My Inspiration for December 2020

This December my aesthetic was Greuze’s delicate and wistful girls, fairy tales, castles covered in snow, winter forests, skeletons and maidens, Polanski’s film Fearless Vampire Killers with the gorgeous Sharon Tate, 1990s fashion by Lolita Lempicka, white lace dresses and frosty red roses, troubadours and damsels, swans and sad brides, The Smiths, delicate watercolours by Susanna Duncombe (1725-1812), birches and wedding veils. I watched a wonderful and poignant Polish film “Brzezina” (The Birch Wood, 1970) which touched me deeply and I will surely watch it again. I also Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (finally, because I love the film!) and Bret Easton Ellis’ wonderful book of essays called “White” (2019); it was refreshing to read some common sense.

“Love life more than the meaning of it.”

(Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov)

“My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking to suit other people! My manner of thinking stems straight from my considered reflections; it holds with my existence, with the way I am made. It is not in my power to alter it; and if were, I’d not do so.”

(Marquis de Sade (in a letter to his wife; 1783)

“We are all engaged in the task of peeling off the false selves , the programmed selves, the selves created by our families, our culture, our religion.”

(Anais Nin, In Favour of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays)

“Silver Birch” (c.2005) photograph by Adam Brock, via flickr.com

Brzezina (1970)

Picture found here.

Found here.

 

Château de la Bretesche by Night by Loïc Lagarde

Instagram: opheliesz

Vasily Vladimirovich Pukirev – The Unequal Marriage

“Sad veiled bride, please be happy
Handsome groom, give her room
Loud, loutish lover, treat her kindly
(Though she needs you
More than she loves you)…”

(The Smiths, I know it’s over)

Vasily Vladimirovich Pukirev, The Unequal Marriage, 1862, oil on canvas, 173 x 136,5 cm

Pukirev, the son of a peasant who had originally been trained to be an icon painter swept the art scene when he presented his very large canvas “The Unequal Marriage” in 1863. Pukirev had just finished studying at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow and this painting was an ambitious and successful attempt to portray a scene from an everyday life (well, a wedding may not be an everyday thing, but it’s not a theme from history or religion) in a serious, not sentimental manner. The scene looks like a very dramatic moment in a play; the light in the church is falling on the three main figures in the painting; the bride, illuminating her beautiful and sad figure of the bride, the wrinkled and dull looking old groom, and the hunched priest. The bride and the groom are both holding a lighted candle. The bride; beautiful, shy, and melancholy, is the picture of innocence. Her lovely pale oval face is framed with silky curls that touch her collar bones and her necklace. Jewels glimmers on her skin, blossoms on her wreath are blooming, but her heart is a poor withered flower, sad and cold. The crinoline is heavy on her slender frame, and her downward gaze reveals more than it hides. We cannot see the look in her eyes, but we can feel what she is feeling, we can imagine the soft tears blurring her visions, we can imagine the dryness in her throat when the moment to say “I do” comes.

The idea for the painting came from this one particular real life story; Pukirev’s friend Serge Mikhailovich Varentsov, a young merchant, was hopelessly in love with a twenty-four year old girl Sofya Nikolaevna Rybnikova, but her parents decided it would be better for her to marry a man who was richer and more succesful, a thirty-seven year old Andre Aleksandrovish Karzinkin. The age different wasn’t as big as the painting presents it, but Pukirev wanted to emphasise the bride’s youth and beauty in contrast to the man’s old age and fading looks, so the artistic freedom is understandable and justifiable. Poor, lovelorn Sergei was nonetheless forced to attend the wedding and see his beloved marry someone else, due to family reasons; his brother Nikolai was married to Karzinkin’s younger sister. One man’s sadness was another man’s inspiration and when Sergei told this to his friend the artist, Pukirev instantly had the idea of a painting in mind. The man behind the bride is suppose to be portrait of Sergei but later Sergei was rather angry that Pukirev had painted him and so Pukirev added a beard to the face but the rest remained unchanged. Still, the artist’s friend S. I. Gribkov said for the bearded man that: “with crossed arms in the picture, it is V. V. Pukirev himself, as if alive”. The theme of the painting and the social problem it accentuates reminds me of something from Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”; the main character Raskolnikov’s intelligent and beautiful sister Dunya takes upon herself to better the family’s financial situation by marrying an old and wealthy, but not good-hearted lawyer Luzhkin. In the end, she doesn’t proceed and she ends up marrying Raskolnikov’s best friend Razumikhin who is intelligent and strong and, unlike Luzhkin, he loves her dearly.

First Zhuravlev, After the Wedding, 1880

Auguste Toulmouche, The Reluctant Bride, 1866

More sad brides!

