2

Abstract While the letters between Heloise and Abelard, written after the latter’s publication of the Historia

Calamitatum, enjoy a certain amount of notoriety, the following collection of love letters, purportedly

written during their affair, are less well-known. Much like its more famous counterpart, the

authorship of this lengthier exchange is the subject of heated debate. To analyze the correspondence

simply in terms of its authenticity or origin is, to a great extent, to ignore the text of the letters

themselves. This translation focuses on the letters as a literary text, paying careful attention to the

semantic differences that the authors create between different types of love. The accompanying

essay explores the traditions of translation theory that allow for the development of such a

translation methodology. A strict adherence to the rules of Latin grammar produces an awkward text

that is bereft of the elegance contained in the original; to stray too far from the original, however, is

to betray the essence of the letters. A careful balance must be achieved, translating not only words,

but also the ideas and feelings connoted by those words into felicitous English.

3

Preface: An Introductory Note on Some Historical Matters

Whenever the names of Heloise and Abelard are mentioned, a certain exchange of letters

inevitably comes to mind. Following the publication of his Historia Calamitatum, which reminisces on

the couple’s earlier affair in a rather unflattering light, there is a series of letters, purportedly between

Heloise and Abelard, conversing on their affair. Quite naturally, this exchange has sparked quite the

scholarly debate; are the letters attributed to Heloise really hers, or did Abelard write them for her?

For every scholar that holds the former to be true, there is another who asserts that it must be the

latter. Just as tantalizing as the authenticity of this rather brief exchange are references in their

writings to earlier letters; in the Historia Calamitatum, Abelard mentions that through letters the

couple continue their conversations, while Heloise “refers to [the earlier] letters as great in number

at the end of the letter she wrote to Abelard after reading his Historia calamitatum.”1 History,

however, has long remained silent about these letters, presuming them lost.

Return to the France of the fifteenth century. At a monastery in Clairvaux, the monk

Johannes de Vepria copied a collection of love letters from the twelfth century. The authors remain

anonymous in his transcription of the letters; instead, each letter is accompanied by an identifying

mark of either M (for mulier, or woman) or V (for vir, or man). The letters remain in obscurity for

centuries, until Edwald Konsgen edited the collection for his doctoral thesis in 1974. The subtitle of

his edition is Briefe Abaelards und Heloises? and therefore hints at the possibility that the text comprises

the lost letters of the famous lovers.2 In 1999, Constant Mews published an edition of the letters,

complete with an English version of Konsgen’s annotations and Mews’ own analysis of the

authorship of the collection. In his book, Mews performs a comparative analysis of the language

employed in the more famous exchange between Abelard and Heloise and that used by the man and

1 Constant J. Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France (New York: Palgrave, 1999) 5. 2 Ibid, 4-7.

4

woman in the Clairvaux manuscript. Early on he concludes that the “exchange copied by Johannes

de Vepria records a relationship between an eminent teacher and a brilliant student very similar to

that of Abelard and Heloise,”3 while his extended analysis of the letters themselves certainly point to

the fact that he does indeed believe that Heloise and Abelard are the authors of this collection. His

conclusions could undeniably be the source of yet another scholarly debate over the authenticity of

this set of letters similar to the one surrounding the more (in)famous exchange written in response

to the Historia Calamitatum. As Mews himself points out, however, that scholars seem “reluctant” to

engage in such a debate since there is still an “ongoing controversy about the authenticity of the

Abelard-Heloise letters.”4 Why become embroiled in yet another authenticity debate when there is

still one that is unresolved?

Indeed, this is much the attitude with which I have approached the collection of love letters.

It seems that everything that there is to be said about the letters’ authenticity (or lack there of) has

already been said multiple times; why reiterate it again? Surely there is more to the letters than

merely answering the question of who wrote them. To judge by scholarship on and the availability of

the letters, however, there is not. Recent anthologies of the writings of Abelard and Heloise do not

include the letters from the Clairvaux manuscript as they are of indeterminate origin (even though

they do include other writings that many still describe as being of indeterminate origin), and without

a “big name” to which they can be attached, there seems to be little interest in anonymous love

letters. Unlike the writings which were “discovered” earlier and have been translated numerous

times by many different translators (even those of dubious origin, like Heloise’s response to the

Historia Calamitatum), this collection of letters has not enjoyed such attention. Indeed, I have been

able to locate only one translation of the letters into English; Mews, collaborating with his student

Neville Chiavaroli, included a very literal translation of the collection in his book. The translation 3 Ibid, 54. 4 Ibid, 7.

5

often seems to serve as a substitute for those of us who cannot read the original Latin, standing

beside the proffered analysis, showing ways in which the text mirrors the exchange more often

attributed to Heloise and Abelard.

I decided that, rather than joining the long-standing debate of authorship, I would turn my

attention to less considered aspects of this exchange which could be between Heloise and Abelard.

Rather than looking at and translating the letters while trying to prove or disprove the authenticity of

their authorship, I looked at and translated the letters simply as letters. Thus, I focused on reading

the letters as a literary text, on the patterns of imagery and the vocabulary used to construct a

specialized language of love, and ultimately attempted to capture these aspects of the letters in

English. It is not, perhaps, the most conventional way to approach a text that could be attributed to

Heloise and Abelard, but restating the age-old arguments and applying them to a different text was

never my intention. Instead, it is my hope that my translation (and indeed the accompanying

discussion of my translation) offers a different way of looking at this enigmatic collection of

correspondence, that it assists the reader in going beyond the mere question of authorship and

becoming engaged in the text and what it has to say about the nature of love.

6

On Translating the Language of Love

If you cannot do, teach; if you cannot write, translate. All too often, the image of a translator fits into

the “poor cousin half” of this familiar dichotomy, complementing the age-old maxim of what those

who cannot perform on their own can do. All too often, the image is of a silent person, buried in the

words of another’s text, silent, laboring to make someone who is long dead speak. In short, the

translator becomes nothing more than a mouthpiece for someone else’s genius. Such an image

evokes, somehow, the notion that the translator is a second-class citizen, that the translator is

engaged in the simple task of finding the synonyms in her own language for the brilliance of

another. There is no creativity at work, the image argues, it is merely copying. Such a mindset at best

demeans and at worst ignores the work of a translator, making the work and the worker valueless.

In translating Ex Epistolis Duorum Amantium, I have discovered that translation is anything

but easy, menial labor, primarily because of the very reasons which could be used to argue that

translation is not true academic work. To be a translator is to become a mouthpiece for another text,

but it does not necessarily follow that being a voice for another is an easy way out of a real

education, a real scholastic pursuit. To take the words, the letters, the lives of people from a

different time, a different culture, and transplant them into the linguistic context of another is not a

simple task. If the task were simply to entail finding the closest English word for each Latin word in

the text, the undertaking would not be so difficult as it would simply require careful study of a Latin

lexicon. Translation, or at least translation that endeavors to be good translation rather than a

vocabulary gloss, is not, however, simply concerned with a word-for-word rendering of a foreign

text into an equally foreign tongue. No two languages are structured in the same way, and for all of

its lexical and grammatical debt to the language, English is radically different from Latin. The

difficulty, and paradoxically the joy, inherent in translation is finding a way to voice the ideas behind

those foreign words in a way which is not alien to the “new” language of the translated text.

7

How might a translator best go about the enormous task of representing a foreign text in a

language, a framework, that is foreign to the original set of ideas? Knowing that the question is not a

new one, I turned to the strategies of generations of translators, primarily, but not exclusively, those

working at capturing the dead language of Latin in the living syntax of English. Unfortunately,

however, there is not a simple or easy answer to the question; there seem to be almost as many

methodologies for translation as there are translators. For each theory that advocates a highly

faithful transliteration (even if the result is a rather clunky English sentence), there is an answering

voice promoting the notion of capturing the feelings, the meanings, the spirit of the text and

creating similar feelings, meaning, and spirit in a new, translated text.

Take Dryden, for instance. His remarks on translating Latin into English seem a logical place

to begin formulating a methodology for the translation of Latin as his presence in the canon of

translated Latin literature is a towering one. Even Dryden, however, seems unable to produce a

single unifying theory for translation, despite his many efforts in the dedications or prefaces to his

translations. In the preface to his translation of Ovid’s Epistles, he identifies three types of translation:

First [is] that of metaphrase, or turning an author word by word, and line by line,

from one language into another…The second way is that of paraphrase, or

translation with latitude, where the author is kept in view by the translator, so as

never to be lost, but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense…The third

way is that of imitation, where the translator (if now he has not lost that name)

assumes the liberty, not only to vary from the words and sense, but to forsake them

both as he sees occasion; and taking only some general hints from the original, to run

division on the ground work, as he pleases.5

5 John Dryden. Preface to Ovid’s Epistles (1608), in Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida, ed. Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) 17.

8

In his own inimitable style, Dryden pinpoints three fundamentally different methods of translation

methodology, all of which are appealing to some translator at some point in translation history.

While his cataloguing of methodologies is comprehensive, his advocation of a single method, his

ability to point to one as the best, is not as conclusive.

On one point, however, Dryden is quite convincing, and I remain persuaded that his final

analysis of the matter should be considered in my own formulation of a translation methodology.

Regarding his third type of translation, the very free, suggestive / imitative approach, Dryden

acknowledges that there have been quite successful translations stemming from this tradition,

namely Cowley’s translation of Pindar’s Odes. In the main, however, he argues that such an approach

is quite dangerous since the translation can not really be called a translation; rather, it is at best an

imitation, but most often a new creation. Even though something “that is excellent may be invented,

perhaps more excellent than the first design… he who is inquisitive to know an author’s thoughts

will be disappointed in his expectation.”6 Unlike Dryden, I remain unconvinced that such an

approach to translation could ever produce a good translation; a good piece of writing, yes, but

translation, no. By its very nature, translation requires its practitioners to make their minds, their

texts, work in a foreign way, to strive after capturing foreign ideas and words, not to be inspired by

them and make their own new creation. To borrow once more from Dryden, “a translator has no

such right.”7 Something other than a passing similarity in thought or feeling must remain that echoes

the original if a work is to be called a translation rather than an imitation.

So much for what not to do. What does Dryden have to say about what a translator is to do?

It is at this point that one becomes bogged down in the quagmire; apparently it is just as difficult to

articulate how one should translate as it is to engage in the art of translating. First, we as translators

are “to conform our genius to” the original author’s, “to give his thought either the same turn, if our 6 Ibid, 20. 7 Ibid, 21.

9

tongue will bear it, or, if not, to vary but the dress, not to alter or destroy the substance.” Most

importantly, however, we must not destroy the character of the author. If, for instance, “the fancy of

Ovid be luxuriant, ‘tis his character to be so; and if I retrench it, he is no longer Ovid.”8 Later,

however, in his preface to Sylvae: Or, the Second Part of Poetical Miscellanies, we are told that by Dryden

that on occasion he has “taken away some of their [the authors’] expressions, and cut them

shorter…[since] what was beautiful in the Greek or Latin, would not appear so shining in the

English.”9 Taken independently, each of these three statements sounds laudable, even worthy of

imitation in later translations; taken together, however, there are some problems. If it is a translator’s

duty to conform to the original, to capture, for instance, the luxuriance of Ovid (or the language of

medieval lovers) in English rather than exercising our own personal tastes and editing, why, then,

should we later abridge some turn of phrase? Why, if the vast majority of translators should not

engage in a loose, imitative translation / creation, should we be told that Dryden can make

additions, since if the author “were [now] living, and as Englishman, they are such as he would

probably have written”10?

Dryden’s translation conundrums point to the inherent difficulty of translation. The object is

not to create a new text, but neither is it to create a text so awkward that readers of the translation

have to wonder about the mental acumen of both the original author and the translator. To translate

is to walk a tightrope, to perform a careful balancing act, “to keep as near my author…as I could,

without losing all his graces”11; it is this task of simultaneously remaining close to the source without

sounding inept at English composition that is the source of a translator’s troubles, both in

performing the act of and writing about translation. 8 Ibid, 20-21. 9 John Dryden, Preface to Sylvae: Or, the Second Part of Poetical Miscellanies (1685), in Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida, ed. Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) 23. 10 Ibid, 23. 11 John Dryden, Dedication to Aeneis (1697), in Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida, ed. Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) 26.

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Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe points to this difficulty in his definition of the “third epoch

of translation, which is the final and highest…In such periods, the goal of the translation is to

achieve perfect identity with the original, so that the one does not exist instead of the other but in

the other’s place.”12 Such an ideal is rather, well, ideal. To produce a translation that is

indistinguishable in content and form from the original – what more could a translator ask for? The

difficulty is, of course, in producing such a translation, and the difficulty is compounded by the

underlying question of translation methodology – how does one achieve such a translation? Dryden,

I feel, would have answered the question very differently from Goethe. In his dedication to the

Aeneid, Dryden writes of attempting to achieve a version of what, in one sense, one might call a

translation from Goethe’s third epoch, and to do so he “endeavoured to make Virgil speak such

English as he would himself have spoken, if he had been born in England, and in this present age.”13

Such an accomplishment would, in one sense, achieve Goethe’s objective; Dryden’s translation

attempted to achieve “perfect identity” with Vergil by making Vergil speak contemporary English,

making an English text that stands for the Latin one. Goethe, however, would place such a

translation in the second epoch “in which the translator endeavors to transport himself into the

foreign situation but actually only appropriates the foreign ideal and represents it as his own.” For

Goethe, a third epoch translation, an ideal translation, is a “translation that attempts to identity itself

with the original [and] ultimately comes close to an interlinear version and greatly facilitates our

understanding of the original. We are led, yes, compelled as it were, back to the source text.”14 For

Goethe, then, the method of translation which Dryden would call awkward, in need of some genius

of the translator’s to allow the original to shine through into the translation, is the ideal toward

which we should strive.

12 Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Translations, trans. Sharon Sloan, in Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida, ed. Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) 61. 13 John Dryden. Dedication to Aeneis, 26. 14 Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Translations, 60-63.

