public policy in his letters to his wife Abigail, but there was also space for the following.
Dear Miss Saucy, I hereby order you to give me as many kisses and as many hours of your company as I shall please to demand, and charge them to my account.
The US presidents of the 20th century had tried their luck with love letter writing (cnnmf-bhgll).
Here’s Woodrow Wilson trying to woo Edith Bolling Galt.
You are more wonderful and lovely in my eyes than you ever were before; and my pride and joy and gratitude that you should love me with such a perfect love are beyond all expression, except in some great poem which I cannot write. (..) Please go to ride with us this evening, precious little girl, so that I can whisper something in your ear -- something of my happiness and love, and accept this, in the meantime, as a piece out of my very heart, which is all yours but cannot be sent as I wish to send it by letter.
He’d sometimes sign “Tiger”.
Harry Truman wrote to Bess Wallace
I suppose that I am too crazy about you anyway. Every time I see you I get more so if it is possible. I know I haven't any right to but there are certain things that can't be helped and that is one of them. I wouldn't help it if I could you know.
(before their marriage)
Ronald Reagan wrote to Nancy after 31 years of marriage.
I more than love you, I'm not whole without you. You are life itself to me. When you are gone I'm waiting for you to return so I can start living again.
See their book, I love you, Ronnie.
Gerald Ford wrote to wife Betty in 1974.
No written words can adequately express our deep, deep love. We know how great you are and we, the children and Dad, will try to be as strong as you. Our Faith in you and God will sustain us. Our total love for you is everlasting.
Sounds like the law of the land or something.
Zelda Fitzgerald’s letter to F. Scott is among many others written 1920s to 1930s.
Darling– I love these velvet nights. I’ve never been able to decide whether the night was a bitter enemie or a “grand patron” –or whether I love you most in the eternal classic half-lights where it blends with day or in the full religious fan-fare of mid-night or perhaps in the lux of noon. Anyway, I love you most and you ‘phoned me just because you phoned me tonight– I walked on those telephone wires for two hours after holding your love like a parasol to balance me. My dear–
A family affair..
Churchill wrote to his wife Clementine in 1935.
In your letter from Madras you wrote some words very dear to me, about my having enriched your life. I cannot tell you what pleasure this gave me, because I always feel so overwhelmingly in your debt, if there can be accounts in love.... What it has been to me to live all these years in your heart and companionship no phrases can convey.
I suppose historians are better at chronicling.
The 1940s have Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera.
Diego.
Truth is, so great, that I wouldn’t like to speak, or sleep, or listen, or love. To feel myself trapped, with no fear of blood, outside time and magic, within your own fear, and your great anguish, and within the very beating of your heart. All this madness, if I asked it of you, I know, in your silence, there would be only confusion. I ask you for violence, in the nonsense, and you, you give me grace, your light and your warmth. I’d like to paint you, but there are no colors, because there are so many, in my confusion, the tangible form of my great love.
F.
Who said plastic artists can’t use words?
Ernest Hemingway wrote to Marlene Dietrich in 1951.
I can’t say how every time I ever put my arms around you I felt that I was home. Nor too many things. But we were always cheerful and jokers together.
He’s known for being manly and she wasn’t exactly girly.
In 1952, scientists wrote a program to test Manchester University’s Mark One computer with love verses, such as
MY LUST TEMPTS YOUR FOND ARDOUR. MY LIKING ARDENTLY CARES FOR YOUR HUNGER.
(all from a database, no AI back then)
In 1964 Richard Burton was writing to Elizabeth Taylor.
My blind eyes are desperately waiting for the sight of you. You don’t realise of course, E.B., how fascinatingly beautiful you have always been, and how strangely you have acquired an added and special and dangerous loveliness.Z
They’re what’s called Hollywood royalty.
1989 was a tumultuous year and so is Patti Smith’s letter to Robert Mapplethorpe.
Dear Robert,
Often as I lie awake I wonder if you are also lying awake…You drew me from the darkest period of my young life, sharing with me the sacred mystery of what it is to be an artist. I learned to see through you and never compose a line or draw a curve that does not come from the knowledge I derived in our precious time together…The other afternoon, when you fell asleep on my shoulder, I drifted off, too. But before I did, it occurred to me looking around at all of your things and your work and going through years of work in my mind, that of all your work, you are still your most beautiful. The most beautiful work of all.