Skeleton Lover

These dreamy photographs I recently discovered are exactly my cup of the tea. I have already written about the fascinating and macabre yet very popular motif in art, the Death and the Maiden, and these pictures seem to be continuing with the same theme. Something that always comes to mind in connection to young girl’s beauty and mortality is a short story “Edward Fane’s Rosebud” by Nathaniel Hawthorne where the beautiful young maiden Rose is faced with mortality for the first time and Hawthorne describes it very poetically:

“She shuddered at the fantasy, that, in grasping the child’s cold fingers, her virgin hand had exchanged a first greeting with mortality, and could never lose the earthly taint. How many a greeting since! But as yet, she was a fair young girl, with the dewdrops of fresh feeling in her bosom; and instead of Rose, which seemed too mature a name for her half-opened beauty, her lover called her Rosebud.”

The young, rosy-cheeked girl dressed in white and the skeleton lover who adores her; they are such a lovely couple, wouldn’t you concur? I must say that this skeleton looks more charming and … shall I say handsome than the ones painted by Hans Baldung Grien.

Pictures found here.

Marianne Stokes – The Queen and the Page

“…the woman is seen as unattainable, the more the desire she has aroused grows, and her Beauty is transfigured.”

Marianne Stokes, The Queen and the Page, 1896, oil on canvas, 101 x 96 cm

Marianne Stokes’ painting “The Queen and the Page” has been haunting me for weeks now. As soon as I read the painting’s title I was, in my imagination, transported to some enchanted, far-away, Medieval fairy tale land, to some white castle with many many narrow towers and spiraling staircases; a castle with knights, troubadours and damsels. The painting has a distinctly Medieval mood which shows Marianne Stokes’ interest in the Pre-Raphaelites. The composition and the colour palette both contribute to the gentle beauty and the bittersweet mood of the painting. The focus is solely on the two figures of the Queen and her Page who are seen walking through a forest. The space around them is painted in soft, tender shades of blue, grey and green, and it looks very dreamy and remote from the stifling life at the court. The woodland, with the tall elegant tree trunks and the mushrooms springing from the ground, is a beautiful setting for the scene.

The figures of the Queen and the Page are elegant and gently elongated, beautifully clad in sumptuous fabric, both are wearing a similar pair of pointy shoes, and their paleness and some sort of frail elegance brings to mind the elegant figures from the fourteenth century illuminations by the Limbourg Brothers. The Page is carrying her train; it’s a sacred duty to him, a privilege to touch the silk train of her dress when the fate is so cruel that he may not touch her lips of soft blonde hair. Without a word being spoken we can feel the mood between the young and beautiful Queen and the blonde Page; there’s a quiet yearning and tenderness in the air. Their faces are especially interesting in conveying the feelings; her downward gaze seems wistful and passively surrendered to her faith, the Page’s eyes glisten with yearning and his cheeks, rosy as rosebuds, speaks of sweetness that mount in his soul while he is breathing the same air as his beloved. But, alas, bittersweet is the tale of their romance!

The inscription written in German in the upper part of the canvas speaks of the story of an old grey-haired King who was married to a young, beautiful Queen, and there was also a Page who had blonde hair and who carried the Queen’s silk train. The Queen and the Page loved each other too much and they both had to die. This vision of love, exceedingly idealised and romantic, tinged with melancholy, tender and – tragical – is typical for the late Medieval age of romance, damsels and troubadours that Marianne Stokes is clearly trying to evoke: “That new romantic code so sweetly celebrated in ‘Le Roman de la Rose’ and the ideal of “courty love” sung by the troubadours governed the relations between the sexes. The lover was expected to show delicate attentions and pay respectful hommage to the lady of his heart. This new culture, worldly no doubt but full of smiling grace, did much to shape the course of the 13th century life.” (Gothic painting, Jacques Dupont)

And here is something very interesting that Umberto Eco says on the same topic in his book “On Beauty”:

“…the development of an idea of female Beauty, and of courtly love, in which desire is amplified by prohibition: the Lady fosters in the knight a permanent state of suffering, which he joyfully accepts. This leads to fantasies about a possession forever deferred, in which the more the woman is seen as unattainable, the more the desire she has aroused grows, and her Beauty is transfigured. (…) …all these stories of passion contain the idea that love, apart from the ravishment of the senses, brings unhappiness and remorse in its train. Consequently, as far as regards the interpretation of courtly love in the centuries that followed, the moments of moral weakness (and of erotic success) undoubtedly took second place to the idea of an infinitely protracted round of frustration and desire, in which the dominion the woman acquires over the lover reveals certain masochistic aspects and, the more passion is humiliated, the more it grows.”

Marianne Stokes, Aucassin and Nicolette, date unknown

Marianne Stokes (born Preindlsberger) was an Austrian painter who married the British landscape painter Adrian Scott Stokes. They had no children and they were both devoted to their art and travelled Europe extensively. These travels fueled their inspiration and Marianne’s oeuvre, very thematically diverse, reflects this. Painting “The Queen and the Page” is a very beautiful example of Stokes being inspired by the art of the Pre-Raphaelites. Another beautiful and romantic example of this is the painting “Aucassin and Nicolette”.