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Vladimir Nabokov’s theory of translation would certainly come closer to agreeing with

Goethe’s than Dryden’s, but it produces some problems of its own. Replying to a reviewer’s

statement that a translation should be “readable” (Dryden’s attempt to make Vergil speak the

language of 17th century England comes to mind), Nabokov asserts that

A schoolboy’s boner is less of a mockery in regard to the ancient masterpiece than its

commercial interpretation or poetization. “Rhyme” rhymes with “crime,” when

Homer or Hamlet are rhymed. The term “free translation” smacks of knavery and

tyranny. It is when the translator sets out to render the “spirit” – not the textual

sense – that he begins to traduce his author. The clumsiest literal translation is a

thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.15

If one were to ascribe to Nabokov’s methodology, Dryden’s dilemma of just how to make a dead

author speak in a living language would become moot, for to make the dead language live would be

a travesty. While I acknowledge a certain reticence to co-opt the sentiments of a text and assimilate

them into another way of thinking, speaking, writing, Nabokov’s assertion perhaps oversimplifies

the matter. Most translation is not transliteration. Indeed, reading a transliteration is often more than

cumbersome; sometimes, the result is quite incomprehensible. “Love conquers all,” a literal

transliteration of the famous axiom “amor vincit omnia” works quite nicely with English syntax, but

finding a Latin sentence where the subject comes first, followed by a verb and then a direct object is

a rare instance indeed. Relying upon word order as it does, English simply cannot remain strictly

faithful to an inflected language. It would seem an exercise in futility to create a translation that is

simply an interlinear gloss, a translation that does not attempt to convey the artistry, the genius of

the original. To leave a “translated” text in such a state of disarray is, in its own way, as much a

travesty as too free a rendering would be. 15 Vladimir Nabokov, Problems of Translation: “Onegin” in English (1955), in Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida. ed. Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) 127.

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In the wake of Nabokov’s rallying cry for strict adherence to the text, Paul Valéry offers a

reminder why such a mindset does not always work:

The work of translation, done with regard for a certain approximation of form,

causes us in some way to try walking in the tracks left by the author; and not to

fashion one text upon another, but from the latter to work back to the virtual

moment of its formation, to the phase when the mind is in the same state as an

orchestra whose instruments begin to waken…From that vividly imagined state one

must make one’s way down toward its resolution in a work in a different tongue.16

Translation is not just the faithful recitation of words; rather, the words must be resolved into the

syntax of a foreign language. Resolution does not mean, however, that the original intent is to be

forsaken, hidden in the polluted lines of a “readable” rendering; rather, it implies a give and take, an

agreement, a bringing into focus. This bringing into focus enables the readers of a translated text to

do more than understand the words of an otherwise indecipherable language and text; it brings them

closer to the artistic intent of the original and therefore one step closer to deciphering more than the

literal meaning of a foreign turn of phrase.

Such an approach to translation, facing it as an attempt to resolve every aspect of a text into

another language rather than just make the words decipherable, is, as Dryden points out, a creative

act. This notion brings us full circle back to my opening remarks on the implicit assertion that

translation is cheap labor. To return to the words of Valéry once more, we are able to find a

definitive answer to such belittling remarks and, in the process, to reconcile, in part at least, the

diverse and contradictory approaches to translation. Valéry reminds us that writing is an act of

translation on par with “transmuting” a foreign text:

16 Paul Valéry, Variation on the “Ecologues” (1953), trans. Denise Folliot, in Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida. Ed. Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) 120-121.

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Within the range of any one language, used by everybody to meet the conditions of

the moment and of circumstance, our interlocutor, our simple or complex intent, our

leisure or haste, and so on, modify our speech. We have one language for ourselves,

from which all other ways of speaking differ more or less.17

Using language, even one’s own mother tongue, is an act of translation, an act of transcribing feeling

and intent into words, sentences, paragraphs, ideas, intentions, and feelings that others can

understand. Writing something “original,” or from one’s own brain, calls for an intimate form of

translation, a translation of the self into comprehensible syntax. Extend this idea now to the

translation of “unoriginal” texts, that is, the translation of another person’s words into a different

language. The levels of translation at work now become two-fold: one, translating the foreign into a

form that is personally comprehensible, and two, translating the personal understanding into a form

that is communally comprehensible. Such an act suddenly seems not quite so menial; indeed, it leads

to an appreciation for Dryden’s assertion that “the true reason why we have so few [translations]

which are tolerable is…because there are so few who have all the talents which are requisite for

translation, and that there is so little praise and so small encouragement for so considerable a part of

learning.”18 To translate requires not only an understanding of a foreign tongue, it also requires an

understanding of one’s own, an understanding of how to make oneself comprehensible to others.

To be sure, the task of translation is different than the task of composing “original” prose, but it is

no less daunting, no less challenging.

An appreciation for the skill required in translation is not, however, the only implication that

can be gleaned from Valéry’s comment. His assertion that all writing is an act of translation reminds

us how intensely personal translation can be, which draws us back full circle once more to the

contradictory methodologies of translation. If the translation of a foreign text – and here I mean by 17 Ibid, 116-117. 18 John Dryden. Preface to Ovid’s Epistles, 22.

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“translation” more of a creative act rather than a strict, word for word transliteration or trot –

ultimately reduces down to a translation of the self, how can a theory of translation help but be

personal and subjective? Translation, Yves Bonnefoy asserts, “can only inscribe itself – write itself –

in the course of a life; it will draw upon that life in all its aspects, all its actions.”19 This means that, as

a translator, I cannot literally reproduce this collection of love letters verbatim into English; I can

only hope to translate my interpretation, my understanding, my approach to the letters. While I hope

that this interpretation, understanding, and approach is faithful to that of the original, there is no

denying that is filtered through the lens of my perceptions. As such, my translation, both of this text

and others, is different from another translator’s, even if my end goal is the same. Indeed, the end

goal of the methodologies examined above is the same: to reproduce as faithfully as possible to

content of a foreign text in another foreign tongue. It is in the fulfilling of this objective that the

translation of personal understanding occurs, that the task becomes, like any other form of writing, a

creative act, an art.

To borrow and modify an old expression, theorizing about translation is like dancing about

architecture: possible, but perhaps not always the most direct method of communication possible.

More direct is to apply this speculation to an actual translation, to see how it works in fact rather

than simply in theory. What fascinated me the most in translating the following collection of 113

love letters are the varying words and ideas used to convey the notion of love. On a personal,

internal level, I understand the differences and their source of origin. How, though, to translate this

from my own language, understood by myself on an intuitive level, into a language readily

understood by others? Then, too, there is the fact that these letters are heavily influenced by and

infused with classical Latin texts on love. Since the authors of the letters are cognizant of the

19 Yves Bonnefoy, Translating Poetry (1989), trans. John Alexander and Clive Wilmer, in Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida. Ed. Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) 189.

15

relationship between their own and their predecessors’ – especially Cicero, Ovid, and the Vulgate –

use of the language of love, it seems necessary that the translation be aware as well.

The authors of the letters use three different words for love throughout their exchange: amor,

dilectio, and caritas. Each word can technically be translated into English simply as “love”; however,

there are semantic differences between the types of love which each word connotes. Even without

consulting the shades of meaning present in the context of the letters themselves, the perusal of a

Latin lexicon intimates that the three words should not be treated synonymously. The definition of

amor tells us that it is a fond or passionate love, distinct from caritas, which can be translated as

affection, esteem, or love. Dilectio carries yet another shade of meaning: love in the form of choosing

out or prizing a person, the act of cherishing. Moreover, the participial form of the related verb diligo

also carries the connotation of being beloved. A literal definition of all three words is love, but there

is a world of semantic difference between passionately loving someone, esteeming the same person,

or prizing him / her.

How, though, is a translator to preserve these differences in English without becoming

bogged down in excessive verbiage? Consider love verses from the Vulgate and their English

counterparts in the King James Version; the jumble of words translated in English simply as love

illustrates the dilemma nicely. John 3:1620 says that “God so loved (dilexit) the world that he Gave his

only begotten son,” while Romans 8:39 tells us that nothing “shall be able to separate us from the

love (carite) of God.” Muddying the waters even more is the translation of 1 Timothy 3:10: “for the

love (cupiditas) of money is the root of all sin.” Technically, cupiditas does not even mean love in

Latin; it means desire, longing for, or lusting after. The English version, however, uses the exact

same word in each of the verses. There is no shading of meaning, no allowance for different kinds

20All English language references to the Bible are from the 1611 King James Version. All references to the Vulgate are from the electronic copy of the Biblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem found at the Index Librorum Liberorum <www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/Vulgate/Vulgate.html>.

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of love. To be sure, the result is a flowing, beautiful text; somehow, “the longing after money is the

root of all sin” just does not have the ring to it as the looser rendering of cupiditas as love. While such

an approach stands to gain much in fluidity and sound, it is, however, in danger of losing much of

its meaning. After all, the English version does employ precisely the same word to describe the love

of God as it does the love of money.

Tradition and many a generation of Sunday School teachers have managed to preserve the

semantic differences between the types of love that are called “love” in the Bible; a less well-known

text, such as the Ex Epistolis Duorum Amantium, does not enjoy centuries worth of commentary to

make its subtle shades of meaning clear in the vagueness of the love lexicon in English. For better or

for worse, I chose not to adhere to the English tradition of calling everything that can be termed so

“love”; such single-mindedness simply does not allow for the conveying of the original intent.

The other readily apparent option for translation begins with a close examination of the

pattern of meaning associated with the different terms in the letters. Just as their literal definitions

are quite different and not to be confused, the authors of the letters preserve these unmistakable

semantic differences in their employment of the words. In preserving these differences, the letters

construct a dialogue concerning the nature of love, what it is, and how it can be defined. Amor

comes to refer to physical, passionate love, while diligo, especially in the woman’s letters, eventually

stands for something more: a mental love, a love that involves not only physical passion, but also

esteem, cherishing, prizing, and selecting the beloved. Ultimately, one way to interpret (and

eventually translate) this collection of letters lies in what they say about love, how the vocabulary of

love comes to define different types of love. Before this language can be translated, however, a

thorough understanding of what is meant by each love word must be reached. The letters are often

permeated by the language of earlier Latin love literature, and analyzing the letters in connection

17

with their debt to earlier ideas about love facilitates the task of identifying the differences inherent in

the usage of love vocabulary.

The man’s letters in particular are filled with the word amor. Constant Mews counts that the

man refers almost exclusively to amor ( 47 times, in contrast with his ten usages of dilectio)21. The

ubiquitous presence of amor is reminiscent of Ovid – recall his many works on love, featuring the

word amor prominently in the title, not to mention throughout the texts. Thanks to the extensive

annotations that Edwald Konsgen included with his edition of the love letters, it is not at all difficult

to ascertain that the letters are permeated by allusions to the love literature of Ovid. Letter 15,

written by the man, is the first time that imagery is borrowed from Ovid (an image of a clear night

from the Heroides in the letter from Paris to Helen), and the borrowing of imagery continues

throughout the correspondence. Beyond borrowing images for the love letters, however, the

connotations of the language of love employed by Ovid are also present in the use of amor: looking

especially at the Art of Love, Ovidian love is a physically passionate love, not an inner, contemplative

love.22 How, then, is the rhetoric of amor in the man’s letters informed and colored by a somewhat

Ovidian definition of love?

In letter 24, the man attempts, not completely successfully, to define love and to carry his

definition beyond physical passion:

Soles a me querere dulcis anima mea quid amor sit, nec per ignoranciam excusare me

possum…Est igitur amor, vis quedam anime non per se existens nec seipsa contenta,

sed semper cum quodam appetitu et desiderio, se in alterum transfundens, and cum

altero idem effici volens ut de duabus diversis voluntatibus unum quid indifferentur

efficiatur.

21 Constant J. Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France (New York: Palgrave, 2001) 136. 22 Ibid, 92.

18

You are accustomed to ask of me, my sweet spirit, what love is, and I am not able to

excuse myself through ignorance…Therefore, this is love : a certain power in the

spirit existing not through itself nor content in itself, but always with appetite and

longing, transferring itself into another, wanting to be made into the same thing with

the other, so that, out of two different wills, one which has no difference is made.23

Such a definition of amor seems to be attempting to go beyond the strict Ovidian connotations of

physical passion; its focus is on the selflessness of love, the creation of a new entity out of the

merging of two wills in love. The moment is, however, rather anachronistic in his rhetoric as he is

applying the Ciceronian ideal of friendship found in the De Amicitia to the terminology of Ovidian

amor (his rhetoric in letters 15-22, leading up to this departure, is especially permeated by allusions to

Ovid). Indeed, the end of the passage quoted above is simply a quotation on the man’s part from

Cicero’s work. Moreover, his definition is also still based in the rhetoric of passion: to love is to have

an appetite for someone, to long for her.

The rhetoric of the woman is, to be sure, also influenced by the literary legacy of Ovid, but

her discussion begins to offer a true differentiation between amor and other words for love in her

reply to the man’s definition of amor. In her reply in letter 25 to his definition, the woman admits

that she, too has been considering what love is (“Quid sit amor”), but unlike the man, the woman

abandons amor halfway through her reply and instead focuses on dilectio, speaking of the debt of true

love (vere dilectionis debitum). With the shift in terminology, the woman shifts the conversation from

the result of love (the merging of two wills) to the practice of love:

Magno quidem studio tempore inter nos nascentis amicicie me appetere cepisti, sed

maiori desiderio ut augeretur et permaneret dilectio nostra contendisti.

23 All Latin quotations from the letters come from the reprint in Mews’ The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard. All English translations are my own.

19

Indeed with great zeal you began to grasp after me at the time of the inception of the

friendship between us, but with greater desire you struggled so that our love would

grow and become permanent.

This passage is somewhat reminiscent of the statement near the beginning of Ovid’s Artis Amatoriae

I which asserts that the final task in loving is “that love (amor) should endure for a long time.”24 The

woman is not, however, talking about amor; indeed, she shifts rather abruptly at the end of the first

paragraph from talking about amor to discussing dilectio and her lover’s attempt to make their dilectio,

not amor, “last a long time.” Comparing the man’s definition of amor to the woman’s sudden shift to

and discussion of dilectio begins to illustrate the fundamental difference between amor and dilectio in

the vocabulary of the letters: the former is concerned with the result and act of love; the latter cares

more about the conscious practice of love, of choosing to continue to love. The man’s discussion of

amor does not make mention of this difference, and indeed his later letters do not address the matter.