Patti
This letter was written after the recipient’s (untimely) passing.
1994 brings another husband to wife letter, more precisely, Johnny Cash’s to June Carter Cash.
Happy Birthday Princess,
We get old and get use to each other. We think alike.
We read each other’s minds. We know what the other wants without asking. Sometimes we irritate each other a little bit. Maybe sometimes take each other for granted.
But once in awhile, like today, I meditate on it and realize how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met. You still fascinate and inspire me.
You influence me for the better. You’re the object of my desire, the #1 Earthly reason for my existence. I love you very much.Happy Birthday Princess.
John
Quite straightforward, methinks.
There’s even a “form letter” (alw-olf1ll)
Beloved,
From the very first time my eyes rested on you, I knew that you are the woman who would fill the void that has long been existing in my heart. No one has captured my attention this way. My heart seems to be afflicted with a malady, the only cure of which is in you.
Whatever I do, wherever I am, my thoughts always stray back to you. My heart skips a beat every time I remember your face while my feet long to hurriedly carry me back to you. There is nothing I would want more at this very minute than to be with you.
I never thought I’ll say this to any woman but yes, I will pluck the stars from the heavens to lay at your feet. I will tirelessly travel through time and space if that is what it would take to have your love for all eternity. I will brave the storms and all obstacles to experience the calm of being in your arms.
I sincerely believe that you were made for me and no one else. I’d challenge to a duel to death, any man who would attempt to lay claim to your love. In the event that I die, it will still be you who I will love in my next life.
You are the very reason that I breathe and if I lost you, my life wouldn’t have any meaning left in it. I would be like a human being floating about without any purpose. You are my north star that gives me direction to where I will come back over and over again wherever life takes me.
Be patient my love for I will be back soon. If I had the power to expedite the time to make our waiting shorter, you know I’ll do that in a flash. Know that I am counting every fraction of a second until I can gaze at your lovely face and hold you to never let go.
I love you … do not ever doubt. If you open up my heart right now, you’ll see your name inscribed in it. Be comforted …we will be together soon.
With all my love,
The author seems to expect and encourage others to copy it and use it.
And if that’s not enough, HuffPo has a collection of “seriously funny” letters (hp-1918ll), while TemplateLab has, you guessed it, templates (tl-45ll) which are meant to be serious, but I do find them unintentionally funny.
- For him: To my one and only (i, w), My dear (i, w), Dear _, (i, w), My dear (yellow, w), Dear Bob (i, w), My one Love (i, w), My Dearest Jack (i, w), Dear _ (i, w), Dearest Dipanshu (i, w), My dearest _ (i, w), Dear Prema (i, w)
- For her: Hello _, (w), Dearest love (w), Dear _ (w), My Love Shiny (w), Most Beloved (w), My Love (w), To someone special (w), My darling (w), Dear Zeenet (w), Eternal Love (w), My Man (w),
- I <3 U: To my one and only (w), Dear _ (w), Dearest One (w), Diego (w), Dearest Sara (w), My Dear (w), To my Love (w), Dear Meenakshi (w), My love (w), My Love (w), Dear (Insert name) (w)
- Romantic: My Sweet Lover (w), My dearest Amanda (w), My Sweet Darling (w), Dear Name (w), Dearest (w), Dear Bob (w), Dear Petey (w), My lover (w), Baby (w), Dear you Darling (w), My Clementine (w), Love of My Life (w)
This latest batch may very well end with “and please come again”, and some letters are plagiarized without credits (e.g., Diego, also shown above).
Hopefully, you now have enough inspiration to write your own.
Sources / More info: vb-thrac, trp-cmal, bc-10dngrs, bc-10clst, el-11ll, igt-fll, hp-1918ll, tl-45ll, alw-olf1ll, sa-smell, lh-l2v, pr-slcn, bst-sos, cnnmf-bhgll, ind-10bst, tm-kahlo,
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