I have finished reading “A Letter from an Unknown Woman” this afternoon. I have heard of this book long ago, and knew its main idea. But to read its original is quite another thing. This is a world-renowned book, it is said that this book begot probing into the emotional pattern of “I love you, and it has nothing to do with you.”
The main story is as follows, a strange woman wrote a letter to her beloved—a writer, at the end of her life, pouring her innermost feelings towards to him. The letter has revealed how this woman loved him from beginning to last, and the various hardships she had endured just because this kind of passionate love. When she was only thirteen years old, she began to admire the writer, and she didn’t know that’s love at that time. She adored him very much, adored his learning and wisdom, his politeness and neatness. She even kissed the doorknob just because the man had ever touched, she picked up the cigarette which the man littered and held it as it were a sacred thing. Incredible! She would wait for his coming back everyday, but stealthily, afraid to let others know. And later her mother married a wealthy man, and they moved away. The little girl alienated herself from the people around her, although her stepfather is very mild and kind to her. Later she can’t inhibit her yearning for the man, so she moved back.
She waited outside the man’s window, and the man finally gave his attention to her, because she’s very beautiful, not because he recognized that she was the girl living in the opposite door. They spent three nights together, and the woman devoted her everything to him, without little hesitation. Then the man said that he would be away for two months, and would contact her as soon as he was back. But when he was back, he never wrote a line to the woman, he had totally forgotten her.
In fact, the woman had the man’s baby already, but she never told him that, because she knew his nature, he didn’t want to assume any responsibility, he’d like to be carefree. In order to provide the son with good education, she sold herself, she became a prostitute because life was too hard for her. Then she and the man met again in a amusement place. The man invited her to his house again, this time he considered her as a street walker, and gave money to her when she left. This is great humiliation for her because she had been loving this man the whole life. She refrained from sorrow and continued to give the man many hints, in the hope of being recognized by him, but no, the man could never recall her. She was finally involved in despair, but she never complained, she stilled loved him. The follows lines were quoted from the book:
“I want you to understand how it was that from the very beginning your personality came to exercise so much power over me when I was still a shy and timid child. Before I had actually seen you, there was a halo round your head. You were enveloped in an atmosphere of wealth, marvel, and mystery.”
“How strange it was that in the first moment I should have plainly realized that which I and all others are continually surprised at in you. I realized that you are two people rolled into one: that you are an ardent, light-hearted youth, devoted to sport and adventure; and at the same time, in your art, a deeply read and highly cultured man, grave, and with a keen sense of responsibility. Unconsciously I perceived that what everyone who knew you came to perceive, that you led two lives. One of these was known to all, it was the life open to the whole world; the other was turned away from the world, and was fully known only to yourself. I, a girl of thirteen, coming under the spell of your attraction, grasped this secret of your existence, this profound cleavage of your two lives, at the first glance.
“I have loved you ever since. I know full well you are used to hearing women say that they love you. But I am sure no one else has ever loved you so slavishly, with such doglike fidelity, with such devotion, as I did and do. Nothing can equal the unnoticed love of a child. It is hopeless and subservient; it is patient and passionate.”
“None but lonely children can cherish such a passion. The others will squander their feelings in companionship, will dissipate them in confidential talks. They have heard and read much of love, and they know that it comes to all. They play with it like a toy; they flaunt it as a boy flaunts his first cigarette. But I had no confidant; I had been neither taught nor warned; I was inexperienced and unsuspecting. I rushed to meet my fate. Everything that stirred in me, all that happened to me, seemed to be centered upon you, upon the imaginings of you.”
“There is nothing more terrible that to be alone among human beings.”
“Mourning was my joy; I renounced society and every pleasure, and intoxicated with delight at the mortifications I thus superadded to the lack of seeing you. Moreover, I would let nothing divert me from my passionate longing to live only for you. Sitting alone at home, hour after hour and day after day, I did nothing but think of you, turning over in my mind unceasingly my hundred petty memories of you, renewing every movement and every time of waiting, rehearsing these episodes in the theatre of my mind. The countless repetitions of the years of my childhood from the day in which you came into my life have so branded the details on my memory, that I can recall every minute of those long-passed years as if they had been but yesterday.”
“The town, which had seemed so alien, so dreary, grew suddenly alive for me. I myself lived once more, now that I was near you, you who were my unending dream.”
“I understand now (You have taught me) that a girl’s or a woman’s face must be for a man something extraordinary mutable. It is usually nothing more that the reflex ion of moods which pass as readily as an image vanishes from a mirror. A man can readily forget a woman’s face, because she modifies its lights and shades, and because at different times the dress gives it so different a setting.”
You glance that evening, showing me as it did that on your side there was not even a gossamer thread connecting your life with mine, meant for me a first plunge into reality, conveyed to me the first intimation of my destiny.”
“But I do not accuse you; only God, only God who is the author of such purposeless affliction. Never have I cherished an angry thought of you. Not even in the utmost agony of giving birth did I feel any resentment against you. Never did I repent the nights when I enjoyed your love; never did I cease to love you, or to bless the hour when you came into my life.”
“Everyone has been eager to spoil me, everyone has loaded me with kindness. But you, only you, forgot me. You, only you, never recognized me.”
“But what can you be to me—you who have never recognized me; you who stepped across me as you might step across a stream; you who trod on me as you might tread on a stone; you who went on your way unheeding, while you left me to wait for all eternity.”
“Nothing will be changed in your bright and lovely life. Beloved, my death will not harm you. This comforts me.”