His reply to her discussion of dilectio is to ask for her love (amor, not dilectio) to set itself free in him.

This philosophical exchange on the nature of love not only illustrates a difference between the man

and woman’s approaches to love, it exemplifies the growing difference between the two words in

the exchange. Through the woman’s consistent shifts between the two words (and perhaps even

through the man’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge the difference between the two), dilectio does

indeed connote something different than the physical, passionate love associated with Ovid’s

favorite word, amor. Much as its strict dictionary definition would imply, the woman comes to use

dilectio to refer more to the conscious choice of loving, to the esteeming and prizing of the individual

to be loved, rather than the mere passion of amor.

24 Ovid, The Art of Love, and Other Poems. ed. T.E. Page et al., (London: William Heinemann, 1929) 14. The translation is my own.

20

The difference between the two words becomes more pronounced when more of the

woman’s uses of dilectio and its verb form diligo are more closely examined. This investigation reveals

that dilectio is an integral part of the vocabulary of love in the Vulgate translation of the Bible. When

James says that “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for…he shall receive the crown of

life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him” (1:12), the Vulgate translation speaks of

those who diligent the Lord. Similarly, Ephesians 5:25 commands husbands to love (dilige) their wives,

while Galatians 5:14 exhorts us to love (diliges) our neighbors as ourselves. This, then, is the love, the

dilectio, the woman writes of in her letter 25. It is the love of God for humanity, the love that God

exhorted men to show their wives – not just the love of physical passion. In his analysis of the

letters, Constant Mews notes that the woman’s use of dilectio is not, however, synonymous with the

Vulgate’s; for she “understands [it] not as a synonym for caritas, as common in Christian tradition,

but as a special form of love…she prefers the term dilectio to denote a special form of the general

category of caritas.”25 With her use of dilectio in letter 25, then, the woman sets the word apart from

the other “love” words, makes it special by noting that “licet omnibus integram caritatem

exhibeamus, non tamen omnes equaliter diligimus, et ita quod omnibus est generale quibusdam

efficitur speciale” (although we might exhibit complete love to everyone, nevertheless we do not

cherish everyone equally, and thus that which is generic to everyone is made special for some). This

passage, coming after the sudden shift from amor to dilectio, juxtaposes caritas, a general love to be

shown to everyone, with dilectio, a special love, set aside for a single, beloved person. In addition, the

use of two different love words in a single sentence underscores the notion that to translate them all

simply as “love” would be a disservice to the development of a specialized vocabulary generated in

the letters.

25 Constant Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard, 17-18.

21

While his observations on letter 25 do indeed point to a pivotal moment in the development

of a vocabulary of love in the letters, Mews’ analysis does not go on to explore the continued

juxtaposition of these terms and the way this process solidifies their different meanings. Throughout

the first 58 letters, the woman continues to explore the differences between these words, especially

amor and dilectio, and their relationship to each other, making it even more impossible to reconcile the

notion of translating all three as “love” every time that they are used. Her letters 48 and 49, for

example, make a comparison between amor and dilectio, resulting in a vocabulary that favors dilectio.

Letter 48 argues that “Nemo debet vivere, nec in bono crescere, qui nescit diligere, et amores

regere” (No one ought to live, nor to grow into something good, who does not know how to love

and to govern his passions). Letter 49 continues this differentiation:

Illa quidem est que…cupiditates omnes refrenat, amores reprimit…que cuncta

apta, cuncta placentia, cuncta jocundissima…Habeo sane repertum in te, unde te

diligam.

To be sure, this is the one which restrains all cupidity, represses passion, tempers

joy… it supplies every proper thing, every pleasing thing, every joyful thing…

Certainly I have this discovery in you, and on account of this I love you.

In these letters, the woman argues that passionate love (amor) should be either ruled over or

repressed so that there might be dilectio, the love that chooses out and prizes the beloved rather than

having its basis in physical passion like amor.

How, then, to translate the words? My initial response involved finding exact synonyms for

the words, regardless of how wordy or cumbersome the result, to translate amor as passion every

time it is used, to translate dilectio as esteem and thereby avoid the whole “love” quandary. Such an

approach does not, however, allow for the various uses that are assigned to the words throughout

22

the text. The man, for example, uses amor differently than the woman; while she creates

juxtapositions that ultimately favor dilectio, the man is much more taken with amor and does not use it

to mean exclusively physical passion. In letter 54, for example, he uses amor and dilectio

interchangeably to mean simply “love”: the love between a man and a woman, yes, so it involves

something of the physical, but it is also a strong, growing love, the type which the woman would

speak of as dilectio. The approach to this vocabulary is not simple, and to render a simple translation

of it would be inaccurate. The approach on which I finally resolved involves a careful analysis of the

word in question every time it is used (much like the few examples which I gave above). In my

interpretation, the woman’s letters very often draw a distinct comparison between amor as physical

passion (very much in an Ovidian sense) and dilectio as a specialized, unique version of love. In such

instances I decided to translate amor as passion, dilectio as love. In such instances as the man’s letter

5426 where there is no apparent difference intended between the words, I opted for the less

cumbersome approach and translated both as “love.” To search incessantly for slightly different

synonyms in the English language would have been, in my opinion, to belabor the point when one

English word suffices to translate the meaning of both.

My approach to translating these letters, then, attempts to walk the fine line between

faithfully rendering into English the subtle differences in meaning which are conveyed via a

specialized vocabulary of love and becoming bogged down in excessive verbiage not present in the

original when it is not needed in English. I fear Dryden would not approve of the result as neither

the man nor the woman entirely speak English as they would if they were writing their letters

today27, nor would Nabokov, as I have endeavored to make my translation something more than a

26 Unlike the woman’s preceding rhetoric which carefully juxtaposes different words for love, the man’s shifting in this (and other) letters does not feel so calculated in terms of meaning; his text does not foster a discussion on the differences between the types of love. 27 After all, the letters were not written today, so to put them into the English idiom of today would, I feel, have been to rob them of the meaning implied in the language which they used. In my experience, present day English does not favor

23

clumsy and awkward (albeit highly faithful) transliteration. My approach to the vocabulary of the

letters is exactly the approach to translating the entire text. What I have done is to read the original,

to come to some understanding about what the words, sentences, paragraphs, and letters are trying

to convey, and to render that meaning into an English translation which follows the meaning and

syntax of the original when the result is intelligible in English28. When it is not, however, I feel that

the entire point of the exercise would have been futile; hence decisions such as the one to change

the order of the many flowery greetings into a more readily intelligible English syntax (subject-verb-

indirect object rather than indirect object-verb-subject). English relies upon word order to make its

meaning clear, and to pretend that it can do the syntactical gymnastics that Latin’s inflected syntax

can is naïve at best. I do feel strongly, however, that these are not my letters; they are letters which

were written (presumably) by a man and a woman in the 12th century; regardless of a definitive

answer to their authorship, the content and meaning of the letters is not original with me. As such, I

took pains to follow the construction of the original text when at all possible; some lines do indeed

read much like a transliteration as the original syntax was easily reconciled into intelligible English. It

is when the dilemma was between losing the original construction and losing the original meaning

that my pen, my interpretation went to work, moving a subject to the beginning of the sentence,

placing relative clauses next to their modifiers, reconciling the questions of vocabulary of love into

my own vocabulary. In short, I as a translator have tried to remain as invisible as possible, but such

an attempt, given the nature of the work, is ultimately impossible. My fingerprints remain on the

translation, given my earlier argument that translation occurs twice: one translation of the original

into personal understanding, a second into written English. Although my personal understanding,

exemplified in my consideration of the vocabulary of love, aimed at being as close to the original as

such flowery comparisons of lovers to the celestial movements and Biblical imagery. As an alteration from this to a more modern linguistic pattern would have substantially altered the meaning, I left the unfamiliar image patterns alone. 28 Hence most of my editorializing is grammatical in nature or attempts to capture subtle nuances in vocabulary.

24

possible, the result is undeniably my own understanding and translation of the Ex Epistolis Duorum

Amantium.

Translator’s Note

I translated from the text of the letters which Constant Mews published in his book The Lost Love

Letters of Heloise and Abelard. His text is based on Edward Konsgen’s; for my purposes, Mews’ text

had the advantage of containing annotations and a few brief notes in English rather than German.

In the following translation, I have preserved Vepria’s scribal markings which identify the letters as

being written either by M (mulier) or V (vir). I have simply translated the shorthands; in my

translation, W stands for woman, M for man. All elipses denote Vepria’s omissions from the

manuscript which he copied.

25

From the Letters of Two Lovers

26

1 : W

To her own heart’s love, smelling so sweetly of all aromas, from her heart and body : with

the flowers of your youth becoming dry, the bloom of eternal happiness.

…Farewell, salvation of my life.

2 : M

The man whose life without you is death to his single joy and to the sole consolation of the

exhaustion of his mind: what is more than himself, as much as is possible in body and in spirit.

…Farewell, my light, farewell to the one for whom I could wish to die.

3 : W

To her most absolute love, and to the intimate friend worthy of her fidelity : through the

condition of her true love, the hiding place of her faith.

…May the king of heaven be a mediator between us, and may he be an ally to our faith.

Farewell, and may Christ, the king of kings, save you most sweetly forever. Farewell in the one who

governs everything on earth.

4 : M

The only person for her to the woman who is sweeter from day to day, to the one now loved

as greatly as is possible, and to the one who must always be cherished above all things : the same

immutable steadfastness of her faithfulness.

…Farewell, my bright star, my most celebrated happiness, my only consolation…Farewell, o

my source of well-being.

27

5 : W

To my laughing hope : my faithfulness, and with all my devotion for however long my life

may be.

May the liberal giver of every skill and the most bountiful giver of human ability fill the

innermost part of my breast with the skill of philosophy, so that I might greet you thus with words

written most lovingly to the concord of my meaning. Farewell, farewell, hope of my youth.

6 : M

To my brightest star, in whose rays I recently delighted: she shines with such non-eclipsed

splendor that no cloud can obscure her.

Because you, my sweetest lady, entreated me so, that I should speak even more truly,

because you, the hottest flame of my love, compel it, your own cherished one could not contain

himself, that he, in lieu of presenting himself, greets you to the extent that he is able with the use of

letters. Therefore, be well, as I long for your wishing me to be well. And so farewell, just as in you it

is fixed for me to fare well. In you is my hope, in you is my rest. For I never wake so suddenly but

that my spirit finds you placed within.

7 : W

To the one loved up to this point and to the one who must always be loved : with all her self

and good-will, the well-being, joy, and aid of complete utility and honesty.

…Farewell, farewell, and at last farewell for as long as the kingdom of God should seem to

extend.

28

8 : M

To his own most cherished woman, the memory of whom no oblivion can block – her most

faithful one will have the first forgetting of your name when I have no memory of my own.

…Farewell, sleep in peace and rest in the same. Sleep sweetly, lie down pleasantly; may you

sleep so soundly that you do not change sides. Farewell, o my rest, farewell and always fare well.

9 : W

To my burning lamp and a city set on a hill : fight thus to conquer, run thus to capture.

…I wish and I want most longingly that our friendship may be strengthened with these

letters running back and forth among us as your precepts say, up to the time when that happy day

glows upon me a great deal, on which, with every prayer, I may see your beloved face. Just as a

weary man longs for shade, and too a thirsty one, so I long to see you…Nothing will ever be so

laborious to my heart, nothing so dangerous to my spirit, than the fact that I am not close to you,

my dearest…Farewell in God, the one whom no one surpasses.

10 : M

To his own most precious gem, to the one always glowing with her own natural splendor,

her gold most pure : oh to encircle this same gem with the happiest of embraces and to ornament

her most fittingly.

…Farewell, you who makes me flourish.

29

11 : W

His most faithful among everyone to the one most renowned in the temperance of all virtues

and the one pleasing above the honey comb : with half her soul, and her own self in all her faith.

… I have God as my witness that no secret machination ever hides, nor can it hide, how

purely, how sincerely, with how much faithfulness I love you…Therefore, since I do not have

leisure now for writing, I shout a hundred times that you might be well, and I repeat it a thousand

times so that my wish for you to fare well might be equal to nothing else.

12 : M

From one faithful before everyone, and, that I may speak more truly, the only faithful one to

the one loved ardently, and the one who must be loved still more ardently : whatever the ruler of the

most sincere love determines.

I think that there is not need, my sweetest, for you to exhibit your faithfulness, which you

commend with words to your beloved, more openly with deeds. If I test all my strength against your

loyalty, I will find that I have accomplished nothing, I will judge that I have obtained empty efforts

in comparison with yours that are deserving of merit. If any of the good things of this age can be

collected, they should be brought together in only one place, so that were I to choose either them or

your friendship, through the faith which I owe to you I shall reckon the good things to be of no

worth…Certainly it is pleasing to have done so. Farewell, my glory, you who are incomparably

sweeter than everything which is sweet, and may you happily protract all your time as I so wish it for

you, since no other effort is as beneficial.

30

13 : W

The thankful benevolence of my mind, on behalf of itself and the respect always exhibited to

you, since it could not set free all the very many greetings which it wanted to, it has now fallen silent,

lest in recounting more it seem to make the whole offensive to you. I think that the fact that I often

write to you, that I repeat the same things again and again, is neither onerous to you nor difficult for

me, for to be sure you are the one whom I cherish just as my very self; thus with every bit of my

heart I do not neglect to love you…Farewell, one dearer than life. May you know my death and life

are in you.

14 : M

If it may be pleasing for me to hold on to your tablets a little longer, my sweetest, I will write

very many things just as they occur to me. For if I could always write thus, so that I could do

nothing else. I would, without a doubt, have sufficient material : your uprightness, of course, your

good deeds, so many of which are around me, so that however many there may be cannot be

estimated. Farewell, my most certain hope.

15 : M

Her most faithful one to his own heart : it is a clear night, and would that you were with me.

…Farewell, my spirit, my rest.

16 : M

To his own seal, to the one skillfully impressed on the innermost parts of his mind, from the

one who is the molded resemblance of that same seal : tenacious affection in which, in the well-

being of each of us, the matter is made communal, without differentiation.

31

O you harsh one, how could you be unmindful in your spirit? For when you have forgotten

me, if I am your sprit, you have also forgotten your own spirit. Farewell, my sweetest. I am

completely with you, and, so that I may speak more truly, I am complete in you.

17 : M

Her most cherished one to the unexhausted little vessel of all his sweetness : the light of

heaven having been neglected, oh to gaze at you alone hereafter.

Since day turned into night, I have not been able to contain myself more distantly, but

indeed I have spontaneously snatched the duty of greeting you, since you have communicated so

tardily. Farewell, and may you know that without your well-being, neither my well-being nor my life

stands firm.

18 : W

An equal to an equal, to a blushing rose under the spotless luster of a lily : whatever one

lover gives to another lover.

Although it is winter right now, still my heart burns with the fervor of love. What more? I

would write more to you, but a few words instruct a wise man. Farewell, my heart, my body, all my

love.

19 : M

Indeed your words are few, but I have made them many by reading them often, nor do I

weigh how much you say, but from how your fruitful heart turns out what you say. Farewell, my

sweetest.

32

20 : M

A star moves around a pole, and the moon colors the night,

But the star is dull which ought to lead me.

Now if my star should rise in the fleeing darkness,

My mind would now know no other darkness of grief.

To me you are Lucifer, who ought to banish the night.

Without you light is dark to me; with you, night is splendid light.

Farewell, my star who does not permit damage to her own splendor. Farewell, my highest hope, in

whom alone I am pleased, whom I never take back to memory, since I never release you from my

memory. Farewell.

21 : W

To her own special love, special from her own experience of things : the being that she is.

When my mind is twisted around the most trivial of things it rebels, having been pierced by a

sharp hook…Just as fire is inextinguishable, conquered by no material, except for water, which is by

nature a strong medicine against it, is employed, thus my love can be cured by nothing, except for by

you alone. My mind is made anxious by not knowing how I will enrich you with gifts. O glory of

youth, consort of poets, how beautiful in appearance you are, but how very dignified in disposition;

your presence is my joy, your absence my sadness; regardless, I love you. Farewell.

22 : M

He who without you is wrapped all around by dense shadows to his own gem, more pleasing

and bright than the present light : what more, except that you glory without end in your natural

brightness.

33

Scientists are accustomed to make it known that the moon does not shine except for on

account of the sun. And so when it is deprived of this light, becoming bereft of every privilege of

heat and luster, it reveals its indistinct and pale orbit to humanity. To be sure, something similar to

this is clearly expressed between you and me. For you are my sun, you who always inflame and

illuminate me with the joyful splendor of your face. I have no light except from you; without you I

am cloudy, dark, weak, and dead. And so that I may make it known truthfully, what you do for me

is greater than what the sun gives out to the moon’s sphere. Although the moon becomes more

obscured as it is nearer to the sun, I, as I am moved more towards you, as I come nearer to you, I

shine more and I am inflamed so much that, just as you yourself have often noted, when I am near

you, I completely pass over into fire, I am burned even in the marrow of my bones.

What, then, shall I place as an equal to your innumerable kindnesses? Truly, nothing, since

you pass over your sweetest words with the quantity of your actions; you yourself pass over them

with the display of your love, so that you seem to me to be poorer in words than in deeds. Among

other things which you possess innumerably in comparison with others, you also hold this

extraordinary thing – that you do more for a friend than you say, being poor in words, but abundant

in actions; this is more wonderful for you, as it is much more difficult to act than it is to speak…

You have been buried in my heart forever, and from this tomb you will not emerge while I

live; there you lie, there you rest. You accompany me all the way up to sleep, you do not leave me in

sleep, and after sleep, as I open my eyes, I see you before the very light of heaven. I direct words

toward others, while I direct my attention toward you. Therefore, who could deny that you are not

truly buried in me? … Time hangs over us, jealous of our love, and nevertheless you postpone as if

we are at leisure. Farewell.

34

23 : W

She in whose love you are firmly placed, and in whose honey flavored taste of love you are

well-strengthened, to the sweetest one protecting her spirit, and to the one planted at the root of her

affection : that which is distant from anger and hate.

When I wished to write to you, the unevenness of my powers in relationship to the

magnitude of the task drove me back. For I wanted and was unable, I began and failed, I endured

and sank to the ground with my shoulders shattered by the weight. The feverish condition of my

spirit wished it, and the feebleness of my meager skill refused. I sustained the disputes and the fierce

convictions of these two, and with the rationale having been weighed as to which I would rather

yield, I could not reach a conclusion. For the condition of my spirit said, “What are you doing, you

ingrate? How long are you going to keep me in suspense with long and indeed disgraceful silence?

Does the generous kindness and the kind generousness of your cherished one not excite you?

Compose a letter full of thanks, answer with abundant devotion, be thankful for what you ought to.

For kindness does not seem welcome and agreeable for which many thanks have not been

returned.”

I thought that I must obey these arguments, and certainly I wanted to obey, but the dryness

of my skill resisted, punishing my beginning of rashness with the harsh whip of correction. It said,

“Where are you rushing, foolish and feeble woman? Where does the inconsiderate exertion of your

hurrying mind propel you? Do you begin, although you are of uncultivated and unskilled lips, to

speak of lofty things? For you are not adequate for such material and such magnificence. To be sure,

one who assumes to praise a matter as much as she pleases ought to look among the parts and

consider with utmost caution the quality of each part and honor each merit with a suitable

celebration of praise. Otherwise she makes an insult to the matter by praising it, detracting from its

beauty with the telling of it, its elegance with the enormous description. But where is the means for

35

your writing, that you might speak of sublime things worthily? Look at yourself and the matter

which you are undertaking. The kindnesses are many and varied for which you prepare to return

thanks in your letters. Why are you in many waves of thought? Look back at your brutal, cold heart,

lacking straightforward, sound knowledge and so swollen with the sluggishness of dense air. Furl the

sails of your audacity, the boat in which you are making ready to sail the imperious sea; quick- if you

do not take notice, you will be immersed.”

Suspended by the alternation of exhortation and discouragement, to this point I have

delayed the action of giving thanks, yielding to the advice of a skill blushing for its own feebleness.

What I ask is that the divine excellence abundant in you will not reckon it a fault in me, but as you

are truly the son of charm, that the virtue of gentleness known to you will flow more abundantly

over me. Indeed I know and I confess that from the wealth of your philosophy the greatest amount

of riches has flown over me and does still flow, but so that I may speak without offense,

nevertheless it is less than what would make me perfectly happy in this matter. For I often come

with a dry throat, desiring to receive the nectar of your sweet mouth and to drink up knowingly the

riches spread out in your heart. Why is there a need for more words? I profess, with God as my

witness, that no one in this living age breathes air whom I wish to love more than you…May my

farewell to you, my beloved, penetrate the inner marrow of your bones most sweetly.

24 : M

To a spirit which the earth has yet to have produced anything brighter or dearer to me than

it, from the flesh which is made to breathe and move by the same spirit : whatever I owe it through

which I breathe and move.

The wealth and still insufficient abundance of your letters proves the most evident testimony

to me of two things, namely of your overflowing faith and love. Hence it is said: “The mouth speaks

36

out of the abundance of the heart.” …Moreover I take up your letters so eagerly that they always

seem short to me since they satisfy and set fire to my longing, with resemblance to one laboring in a

fever; the more a drink revives him, the more he burns. God is my witness that when I contemplate

your letters in a new way I am moved, I say, in a new way, because my very spirit is agitated by a

happy shuddering, and my body is changed into a new condition and carriage; your letters of such

laudable quality that they impel my sense of hearing whereever they wish.

You are accustomed to ask of me, my sweet spirit, what love is, and I am not able to excuse

myself through ignorance, as if I were consulted about an unknown matter, since such a love has so

placed me under its power that the matter is not foreign but very familiar and close to home; nay,

rather it seems internal. Therefore, this is love : a certain power in the spirit existing not through

itself nor content in itself, but always with appetite and longing, transferring itself into another,

wanting to be made into the same thing with the other, so that, out of two different wills, one which

has not difference is made…

May you know that since it is permitted that love be a universal affair, nevertheless it is

contracted into so limited a space that I would boldly affirm that it has been made ours. For we two

have a complete love, one that is vigilant and sincere, since nothing is sweet, nothing is restful for

one unless it is helpful for both; we say yes equally, we say no equally, we think the same thing about

all matters. For this reason this can easily be proved as you often anticipate my thoughts; what I

begin to write, you anticipate, and if I remember well, you have said that same thing about yourself.

Farewell, and as I do consider me as I do you; thus you shall continue in your unwearied love of me.

25 : W

To her own incomparable treasure, to the one delightful above all the charms of the world :

happiness without end, well-being without fail.

37

What love is, or what it is capable of – I also, with natural intuition, explored with the

metaphor of our own customs and devotion : it is what greatly completes friendships, and, having

been explored, brings a change about – namely to repay you by loving and to comply with you in

everything…If our love went away with so easy a repulsion, it was not love; the tender and plain

words which we have gathered so far between ourselves were not true; instead they simulated love.

For love does not easily abandon one whom it once stingingly pierced. O love of my heart, you

know that the services of true love are well paid when they are owed without intermission, so that

we do things for a friend according to our strength and do not cease to desire to do things beyond

that strength.

Therefore I shall try to pay off this debt of true love, but oh! I sadly cannot do so to the

fullest. But if, in accordance with the smallness of my skill, the task of greeting you is not sufficient

at least my never ending desire will help me in your estimation. For may you know, my love, and

many you know it well, that from that time when your love claimed the guest-chamber, or rather the

cottage, of my heart for itself, it has always remained thankful and more delightful from day to day,

and, as it is commonly accustomed to happen, the continual connection has not led to familiarity,

nor familiarity to trust, trust to negligence, nor negligence to loathing. Indeed with great zeal you

began to grasp after me at the time of the inception of the friendship between us, but with greater

desire you struggled so that our love would grow and become permanent. Our spirit varies just as

your own affairs do, so that your joy is my aid, and your adversity is my very bitter loss. For the

completion of what you began does not seem the same to me as the growth of what you have

accomplished, because what is lacking there is added, while in the other case what was done is

increased. And although we might exhibit complete love to everyone, nevertheless we do not cherish

everyone equally, and thus that which is generic to everyone is made special for some. It is different

to sit at a prince’s table than it is to take part in his council, and it is more to be pulled into love than

38

to be invited to an assembly. And so I would not owe you such great thanks if you should refrain

from driving me away as I would if you were to receive me with a ready hand. Let me speak more

simply to your shining mind and your purest heart. It is not of great consequence if I love you;

rather, it is really terrible if I should ever forget you. Therefore, my dear one, do not be so rare a

thing to your so faithful friend. Up to this point I was able to carry on in some way, but now, as long

as I lack your presence, moved by the songs of birds, the greenness of the woods, I am weak for

your love. And I would have gloried in these things if I could have enjoyed your conversation and

presence according to my desire. As I long for you, may God do so for me. Farewell.

26 : M

The young man who burns to examine the notion of such goodness inwardly to his own

beloved one, not yet known, but still to be known more intimately : oh to abound always in a secret

and inexhaustible fountain of goodness, and not to run short of refreshment on account of it!

…O how overflowing with sweetness is your heart, o how you gleam with fresh loveliness, o

your body, very full of vigour, o your ineffable scent – bring forth that which lies hidden, reveal

what you hold concealed, may that entire fountain of your sweetness boil up most abundantly. May

your entire love set itself free in me, may you hide nothing deeply from your most devoted servant,

because I believe that nothing has been accomplished while I see that something remains to be

done. I am tied nearer to you from hour to hour, just as a fire, consuming wood – the more

voracious that it is, the more abundant is the fire for it…You twinkle unceasingly with the perpetual

light and an inextinguishable brightness. Farewell...

27 : W

To her own eye : the spirit of Baezel, the physical strength of three locks of hair, the image

of the peace of the Father, the deepness of Idida.

39

28 : M

To the beloved, hidden tenaciously in eternal memory : whatever brings one to be at that

place in whose plentitude nothing is deficient.

The one who is envious of us – would that a long cause for envy be given to him, and would

that he grow feeble for our sumptuous affairs since he longs for it so much. But one could not

separate me from you, even if the sea itself should flow between us; I will always love you, I will

always carry you around in my spirit. And you ought not wonder if depraved jealousy might turn its

eyes onto our such extraordinary, such well-fitted friendship, since if we were unhappy, we would be

able to live with others in whatever way without all the livid stigma of censure. Let them slander us,

then, let them disparage us, let them vex us, let them melt away into themselves, let them make our

good things their bitterness; you will still be my life, my spirit, my refuge in distress, and at last my

perfect joy. Farewell, you who makes me fare well.

29 : W

With everything having been laid aside, I take refuge under your wings, I subject myself to

your power by firmly following you through everything. I am scarcely able to speak such sad words.

Farewell.

30 : M

May God be gracious to you, my sweetest one. I am your servant. I am most ready for your

orders. Farewell.

40

31 : M

To his sweetest, his only remedy in every sickness : oh never to feel anything troublesome, to

be tested by no sickness.

…Infer how much your very presence would have done, if you had such power while

absent. Certainly if I should have directed one glimpse onto your most pleasing face at least once, I

would never have felt any sadness…Entrust to me where my fortune is, since it is entirely in your

possession. Farewell, and do not cease to fare well…

32 : W

You know that no one is more pleased than I am that you are convalescing. Believe that the

midday sun has sprung up for you, that the singing of the birds rejoices in your health, that because

of you the same beings, while you were ill, did not rightly keep rank; the testimony of this matter is

the mildness of the air, its feebleness up to this point, and now, as it senses that you are safe, there is

a change to congratulate you. Look – to be sure, this moderate snow having melted, everything has

revived, the time will smile upon them, and through God’s grace the happiness will not be different

for us. May you be safe, and may all things be directed to us.

33 : M

Sluggishness must be thrown off with the ardour of the moment, and a new ardour for

writing must be assumed. Unless you run ahead, I will run ahead of you. Farewell, moon, much

more luminous than the one that is present, and more pleasing than the sun rising tomorrow.

41

34 : W

Farewell and consider that prudent postponement is better than an incautious hurrying of

the mind. Choose a suitable time for our conversation and entrust it to me. Farewell.

35 : M

Her cherished one to his own chosen one : oh to pursue with fixed vigilance the same love

which has been begun.

I would easily forgive you, most beloved, even if you had done something awful to me, since

he would be too hard whom your so soft, so smooth speech could not mollify. Now indeed there is

no need for your pardon, since you have committed no sin against me. Farewell.

36 : M

Her humble servant to his own revered lady : devoted servitude.

For it is necessary for me to speak to you in this way now, so that I say not “you” but

“thou,” not sweet or dear one, but My Lady, since I am not an intimate friend as before, and thou

art too much a stranger to me.

37 : M

To his one expectation whom he expects expectantly : oh that you might be happy, but

nevertheless may you not want to be happy without me.

I am your servant, I direct my whole body to you, my whole spirit to you. When I do not see

you, I do not declare that I see the light. Pity your cherished one, pining away, and almost becoming

weak, if you do not come quickly to my aid…Interrogate the messenger as to what I did after I

42

finished writing this letter : truly, on the spot I threw myself onto the bed on account of my

impatience. Farewell.

38a : M

I am driven to lay open the fire of my mind with these words,

Which cuts into my mind and burns the secret places of my heart

As one seeks water, whom the fire of the sun has branded.

Thus, panting, I want very rashly to touch your breast.

Now I make a conclusion, concluding with this seal.

38b : W

You don’t want to or you do, but I will stay faithful to you in my heart.

May the king of heaven be the mediator for us.

May He be an ally of our faith, who remains fixed in our dual love.

I write these verses which I am giving to you, dearest one,

In which you may examine the fact that I am faithful to you in my heart,

For true love goes back to prior deeds well-done.

Moreover, this faithfulness is given likewise also to the winds –

Therefore may whatever is loving always stream over us;

May the nourishing right hand of God protect you, inside and out.

38c : M

The pretext for my life, may you be merciful to the faithful,

Because the hope in my whole life remains permanently in you.

43

So much do I cherish you that I cannot say how much I do.

This light is night to me, to live without is death to me.

May you fare well, then, live, may you conquer all injuries,

As I wish, as I ask, as I beg with all my power.

39 : M

To his cherished one, to one with sweetness above that of honey and honeycomb : if

anything sweet can approach the one who completely takes possession of it fully.

You are my life, you are my longing. Farewell.

40 : M

To a friend, both noble and much loved : I ask from my heart that you be steadfast with me,

just as I wish to be with you.

May you be with me, be my spirit, be my joy. Farewell, one more beautiful and sweeter than

a cherry.

41 : M

To the one in whom my mind and eyes have an inflexible gaze : whatever the whole effort of

my spirit and body has the power for.

I do not have an injunction for you; do what you want. Write something, at least two words

if you’re able. Farewell.

44

42 : M

To a loved one and one who must always be loved, a lonely man mourning on a roof and

burning with his cares : the health which I want to have with you, and for you not to have without

me.

…Opposition of such a kind is not of one who loves, but of one who want to retreat, of one

who seeks frigid opportunities. Once upon a time you were not of this sort, you did not call

friendship in for a reckoning. I do not say that my harshness contends with yours, for I am too

gentle with regards to you; take my letters, you who are too serious to send yours to me. Tell me

then, my sweetest one, how long I am to be tested, how long I am to burn inside with hot flames,

and am not to relieve them with any of the cooling sweetness of your conversation? Many things

remain that must be said. From day to day I burn more in your love, and you become cold…May

you hide nothing and tell me things plainly. Farewell.

43 : M

To his own lily, not to that lily which droops, but that one which is ignorant of a change in

color : however much he is able, with all the power of his body and mind.

Without a doubt, nature has poured whatever is sweet into you, because wherever I turn

myself I never find anything sweet except in you alone. Therefore, while holding you in front of my

spirit, I live, I feel, I am discerning, I am happy, I forget every trouble, I am braver amid every task.

I, one who fares well in you, then, I pray vehemently for perpetual health for you. Farewell, hold me

always in your spirit.

45

44 : M

To his complete happiness, whom, as long as I am lacking it, I am an exile and unhappy : oh

to live happily, to rejoice greatly, if it is lawful that you may rejoice without me.

Farewell; with God as my witness that I have offered this farewell with my eyes dripping.

45 : W

To her house made of cedar, a statue white as ivory, on which the entire house is supported :

the whiteness of snow, the brightness of the moon, the shining of the sun, the splendor of the stars,

the smell of roses, the beauty of lilies, the sweetness of the balsam tree, the fruitfulness of the land,

the serenity of the sky, and whatever sweetness is united in their circuit.

May the lyre with the tympani accompanying be helpful to you. If the end result should

follow my desire, most loved one, everything that I am now presenting through letters I would

present to you through the bringing together of the whole body…When you went away, I went

away with you in sprit and mind, and nothing got left behind in my homeland, except for my body,

obtuse and useless, and how much your long absence has tormented me – only the one who

examines the secret places of a person’s heart has knowledge of this. For as the area of burning

Syria, made dry, awaits a rain shower from heaven, so does my mind long for you, sad and anxious.

Now may there be glory to God in heaven, and rejoicing for me on earth, because you, whom I

cherish above everyone, I know to be alive and well. For as often as fortune puts me down, the

consolation of your sweetness sets me up again. You rush about on the wheels of your excellence,

and for that reason you are precious to me, far above gold and topaz. For it is not possible to deny

myself to you more than Biblis could to Caunus, or Oenone to Paris, or Briseis to Achilles…What

more? I commit so many joys to you, as many as Antiphila had when her Clinia was recovered. May

46

you not loiter in coming; the quicker you come, the more quickly you will find the place where you

will rejoice. May you live, may you be well, so that you may see the age of Elijah.

46 : M

To his most longed for hope and such great good, that when I have it, no other thing could

be longed for : I pray that I may deserve to be incorporated into that good which I long for with

such great impatience, so much so that it can scarcely be said or believed.

How much I am delighted by your letter, my spirit, with how much exultation of spirit I

wish to run up to your love for me – I wish to exhibit this with deeds more than I wish to

demonstrate it with words. I so long to see you, I pine away on account of this longing. Farewell, my

spirit, my beauty, my every joy; I declare that no one is prettier to me, no one better, than you.

47 : M

To his spirit. The earth produces nothing under heaven more splendid than her; this man is

the most unhappy of all men : have so much of every happiness, just as this man who prays is

lacking in every happiness.

O unfortunate night, o hateful sleep, o my cursed apathy. Farewell, my only restoration, my

only nourishment, my only rest; wherever I am, truly you are there too.

48 : W

A lover to a lover : the freshness of love.

No one ought to live, nor to grow into something good, who does not know how to love

and to govern his passions. What need is there for more words? Burning with the fire of your love, I

47

want to love you throughout eternity. Farewell, my only well-being, and the only one in the world

that I love.

49 : W

She who cherishes you above everyone to the unmarked rose, to the flower blossoming with

blessedness : grow by flowering, and flower by growing.

You know, o greatest part of my spirit, that many people cherish one another for many

reasons, but not one friendship of theirs is so firm as the one which comes out of probity and virtue

and from internal esteem. For those who seem to love each other on account of riches or pleasures

– I judge the friendship of these people to be in no way lasting, since the thing itself for which they

love seems to have no lasting qualities. So be it – with their riches or pleasure being deficient, at the

same time their love will also be deficient, who have loved the state of affairs not on account of each

other but each other on account of the affairs.

But my love is bound to you by another pact by far. For the lazy weight of wealth – nothing

is more instructive to wrongdoing than when the thirst for having things burns – did not compel me

to love you, but the most excellent virtue alone, possessing everything of honesty, which consists of

the cause of total prosperity. To be sure, this is the one which, sufficient in itself, being in need of

nothing, restrains all cupidity, represses passion, tempers joy, extirpates sadness; it supplies every

proper thing, every pleasing thing, every joyful thing, and nothing is able to be discovered that is

better than this. Certainly I have this discovery in you, and on account of this I love you – to be sure

the highest and most excellent good of all. Since it is agreed upon that this is eternal, there is reason

for me beyond doubt that you will remain in my love eternally. Believe me, therefore, o desirable

one, neither wealth nor esteem, nor everything which the followers of this world eagerly covet,

48

could separate me from my love for you. Indeed there will not be any day on which I could

remember myself when the memory could traverse from me without touching on you. Indeed, I

hope for this same thing from you – you may know with no scruple that I am thoroughly excited

because of this.

It is of great rashness that I aim the words of this letter to you, since even for one so very

learned, educated all the way to his toe nails, for whom every arrangement of skill has passed over

through long-made conditioning into habit, it is not possible to depict an expression with eloquence

so florid that it is worthy of the inspection of such a great teacher, nevertheless one written by me,

who scarcely seems disposed even to trivial things which, so to speak, do not taste of gnawed-off

nails nor thump onto wooden tablet : to such a teacher, I say, a teacher of such virtues, a teacher

with such morals to whom French hard-headedness correctly submits, and at the same time to

whom the arrogance of the entire world rises up; and anyone who seems to himself composed of a

scholarly nature, by this teacher’s straightforward judgment he would become ineloquent and mute.

On account of this your kindness may be trusting of me; unless I should know that the non-

defective friendship of true love was grafted onto you, I would not presume to send you an

unpolished letter of a rough style. But since the stimulus of non-defective care and sweetness drove

me into a cherishing love for you, even though it might be unpleasing to you – may that feeling be

absent – therefore the feverish affection of my love for you has discovered that perfect devotion can

never be excluded by some troublesome intervention. Therefore, if my desires could have been

fulfilled, this letter and more would really be yours directly, so that I would write such a thing to you

if my circumstances compelled it, nor would I want for my pen to have a holiday for even one day,

although it might annoy you to write to me.

To be sure, my hunger for your letter you excited in the beginning, nor have you yet satisfied

it plentifully. For when, with my habit, I waste away with the internal desire for my friends, you

49

might have alleviated my great mourning if you had employed a longer discourse. This small

shortening of a caring salutation I accept as if an angel, reading and re-reading it through each hour.

Meanwhile, kissing it in the place of you, I give effort so that I might satisfy my most fervent desire.

For nothing in this life you might judge as being more delectable to me than talking to you, or

writing to you, or hearing you speak. To be sure, the honey of your writing sticks to my heart, and all

the while it restores me from sadness to joy; it even leads me from mourning to happiness. God

knows that nothing could be trusted more truly than this. But if by chance you hardly believe it, I

believe that there will be a day, if it is pleasing to God, on which you will admit that you have heard

nothing truer. Now my exclamation has ceased, since its reason has ended – how we must bend to

our love.

As in the axis of the pole there is nothing equal to the Sun,

So, too, the end of the earth has not shut up something similar to you.

May you be well as long as you live; after death, may you obtain joy.

Lest I make your fatigue greater with my unpolished conversation, be in the care of the

Savior most high; farewell, you who wipe away all my troubles with the remembrance of you.

Farewell without end.

50 : M

To his sole disciple of philosophy among all the girls of our time, to the sole one on whom

fortune has conferred integrally all the gifts of the multiplied virtues, to the sole beauty, to the sole

gracious one – the man who feeds upon the ethereal air with your gift, he who now solely lives when

he is certain of your grace : always proceed onwards, if she who has arrived at the top can proceed

onwards…

50

…I marvel at your skill, you who so subtlely argue about the laws of friendship that you

seem not to have read Cicero but to have given the precepts to Cicero. Therefore, so that I might

come to a response, if it can correctly be called a response when nothing equal is returned, so that I

might respond in my way : you speak the truth, o sweetest of all women, that indeed such a love

does not gather us together as the sort that is accustomed to so for those who seek such a thing for

themselves, who make friendship a profit, whose faith stands and falls with fortune, who doe not

think that virtue is its own reward, who call friendship in for reckoning, who keep track with

practiced fingers that which should be returned to them, for whom nothing is sweet without money.

To be sure, not fortune, I say, but God has joined us together with another pact; I have

chosen you from a thousand women because of your innumerable virtues : truly because of no other

commodity except that I might find rest in you, except that you be a lessening of my every misery,

that from every good thing on earth, your loveliness alone might refresh me and make me forgetful

of every sorrow. You are satiety to me in hunger, you are refreshment in thirst, you are rest in

weariness, you are heat in cold, you are shade in heat, you are even a most safe and true mildness for

me in every excess.

You even, because of, maybe, some good opinion which you held about me, were merited to

call me into your notice. I am not equal to you in many ways, and so that I may speak more truly, I

am unequal to you in every way, since in this you surpass me where I seem to excel. Your talent,

your eloquence, going past your age and your sex, begins to extend itself into manlike robustness.

What humility, what affability you adopt for everyone! What admirable temperance in such dignity!

Do they not say that you are magnificent above everyone, do they not place you on high so that

from there, as if a candle, you might shine and become visible to everyone? I believe and confidently

affirm that there is no one who is mortal, nor related by blood, nor a friend, whom you place before

me, and, so that I may speak more boldly, no one whom you compare to me. For I am not stupid,

51

nor am I foolish, nor do I have a nose so hard that I do not acutely smell where true love is, and

who love me from the heart. Farewell, you who makes me fare well, and however I might be in your

favor, make me so truly, since your grace is my only source of gaiety.

51 : M

To his complete spirit and unexhausted source of joy; oh for this day and all time to be

happy. Entrust, my sweetest, to me how you are keeping yourself, since I will not be able to be well,

unless your health supplies the cause of my own well-being. Farewell happily, so long as the wild

boar shall love the summit of its mountain.

52 : M

To the lily, the privet : oh, flower perpetually.

Since we do not observe the commands of the Lord if we do not have love in return, it is

right for us to be obedient to the divine Scriptures. Farewell, until the time when your wellness

should be tedious to me.

53 : W

She who is completely devoid of all skill to the man shining forth miraculously with the light

of wisdom through the distinguished markings of his nobility, to the one stretching out his similarity

to a glowing lily and a flourishing rose, to the one thriving with the young flower of his entire body :

everything which looks out for the advance of true love.

If a little drop of knowledge should drip from the honeycomb of wisdom, I would attempt

to depict in the notations of my letters, with every attempt of my mind, some things with the scent

of nectar to your nourishing love. Therefore, in every Latinate thing, a conversation has not been

52

found which speaks intelligibly towards how intent my spirit is upon you, because, with God as my

witness, I love you with a sublime and extraordinary love. And from this there is not, and there

never shall be, an affair or a destiny except for death itself which might separate me from your love.

On account of this, every single day there is a longing and the option present in me that I may be

revived by your cooling presence, and a day will seem to be a month to me, and a seventh of a year a

whole year, until the oh so sweet vision of your love should appear…A sadness so great surges and

grows in my heart that a complete year would not be sufficient for its description. Moreover, my

body becomes sad, my spirit is changed from its customary cheerfulness. Farewell.

54 : M

Her most faithful one to his loved one, the one always to be loved : may our love never

know a boundary and always grow stronger into something better.

If you, the sweetest of all things, have a doubt about the faithfulness of your only friend, or

if I should not be quite certain of your love, then longer letters would have to be obtained for the

commendation of our reciprocal love, more arguments would have to be called into its defense.

Now, since our love has become so strong that it may glow through you without assistance, there is

need for fewer words, since we are rich in this matter. Nevertheless, it is indeed not absurd if

occasionally we should see each other and then, in turn, a letter should fill the place of a bodily

presence, when the greedy envy of wicked men does not permit us to be joined together according

to our desire. What more? Just as I frequently long for you with many sighs, omnipotent God

preserves you for me for a long time…Let us permit those whom we are not able to restrain to go

away. Then the plan will be good.

53

55 : W

A devoted friend to the dearest one of all those who are living, and to the one who must be

cherished above life itself : whatever is best in my whole heart and spirit.

I do not believe that you, my sweet light, are ignorant of the fact that ashes superimposed

upon a banked fire suffocate it, and if they prevent it from shining, nevertheless they will not

prohibit it from always burning. Thus, no outside occurrence can for any reason wipe out the

memory of you because I have bound you to my heart with golden chains. What else? I had God as

my witness that I love you with a true and sincere love. Farewell to my great sweetness.

56 : M

A friend of one mind to one desired over everything which can be desired : whatever good

that is saved solely for lovers.

Your conversation, a sweetness over that of honey, is plainly a witness of your most sincere

faithfulness. I have no doubt regarding what I say to you, since I love you so much that I am not

able to articulate my love for you. To this, o highest form of rest in my life, to this, I say, the matter

has come, that I cannot find a name for your most excellent qualities. When you fare well there is

nothing which can make me unhappy; when you do not, there is nothing which can delight me.

Thus, if you wish to look to the interests of your cherished one completely, be well, and then I will

be well. God knows, since nothing can lie hidden from Him, that you are so low down in my heart

that my every thought is directed toward you. Farewell, my sweetest, not a woman, but rather the

universal one of all things.

54

57 : W

His friend with virtue, not in form, to her own most beautiful ornament : the abundance of

the height of sweetness.

Much time has now flowed by, just as you yourself know, in which – oh sadness! No familiar

conversation has joined us together; nevertheless, may you know that although I am unable to enjoy

your presence to my liking, still with no impediment do I cease to look at you with my internal

vision and to desire your health and prosperity. Farewell, most loved one, and cherish me with the

love with which I cherish you.

58 : W

To a friend, as I judge it – the one who at one time was love above everyone else with

words, who now undeservedly lacks the privilege of your love : that which the eye does not perceive

with sight, nor has traveled across into the interior of the heart.

Fare thee well; alleviate my burden willingly.

59 : M

To his own beloved, to the one cherished above everything that is or is able to be : continual

health and the most abundant advance in everything good.

A necessary cause has been an obstacle which interposed its left foot into my desire. I who

began to sin against you am guilty.

60 : W

To the man faithfully fallen in love with, to the one soon not to be cherished with the chain

of an unsound love : nevertheless, the stable security of love and faithfulness.

55

With a great pledge of love, I offered myself to you for however long your true love hinged

upon a firm root; for I have laid the foundation of my every hope in you, as if in an unconquered

tower. You even know, if you should consider it worthy enough, that I was never deceitful in spirit

toward you, nor do I want to be. Now understand and reconsider this and things similar to it. Truly,

I always carried a very many things for your sake fully enough and quite perfectly, and I am never

able to write how strongly and how fiercely I began to love you. If it was necessary for the covenant

which we pledged to be broken, although it might contain much bitterness in the breaking,

nevertheless it will not now be broken by another person. May your shout recede from me, may I

not hear your words any further. For from the place where I hoped for many useful, good things for

myself, in their place the woeful sighs of my heart have grown.

May almighty God, who desires that no one perish, who loves sinners beyond a paternal sort

of love, illuminate your heart with the splendor of his own kindness and lead you back to the path of

well-being, so that you may know that His goodwill is very pleasing and perfect. Farewell; your

wisdom and knowledge have deceived me, and therefore, from this time every piece of our writing

shall pass away.

61 : M

Her most wretched friend, between whose life and death there is almost no difference, to his

own lady, to the one who was loved and must always be loved : whether you wish for it or not, such

a course for the started friendship which shall not come to an end.

I do not know what such great sin of mine preceded that in such a short time you should

wish deeply to throw away your spirit of pity and intimacy for me. For it is necessary that it was one

of these things, that I either sin too much against you, or that you had a small love before this,

which you threw away so easily, so carelessly. Unless I am more carefully admonished by you, I

56

recognize no blame in myself against you, except, if you wish to call it blame, to deplore your own

miseries and anxieties with that person in whom remedy is hoped for and consolation is

expected…These words are not a friend’s, they are not the words of one who was ever benevolent

from the heart, but of one who seeks out opportunities, of one, I say, who has waited for a long

time so that she could find some cause for the cutting off of love. With what deed, or what word, I

ask you, have I provoked such contentious words? You have enveloped me, half-dead, in the middle

of the wave, you who have inflicted a new wound upon my own wounds, and have added sorrow to

sorrow…If you love me, you would have spoken less. I will manifestly prove to whomever you have

established as a judge between us that you have sinned more against me than I have against you. To

be sure, whoever considers your words will discover that they are not of a lover but of one seeking a

separation; I never look at softness in them, but at a hard heart, not to be conquered by the

misfortune of love…

Truly, nevertheless, my spirit, dry your tears, although I cannot do this to mine. Farewell; I

received the letter with your tears, I send a letter back to you with my own tears.

62 : W

A beloved woman to a beloved man : whatever can be more enriching in the presence of

God, whatever can be more honest and happy among men.

If there were such wit of conversation in me that I would be able to respond to your words

skillfully, I would be able to respond to you however properly with a willing spirit. However,

although it is necessary that I not be able to satisfactorily, in proportion to my ability and with the

limit of my knowledge, I do respond. Thus may the affair be treated between us, lest you incur

danger and scandal. O the harshness of man, that proverb that is accustomed to be said in a crowd,

that the piety of man is bound to a die. If you had to endure chains, or iron, or prison, or fetters, or

57

even a sword, I would hope that you could not hold back, but that you would come to me by any

way, and that you would treat with me about these things in person with one voice which you

committed to me in letters.

I do not wish for tears to break out from your eyes anymore since it is unseemly for a man

to weep, when it is necessary for you, a man of rigorous honesty, to hold severity upon yourself. It is

time, dearest one, that we throw away these disagreeable and doleful representations; moreover, let

us press our hands to the wax to prosperity and happier things. Therefore, my loved one, write of a

happy matter, sing of a happy affair, live with prosperity and happiness; my sweet, having nearly

forgotten me, when will I see you? Concede at least one joyful hour to me.

63 : M

To his most cherished one : whatever sincere devotion asks for only between lovers.

In the letters which you have sent, there were mature thoughts, rational and ordered

composition; indeed, I have never seen them more aptly ordered. I sweetest, with God willing, I will

offer many sweet and happy hours. Farewell, my spirit.

64 : M

To his most cherished one : the greeting which I long to bring to you while present.

Farewell and see to it that I never see your tears, but may you be happy and certain

concerning the faith of your faithful one.

65 : M

Her spirit to his spirit : oh to be one in one spirit for a long time.

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66 : W

Give aid to my adopted business with a happy omen, Clio,

May you adorn my tablets with a song, producing sweetness.

Mind, I ask that you be vigilant, having been enriched with such a patroness,

All the instruments, breathe out with the pleasing winds of Jove.

Behold! Let light arrive, and night tries to depart.

Behold! The light has arrived, and night has receded, confused.

Look – the band of clerics grows bright with the light of the Lord,

The splendor of the teacher makes the night of the one who came before flee.

For this reason, Muse, give praise with a resonant voice.

Say first, Clio : “Flower of the clerics, hail always.”

Speak afterward, Euterpe : “Seize happiness while flourishing.”

And speak, Thalia : “Be well, while the sliver of the moon grows.”

Keep nodding, Melpomene : “While the winter breathes out coldness.”

And add this, Terpsecore : “Be well happily throughout eternity.”

And to this Calliope, I ask you to produce sweet songs.

Speak, Urania, at the same time : “Let him live, enlarged with virtues.”

May you embellish him with character and bestow honor upon him, Polymnia.

And speak now, Erato : “May he be happy in body in the world.

May he be happy in the world but rejoice also afterward in the next one

In which the thankful rejoice with themselves without an end to their happiness.”

“Be well, live, be vigilant,” resonate this, every Muse.

“Keep as many joys as the waves of the sea have drops,

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And as many plants as grow green, as many fish as are in the water of the sea.”

What more, what shall I say, but that may he enjoy peace. Amen.

Farewell, my air.

67 : M

Farewell, my sweetest one, and grant your permission to your loved one. Farewell, and may

you feel about me that which you feel about your own self. You always are the goal toward which I

strive, you are the end and the resting sport of my course. Farewell to the one who is more lovely

than everything that can be called upon.

68 : M

The sweetest one to his sweetest : whatever thing that is sweeter than can be thought of.

Farewell, one who is sweeter than everything which is known to be sweet. I entreat you

vigorously that you send to me how you are holding up, since your prosperity is my highest pleasure.

Send to me when I should be able to come. Farewell.

69 : W

Hurry, letter, and carry my complaints to a friend,

Giving words of greeting to him for my part.

I entreat that you alter this friend, although it is against his will.

Speak, since I am not getting service in return for service.

I was made credulous by the artifice of his speech.

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May there be the memory of those tears which he poured out for me

When he kept telling me that he was about to die,

If he did not enjoy to the full the love of such a beautifully formed woman.

And then he praised what he now makes of little worth.

Ask where the weeping man is, ask where the questions are,

And the proof of his faith which he gave to me willingly.

Why does he so rarely come? Why does he damage my heart?

Ah! I was not deserving of being cheated thus.

I ask that envious eyes not read these verses,

And I do not wish that hearts full of artifice should know them.

With what sweetness of speech I shall address you, beloved one – it exceeds the strength of

my mind, since just as the heart of a human being chose the principal seat of exultation to be in the

middle of the life-blood, so too my mind has placed you as the greatest desire for itself in every type

of love.

My spirit is parched with an incomparable love for the origin of your appearance, nor is it

ever capable of leading a happy life without you…As many of these very words are put together in

this letter, so many are the stings impressed upon my sad heart with the waves of blood. Oh, part of

my heart, what have you done? I am amazed how, compelled by no force from me, you have

suddenly been able to be changed, whom I have inscribed upon my heart with the tenacious anchor

of love. For that reason I have become one who looks to ashes and sack-cloth, and throughout the

day and night my eyes drip tears. What more? Over all, the sharpest arrow of sadness has made its

way into me, and he would be a rather harsh one who would remain adamant, whom my sighs

would not move to misery. Farewell for eternity and beyond, if that can be.

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70 : M

To his own hoped for desire and the one always to be hoped for : whatever good can be

devised or hoped for.

Farewell.

71 : W

Having been thoroughly terrified by the Master’s maxim through which it is said : “It is

difficult to resist against good,” I send these plain letters to you, demonstrating by the evidence of

them how devotedly I submit myself to your every precept. The rising of the sun is very distant

from the setting, but faith is requited with faith to those disconnected through great periods of time,

and it will not remain distant for a moment if the chain of true love has chained them together. For

in whatever place they are delayed, nevertheless their spirits will have been joined together in the

mind. I had many things to say, but I am hindered by an excessively harsh voice in my mind. I

should like to have been carried to you and to have conversed with you for an hour; for a little bit of

sadness is permissible, but more sighs of my heart are growing, as long as I consider the studious

times of my work having been neglected completely for you. However, out of those many things I

do have this one thing – that I greet you truly with a kiss of peace. Farewell, and grant license for my

going.

72 : M

The one who was taken back into favor to one who is angry, and to the one not deserting

compassion in the midst of anger : so that you may live happily for so long a time as when I should

want to be lacking of your favor.

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Our love will be immortal in this way – if each of us should work to precede the other in a

happy and loving contest, and if neither one of us allowed ourselves to be surmounted by the other.

If indeed it should happen that a friend should become listless in loving, he should see that he is

loved by the friend less than he deserved. Therefore, I would never wish to have said that I love you

more than I feel that I am loved, since such words are foolish and furnish a disagreement. Rather, I

recollect that this saying is much better, that in reciprocal love I do not want to be inferior, and I am

in doubt as to whichever one of us should conquer the other…When a certain person saw a thorn

bush bringing forth the most beautiful flowers from itself, he said, “My lady is such a woman; no

thorn bush is sharper than her when she is angered, no flower is more pleasing or more brilliant

than she is when she is pleased.”…Farewell, and so that you may compare no mortal person to me,

observe most diligently, because I will tenaciously persevere in the same intention around you. So

hello, most loved one, and hold me always in memory as your own.

73 : W

Hello as well, most loved one, the one deserving of every sweetness.

Hail, flower of youth, hail light and commanding honor,

Commanding honor, flower of youth – hail.

When it formed you, nature enriched you enough :

Inwardly with courage, outwardly with praiseworthy qualities.

Such splendor and grace she gave to your form,

So much so that I either cannot say it or I am stupefied.

I would say more about you, if anyone would believe

What my mind feels about your uprightness.

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Now I will make an end although I could say more :

To live, to rejoice, to suffer minimally. I want this for you.

As many stars as there are in the sky, as many girls as there are in the world,

As many waves as there are in the sea, so many times I say farewell to you.

74 : M

Now I finally understand, sweetest one, that you are indeed of your whole heart and your

whole spirit, since you wish to forget every injury which I , foolishly and unthinkingly, with a mind

hurrying along too much, too soft for resisting sorrows, without any deliberation hurled upon my

beloved. That voice was hollow, signifying nothing, having no weight; and you, my soul, if you wish

to compare words with actions : these words were truly of the sort which were made clear by no

deed. You enquire about my well-being? If you are well, I am well; if you rejoice, then I rejoice; in

short, to your every fortune I want to join myself. Farewell, my soul.

75 : M

To his only sweetness : whatever sweetest thing that can be discovered in life.

O foolish promise, o the voice that is too rash and thoughtless, o the word of a man who

seems either insane of clearly drunk! For who is filled with such great knowledge, is surrounded by

such lips, that he dares to promise such a great thing of himself? I pass over the educated ones of

this time. If Cicero himself had boasted something so great about himself, truly his copious supply

of eloquence would be deficient for discharging the debt, since nothing dignified of such a promise

would be forthcoming. If Ovid had directed his every strength to meter, he would have very plainly

been deficient in this enterprise. Therefore, who am I or what power is in me, that I should be able

64

to write such a letter that shows me as deserving of your golden breast, your ivory arms, your milky

neck?

I lay aside words which are similar to the wind : what labor, what deed, is of such great

quantity that it could sufficiently buy such sweet admiration? If I should cross the ocean in the hope

of such a good thing, the labor would be meager; if I should climb over the Alps in the sharpest

cold, or if I should seek you from the middle of a fire, with danger to my life, in all of these

scenarios I would seem to have done nothing. Therefore, I beseechingly ask for your favor, so that

you do not measure this letter according to my promises, lest I should fall in with that proverb :

“The mountains labor and a ridiculous mouse is born,” since I bring forth nothing worthy of such a

promise…

For a considerable time now, my shapely one, you have had doubts concerning the faith of

your cherished one because of certain words which, pressured by sudden affront, I wrote in the

course of sadness. Would that I had not written them, since you have inscribed them too much into

memory which I ask that you blot out from your heart, that they may not fasten roots into your

insides, just as I, with God as my witness, never fastened them. Instead, when I sent them from my

hands, I immediately wished to recall them, if a word having slipped out knew how to return.

I am the same to you as I used to be; do not consider my words but my deeds. You are not

old news to me; every day you are renewed in my heart, just as the pleasing time of year is new with

the approaching spring – always, equally. Time itself coaxes us with its kindness; may we enjoy the

opportunity of time. We will be able to love most wisely, because it is rare, as a certain man said :

“Who has ever loved wisely?” To be sure we will be able to love wisely, since we will consider

skillfully our reputation, and still we will mingle our happiness with the greatest sweetness. The fire

which is concealed burns more strongly than the one that is allowed to thrust forth. Farewell, my

loving delight.

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76 : W

A friend of certain intimacy to the chain of love, to everything that is binding to my dearest

one : the height of the most unexhausted love.

The hand of the one writing does not have in any way the power to lay bare how intimately

dear you may be to me since a feeling of internal sweetness urges me that you are specially beloved

to me in front of everyone. Therefore, in no way am I able to reveal to you how much my feeling

toward you burns…Indeed I confess to my beloved that very often I would have stopped, an

ignorant sheep on the path, except for the skillfulness of your masterful instruction that called me

back as I was digressing onto the wrong road. “Now, moreover, let us close off the streams as the

meadows have drunk enough.” My intention has decreed this thing – that any other contention

should cease; horrible anger has swelled up enough with words being mutually thrown about…Why

am I delaying with round-about words? May you allow the execution of one of my petitions: that

you presume with certainty that I never disturb your spirit with such ambiguity. Farewell, my bright

star, golden heavenly body, gem of virtue, sweet medicine for my body.

77 : M

To his joy : joy and happiness.

What am I to say to you, sweetest, except what I have often said? I carry you with my whole

heart. With interior arms I embrace you; the more of your sweetness that I take in, the thirstier I am.

My every resource has been built up for you alone, everything I am capable of is yours. Therefore,

so that we may work together mutually, you are I, and I am you. May this be enough to have said.

Farewell; may the strong hand of omnipotent God cover you.

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78 : M

May he who has does not have something write anxiously so that he may find again what he

does not have. I am safe, I have come to port by sailing; may he who suffered a shipwreck offer

prayers; I sit in port, and therefore I am not in want of prayers. Farewell.

79 : W

A torch of love for you to the one worthy of a special love by the embracing of love : may

you harvest as many greetings just as many flowers emit their fragrance in a loving time.

If the intent of a person’s thoughts captures anything great by means of meditation, now and

then it is not employed for her own benefit without some power of an exterior force. For the

desperation of bringing it to an end disturbs it, or before it might be finished it is greatly demolished

with excessive labor. From this, the labor or the effort of each person seems to fail most often in

and of itself when it isn’t possible to reach the wish which one desires.

For such a long time I have dragged out with a burning effort of heart and body just how I

am to address you, o beautiful gem, but the difficulty of suspected failure has deferred the intention

of my affection. For I know and admit that I am not adequate for rendering thanks with the service

of my spirit or body for your singular and composite kind deeds. Nevertheless, I can do this, to be

sure, in one way which I hold as more precious than gold or topaz – that for however long this spirit

thrives in this body, it will never be vexatious to write of your love. For no description found in

letters, no confession of good things reveals how much joy and exultation your honeyed love

confers upon me.

Your honor would seem to have doubled mine if it had been permitted that we live together

all the way up until the fated end. Now, however, I choose more advantageously to be restricted by

the danger of death than, while still living, to be deprived of the joy of your appearance…Since you

67

have become everything to me, the grace of God excepted, it is necessary for me to desire nothing

more through the remaining course of the centuries except that He who is able to offer one day with

equal ease as one thousand might increase the days of your life.

80 : M

He who is burned more intimately by your heat and is restored more gently by your sweet

breath to the one more gratifying than winter’s sun and sweeter than summer’s shade : may you live

sweetly, and may you experience nothing except for that which is sweet.

If I am hungry, you alone fill me; if I am thirsty, you alone refresh me. But what have I said?

Nay – you refresh me and do not fill me. I have never been filled by you, as I think I never will be.

Live in happiness which never withdraws from you. Farewell.

81 : W

To my most loved one, and, so that I might admit the truth, to the one most skilled in love,

to whom I cannot give thanks sufficiently enough : nevertheless I ascribe the praise of everything at

once serviceable and completely beautiful to you.

Farewell, and may those people perish who attempt to separate us.

82 : W

I send the greeting to you which I would like to be sent to me.

I do not know what can be more salubrious than this.

If whatever Caesar ever possessed I should have,

Such riches would benefit nothing to me.

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I shall never bear gifts, except those you have given,

And sadness and mourning follow us for all time.

If you have not given it to me, nothing will be of use to me.

From all the things which the whole earth contains,

Finally you will be the only glory to me forever.

Just as stones put on the earth are liquefied in fire

When the pyre placed on them is liquefied,

Thus our whole body vanishes in love.

And thus fare well, live for the long years of the Sybil.

May you gather and overcome the years which Nestor lived.

Have compassion for me since I am indeed oppressed with love for you. Farewell.

83 : W

May this very day begin happily for you, may it go by happily for you, may it end happily for

you. What else? May you know that you are loved in a like fashion. Farewell – you are clearer than

glass, stronger than iron.

84 : W

A lover to a lover : I appoint joy along with health to the one wishing for that helpful joy

which is not ended, and the joy which is never taken from you throughout eternity.

After the mutual acquaintance of our sight and of each other, you alone were pleasing to me

above every one of God’s creations, and I loved you alone. By loving I searched, by searching I

loved, by loving I selected, by selecting I set you first in my heart, and I chose you alone from the

69

thousands so that I might make a pledge with you; with that pledge fulfilled, and with the honey of

your sweetness enjoyed, I hoped that I would be able to bring an end to future anxieties…Birds love

shadows filled with foliage, fish lie hidden in rivulets of water, stags ascend mountains, and I love

you with an unfaltering and complete mind. Up to this point you have stayed with me, you have

struggled bravely in the good fight with me, but you have not yet received the prize…If his faith

falters, and the chains of love do not firmly contain him in whom my every hope and faith I had

placed, and do still place, I do not know whom I could trust wholly afterwards.

Should you like it or not, you are and always will be mine, and therefore my prayer for you is

never changed, nor do I ever remove my whole spirit from you. In you what I have looked for I

have, what I have chosen I hold, what I have loved I embrace, the customs of you alone are

agreeable, and no one will take you away from me except for death, since I am not opposed to dying

for you. Farewell, and in the continual hours be mindful of our love. The prologue which you

composed for me – I will offer recompense to you with an act of gratitude, with the servitude of

love. May your heart be glad; may that which might be called sad be absent.

85 : M

If any dispute or division can be in the same body, then to the best part of his own body,

divided from himself : undivided love, uncorrupted, complete, interminable sweetness of the most

vital love.

If you should want to take not attentively of the words of your loved one, you would be able

to note frankly, sweetest, the fact that I want to say more than I can, that I am deficient in looking

for words since my affection has excelled the customary methods so much that it is in no way

possible for it to be expressed completely with customary words. If any sluggishness is noted in me,

if any defect is examined, to be sure it is not the defect of one becoming cold in love, but it is on

70

account of too much alienation of the mind, of one doubting what he might rightly say, of one

wanting much, and of one doing less. It is not right that words might sufficiently repay the

kindnesses which you present in deeds.

If whatever precious things the world has were to be collected in one place, with your

kindness there the collection would be sordid in every way, not able to be estimated of any worth.

Your sweetness is so great, your continuity so marvelous, the habit of your speaking alone so

ineffable, as is the beauty and grace of everything which is brought around you, that if anyone

should presume to equip them with words, the obstinacy would seem great. May our fire always

grow with new sources of nourishment, and the more it is touched, the more may it burn; may it

deceive those who are envious and those waiting in ambush, and may it be kept in doubt as to which

one of us loves the other more since there will always be a quite beautiful dispute between us as to

which one will win. Farewell.

86 : W

The inseparable part of his spirit to the untiring fount of sweetness : after the disquiet of

Martha and the fertility of Lia, may you take possession of the best part of Mary.

Henceforth the immense power of my love for you, unceasingly, indubitably, inexpressibly

continuing in its state of movement, forces me to write to you, most loved one, as I am able or

know how to. But what I could say completely most capably I do not know; so many times you

precede me with your sweet words, so many times you reveal the intimate and sincere affection of

your love that without any ambiguity love and longing for you always burns inside of me, and it

never becomes cold.

Oh, if by the will of God I might take the shape of a bird, how soon I would visit you by

flying…For that which I have now asked for, if by the saving grace of God it can be done : with

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God as my witness, to whom it is difficult to give fraudulent words, there is nothing in the entire

sphere of the earth that I would ask for more. Your affection presses upon me, but your love cannot

fill me. In your life is my health, you are my every longing any my every good. Farewell, half of my

heart, and the fire of my complete happiness and love.

87 : M

The present year passed both quickly and slowly for me,

In which, dear one, your love bound me to itself.

For by revisiting the insatiable distinction of your form

And the labor of goodness familiar to you,

It scarcely seems one brief hour from seeing you last –

Thus you are always a new care in my prayers.

But revisiting how infrequently you reach out to your lover,

I reckon that innumerable years have passed.

Whichever day which I am forced to spend, sweet love,

Without you contains three times as many years in its length.

That day flows by lacking the sun and the privilege of its light,

On which your face does not rise like the sun upon me.

Indeed your face is my sun, it is my light,

Whenever it happens that I do see your face.

If you should ask, my stars are two; I do not know more.

I call these your star-like eyes.

Whenever I enjoy them, then I believe that I am missing nothing.

Therefore, when I lack them, I think that I am missing everything.

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Thus I can be said to be happier than everyone,

Thus I can be said to have had nothing good,

Thus it is proven to be true, what we said before,

In what way this passage through the year has passed.

Now it is a new year, now a new love must be begun,

And our faith wishes to hold to another road.

Love must not be injured by any other love;

I will not give you, my life, anything now except for sweetness,

Nor will I say or do anything except what I know is pleasing to you.

I will restrain myself to the will of My Lady;

In no matter will we ever prove to be different.

May you order what you want; immediately I will comply.

A body so delicate – may nothing unpleasant injure it,

Nor may there be any place for harsh poems.

Pardon me, beautiful one, if I have ever written anything

For which you could rightly be angry with me.

I did not plan on that, I did not do it with reason.

It was impulse itself that advised me badly.

If anyone were able to recall such a proffered word,

I confess that I would want to have recalled it.

Whenever I revisit your tears, beloved,

I am not able to hold back my own tears.

May you accept him, therefore, who admits, beloved, his shortcomings;

Accept him; I beg this, dearest one, with a large number of tears.

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I will beg this even with bended knees..

May this day’s light be the last for my eyes

If a woman lives whom I place before you.

88 : W

To the foundation of firmest love – the home built well and greatly complete upon it : the

nearness and stability of a chain.

The mountains and the wooded groves and the shadowy bits of the forests all reply : in what

way is the glory of writing back difficult for me? For labor deceives the one laboring, while the spirit

quite willingly sets itself free for the matter. Nay, nothing is difficult that is from a willing person.

We rarely find someone on this open sea so composed in happiness, so perfect in virtue –

but his body is not well-refined, nor is he greatly penitent that he failed, except for you alone, who

excels virtuously through everything and in everything. Therefore, you adhere, always fixed firmly to

my heart, and you always will, and not even for one hour while sleeping or being awake do you or

will you recede from that place.

There is not, nor will there ever be, a firm love which is altered so quickly by deceit.

Whatever wrong you ever placed on me has not receded from the memory of my heart, but now I

will purely and sincerely and fully forgive your for everything, so that for the duration I will not be

successively moved by such wrongs from you. I will remain faithful to you, stable, immutable, and

not changeable, and if I should know each and every person, having taken them in as individuals, I

would never depart from you, except having been compelled to by force and driven out completely.

For I am not weak, agitated by the wind, nor will any sharpness move me from you, nor will a

softness of any kind.

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For the fire of love for you will always be renewed and will grow in me; it burns more deeply

and does not become cold, and however much more it is concealed inside and preserved there, so

much more it is increased and multiplied. And it is not permitted as many times as I would want, as

I would ask, as I would desire, that you are seen by me with my corporeal eyes; nevertheless you are

not shaken loose from the intent on my mind. For the fire is preserved more easily if it is carefully

immersed in ashes, and smoke is therefore not generated from it; may we love thus in turn. Farewell;

take happiness in unending joy.

89 : M

To his one joy : health – if I can give you what I do not have except for from you.

If the words which I send seem somehow to be fewer than your desire, reflect not on the

words but the wish of the one sending them. A great supply makes me poor. Since many want to

spew forth at the same time, thus they in turn hinder themselves; while I make a delay by hesitating,

time is flying. Farewell, gem of all of France.

90 : W

His flower and his lily to the grove full of trees, giving off the odor of every type of virtue : a

growth of faith and an increase of life.

With a desiring spirit and a devoted mind I would write much to you, my loved one, except

for the fact that so many anxieties hinder me, dragging apart my spirit so that on account of the

excessive sadness of my heart I may scarcely bring forth any words of greeting. Now, however, I

implore you, through your faithfulness and the carefulness of your love for me, that as you received

me into your love from the beginning, may you keep that received one safe and not remove our love

from your heart. Farewell, live, and by living well be happy throughout eternity.

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91 : M

That man for whom there is never day without you to the most splendid moon, to the one

chasing away every shadow, to the moon whose splendor I say does not become eclipsed : shine

forever, rejoice forever with the incrementing of a most pleasing light.

The anxieties, sweetest one, which you endure for your loved one are so much sweeter to me

since they ascribe a greater proof of your faith. If, therefore, I were present, I would remove your

every care, I would wipe away these sweetest tears from your star-like eyes, I would surround your

troubled heart with an embrace, I would entirely mold your happiness anew. Farewell.

92 : W

She for whom no sun – unless it is you – burns in the daytime, nor a moon throughout the

night to her clearest light, her solstice, to one never darkened by the falling of shadows, but to the

one always offering the color of shining whiteness : shine more brightly, glimmer more splendidly,

do not become weak in the fervor of our love, have the seasoning of salt, and preserve your

condition.

Farewell.

93 : M

To his most splendid light who is accustomed to shining in the midst of shadows :

experience no eclipsing of your sweetest light.

No one is unhappier than us whom love and shame pull in different directions at the same

time.

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94 : W

A full moon to the aroma of perfected grace and the best scent, by the seed of sweetness

made a hundred times greater in a barren field : the delights of an entangling love.

You are giving your words to the winds. If you throw stones at me on account of such

things, what would you do to one doing these wrongs? That friend must not be praised, nor is he

perfect in every way, who is not mindful of a friend except in a time of necessity. Farewell.

95 : W

She whom the winds, which are suited to your unfaithfulness, do not move to the boat that

is endangered, to the one not having the anchor of faith.

You do not act with a fair spirit toward me, but you have changed your habits; for that

reason your faith is never safe and sound. It is in no way a source of penitence to me that I have

affixed you alone over everyone so firmly in my heart, since it was laboring in vain, as no one repays

the wages of her labor. Hanging in suspense with expectation I have scarcely kept on expecting. But

what has this hope profited me which has brought no completion? Farewell.

96 : M

To his beautiful one, to one whom neither mind nor tongue can praise : whatever else, if not

everything which the hungering love of your most beloved continually works towards – may it

happen for you.

Indeed my love for you advances from day to day, and it is not lessened by the duration of

tie; nay, just as the sun is new everyday, so too your most pleasant sweetness blossoms in its

newness, it springs forth, and it grows full of life. Farwell, my martyr; be as mindful of me as I am of

you.

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97 : M

I entrust what I am to half of my heart, to part of my spirit : I am yours, while I am living.

Farewell, although you have sent no greeting to me.

98 : W

To a Tyrian, to the sweetest of lovers : the foundation of stable friendship – do not know

the darkness of unfaithfulness, do not become cold or tepid in the sweet fire of our love, but burn

more ardently than the accustomed manner, and always carry me about deservedly without

weariness in the tinder-wood of the friendship of your heart.

My prayers profit me nothing since I and my things are vile to you and you endure the

delight of desired joy, even if you are angry.

99 : M

The same friend which he was to one knowing the laws of love and best satisfied with them :

the steadfastness of the only love.

100 : W

A faithful one to a faithful one : the knot of integral love which is never taken apart.

It is fitting and proper that a possession which is possessed by a possessor is exercised quite

attentively, and it is not made vile in his heart, but grows more and more by every hour.

101 : M

To his star-like eye : always see what is pleasing; never feel what is displeasing.

I am who I was. Nothing has changed in me about my love for you, except for the fact that

every day the flame of my intense love for you grows greater. This fact only is justly conceded – that

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it helps in the love for you within me through all time. In this way, I address you more cautiously, if

you wish to notion, I approach you more cautiously, shame tempers love with itself, modesty

restrains love, lest it pour forth an immense amount, so that we may give abundantly to our sweet

prayers and weaken the rumor which has recently begun about us. Farewell.

102 : W

The shining whiteness of milk and the sweetness of honey to one flowing with milk and

honey : the flowing of every pleasantness and the augmentation of a saving joy.

You, most beloved and most loving in my heart, most fitted to my love, I wish with my

prayers that you always fare most agreeably well, and that you always live sweetly – I wish this with

the greatest intent of my heart. What I have that is most precious I give to you – myself, to be sure,

firm in faith and esteem, stabile in your love, and never changing. Farewell, be happy, may nothing

offend you, may it not injure you through me.

103 : M

He who is always refreshed by your new gifts and by your joys to one shining more than

silver, to one more splendid than any precious stone, to one surpassing every adornment in scent

and taste : always be delighted by new allurements.

Love is not able to be idle. For it always exerts itself for a friend, it always strains towards

new forms of complacency, it never sleeps, it never totters into apathy. This sentiment, my spirit, is

exhibited certainly in you which, firmly enduring on the started course of love – you always declare

to your friend with new indications how you are to him. How great your gifts are and of what

significance they are to me I will indicate I will intimate to you personally.

79

104 : W

She for whom nothing in the entire world is arranged more preciously to the insatiable

sweetness of love, to one surmounting every delectable thing in pleasure : may your honor be

renewed with ineffable glory.

The fire of love for you which grows in me always compels me to write. But of what I

should be saying most of all I am ignorant, except that I will lay bare to you the evidence of love

implanted in my heart. Rightly do I mourn for the one whom I cherish so tenderly, so inwardly,

whose generosity of sweetness goes beyond human pleasures, and the one to whom it is not given to

corporal eyes to behold, who never gives way from the intent of the mind. Therefore, the growth of

this sadness is not to be cured in anyway, unless in the way of a turtle dove I should keep for you an

inviolable pledge of love, desiring this in word and prayer – that the years of your life be multiplied

and that you may obtain at some time a crown of immortality forever. Farewell.

105 : M

To the greatest consolation of exhausted spirits, solid hope, and the final home of everything

that is happy – he for whom your breath is a draught of honey, for whom your gaze is the brightest

light : what more, except that a very long life might be sufficient for your great pleasure?

That my love, sweetest one, you have set up as the necessary cause of your writing I accept

as gratefully as I hold you fastened firmly in the most binding chain of true love. Faith is most easily

in your words, as your actions, which overflow with such frequent kindnesses, prove, that it is clear

that your love is not cold, and you declare to that one whom, even with your tongue being silent,

you say that you love sufficiently through your actions.

106 : M

80

Nothing is more grievous than a foolish man who has been fortunate. Now for the first time

I recognize the fortune experienced before, now there is time for looking back on happy times since

hope is receding – I don’t know whether it is ever to be recovered. I am enduring punishment on

account of my foolishness since that good thing which I have not known how to keep as is fitting,

of which at the very least I have been undeserving; I have squandered that good thing, I declare, it

flies to some other place, it leaves me behind because it recognizes that I am undeserving of its

possession. Farewell.

107 : W

…This spirit divided into many parts is of less worth for singular things…I saw a woman

standing near me, old in age, decorous in appearance, and in every form of her limbs elegant beyond

human measurement, who, inspecting me with fierce eyes, and offering these words with a rightful

reproach, said, “Why are you acting so negligently? Don’t you see that nobility of race, or a shape of

beauty, or an appearance of beauty helps no one except the one to whom the Holy Spirit’s grace

comes before hand, and the one who receives the riches of wisdom and knowledge in himself so

that, fortified by these, it is possible to safely resist secular artifice?”…With my spirit led back into

strength, speaking this I answer her thus…et cetera. Farewell; I entreat for so much prosperity as the

number of leaves that each tree bears.

108 : M

My sun and my serene day, my light – hello.

You are my sweetness, without you there is nothing sweet;

If you were to ask who sends such sweet words to you –

He, whose life you remain, this man who is yours, does so,

81

The one whose drink was tears with you having departed,

The one whose sadness and groaning and meals were mixed together.

Life was grievous, death sweet, and I often prayed for it;

For daytime was not happy, nor was rest pleasing to me.

My prayer was often to follow My Lady; I was prepared to go,

But shame and dread blocked my path.

The rumor of your having returned – as soon as it was heard, the reverse –

The breath of your dear one, my sweet friend, came back;

I became completely warm, shuddering happiness went on inside.

I am excited, I scarcely understand my joy,

And it is not amazing, beloved, that I favor your coming back,

For this time favors happy charms –

The stars shine more pleasingly, the sun passes over the earth more brightly,

Nourishing earth is caressed by its own flowers.

All of nature prepares itself for your praises,

All things, o my life, sing your praises.

109 : W

Because each one of us is capable of looking at the other in the present moment, our letters

are not deserving of a greeting. I want, nevertheless, for you to be well, clothed with the decoration

of virtue, surrounded by the jewels of wisdom, endowed with the habit of honesty, and decorated by

the ornament of every type of composure. Farewell, fountain of coolness. Farewell, flower of the

most gratifying scent. Farewell, memory of happiness, oblivion of sadness.

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110 : M

To his only one : the joy which no illness consumes.

With God as my witness, beloved one, as often as I begin to read your letters, I am filled

with so much pleasure inside that I am compelled to peruse again the letter which I have often read,

as the magnitude of my happiness carries off my attention. Therefore, you can easily consider how

happy for me the presence of your own very pleasing person is and how much weight your living

words have, since your voice, sent from a distance, makes me so happy. Farewell.

111 : M

May your night be light, with the exception of me may nothing be lacking for you.

As long as you lack me, beautiful one, may you think that you are missing

everything.

See me while you sleep, meditate upon me while you are awake,

And as I myself am yours, may you be my spirit.

112 : W

To her most noble teacher, to her most learned one : health in Him who is well-being and

benediction.

If you are doing well and move around among earthly things without collision, then I am

carried away by the highest exultation of mind. It was pleasing to you, noble one, to send this letter

to me, a very small one, in which by calling me by name and by promising the consolation of your

love, from an excess of joy, as it seems to me, with a certain agility of mind, you have snatched me

all the way up to the third heaven. Let me speak more clearly : the immense joy of your letter has

snatched me from an unexpected place, and as if through an internal revelation, has established

83

consolation for my desire…Now, nourished at the hearth of philosophy, you have drunk at the

fountain of poetry…To thirst for God and to cling to Him alone is necessary for everyone who is

living…Although it may be yet to be, nevertheless I now see the pointed mountain kneeling to you.

And I do not doubt but that this will be fulfilled in you – what I long for, by divine counsel. Indeed,

no kind of language, no eloquence of words can sufficiently tell how greatly I rejoice that I am

reaching the port of your love, safe and not ungrateful. Therefore, since I am capable in no way of

repaying the worthy office of your merited kindness, nevertheless, I desire with longing to be free

for unfailing zeal for you…

112a : W

Where there is love and esteem there always exertion is heated. Now I am tired, I am not

able to respond to you, because you take sweet things for burdens, and through this you make my

spirit sad. Farewell.

113 : M

Love urges me to follow its services, to turn to its laws,

And what I did not learn, love has compelled me to learn.

He is not man but stone whom your beauty will not move.

I believe that I am moved, that I am not capable of being stone.

The care of the poets was to fashion the limbs of beauty

…

But did they ever make one equal to you? Indeed, I judge that they did not.

For your beauty surmounts the goddess’, to be sure.

Am I to speak or be silent? If it is by your grace, I will speak,

84

For I shall speak since every traitor is lacking in words.

Of what sort are they which you cover with your clothes? I scarcely rest in my mind.

I wish to stroke them when they pass through my mind.

But fortune and shame, sweetest, and the murmurings of people,

Which I fear, stand in the way of my wishes.

Would that I could see you, dear one, as often as I wished to

(I would wish to be able to do so three times every day)

….

That night would become brighter than the middle of the day.

Grant forgiveness since love dictates what I am compelled to write.

Grant forgiveness to one having confessed – I do not love patiently.

You have conquered me, the one whom no one could conquer.

I am disturbed more strongly since this is my first love,

For this flame had not before penetrated my bones.

If there were any love before this one, I was tepid in it.

Only you make me eloquent, this glory befalls no one,

So that she was worthy of my song.

You are similar to no one, in whom nature has placed

Whatever precious thing the world can possess –

Beauty, birth, manners through which honor is obtained –

They make you conspicuous in our city.

Therefore, why is it amazing if their shininess attracts me,

If I succumb to you, conquered by your love?

85

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Carducci, 1999.

Fagles, Robert, trans. Odyssey. By Homer. New York: Penguin, 1996.

Fitzgerald, Robert, trans. The Aeneid. By Virgil. New York: Vintage, 1983.

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Mews, Constant J. The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of

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1974.

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Tymoczko, Maria, and Edwin Gentcler, ed. Translation and Power. Boston: University of

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