Inspiration: Castles, White Gowns, Roses and Snow

Cardinal in snow by Molly Dean.

Rose by Rein Nomm.

Picture found here.

Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany by 📸 Joonas Linkola

Picture found here.

Picture found here.

Frosty days...🦉 | niiloi

Lake Bled island in Slovenia

Eugène Carrière – The First Communion

Eugène Carrière, The First Communion, 1896

Eugène Carrière’s painting “The First Communion” is the most haunting painting of a little girl dressed for her First Communions that I have seen. Quite a few examples of this motif can be found in the late nineteenth century art, but no painting I’ve seen is this ghostly. The gentle figure of a young girl arises from the surrounding darkness. All of Carrière’s paintings have this distinct atmosphere and the figures in them seem to emerge from the brown-grey fog or a muddy swamp. The girl’s hands are clasped in her lap and she seems so sombre and wraith-like; her white formal gown and veil are transformed into a sea of greys by Carrière’s brush, as if they’re made of ashes. Usually the girls painted in their white First Communion dresses look angelic, smiling and lively, but Carrière’s portrayal of this motif instantly takes away the little girl’s angelic, innocent appeal because she seems more like a ghost than a real girl; no smile, no rosy cheeks on that face.

As I gaze at the girl’s face more, a scene from the film “The Others” (2001) comes to mind; a very devout Catholic woman (played by Nicole Kidman) lives alone in a lonely, forgotten mansion surrounded with constant fog with her two children and servants, desperately awaiting her husband’s return from the war. In one scene she lets her daughter try on the new snow-white dress and veil for her First Communion. The mother leaves the room for awhile and when she returns, she finds her daughter playing with a doll, but her face isn’t her own: it’s a horrible and frightening face of an old woman. Of course, it was only an illusion, but Carrière’s girl seem to me capable of transforming into something else, it isn’t static and final in my eyes, it moves and changes; I can imagine the girl’s dress changing from perfectly white to this shade of grey; I can imagine her eyes losing shine and her face loosing form; this is but one state of melancholy decay, she will sink even more into the darkness that surrounds her.

In all of Carrière’s paintings, I feel like his figures are transitioning from the palpable, material world to a mystical, airy one, their forms are distilling, they are fading away… Odilon Redon, a fellow Symbolist artist who used colour and shapes very differently though, wrote this of Carrière’s art: “…opaque limbos where pale, morbidly human faces float like seaweed: that is Carrière’s painting. It does not have the flavor of solid reality, but remains in the muted regions of the first elaboration, which are favorable to visions, and never appears or flowers in the shining brightness of the solar prism.” My view of Carrière’s paintings varies from day to day, from painting to painting; sometimes the haunting and ghostly mood of his portraits really captivates me, and other times, his colour palette is devastatingly depressing and monotonous. Carrière’s dislike, or mistrust, of colour is truly remarkable. I really love this painting “The First Communion” because of its motif really, but some of his other paintings tend to drain me due to their lack of vibrant colour. And now, here are some other examples of the same motif but in a very different mood and style. With their white gowns and veils, the First Communion girls look like little brides.

Sir John Lavery, Eileen, Her First Communion, 1901

Elizabeth Nourse, The First Communion (La Première communion), 1895

Henri Martin, First Communion, 1891

Jules Bastien-Lepage, First Communion, 1875

Carl Frithjof Smith, After first Communion, 1892

Emile Claus, First Communion, 1893

Harry Shokler: Waterfront – Brooklyn

“The skyscrapers were beautiful. They did not seem like mere corporate shells. They were monuments to the arrogant yet philanthropic spirit of America. The character of each quadrant was invigorating and one felt the flux of its history. The old world and the emerging one served up in the brick and mortar of the artisan and the architects.”
(Patti Smith, Just Kids)

Harry Shokler, Waterfront – Brooklyn, ca. 1934

A big city is never as dreary, lonely and miserable as in winter months, and yet, in those desolate times, some artists are capable of finding a certain magic and these paintings of New York City in snow by American painter Harry Shokler are an example of such beauty. “Waterfront – Brooklyn” shows a Brooklyn port, busy despite the cold weather and snow. I bet there was nothing poetic about this scene in real life, just coldness and misery, but through the eyes of the artist the scene is transformed into a harmony of white, greys and browns. The drab industrial part of the city becomes a place where all hope is placed because the workers and the industry will pull the country out of the economic depression of the thirties. Streets, rooftops and cars are all covered with a layer of snow, but the workers are threading their way through the snow and the work has to continue despite the weather conditions. In the distance, through the fog and over the water, the skyscrapers of Manhattan look upright and elegant, at once their elongated form appears ghostly and intimidating. They can be see as visual symbols of hope and progress, they are like lighthouses in the depression, signaling the better times that are surely to come. Surely, I say, because hope stays the last. In Shokler’s another artwork called “Skyline” the skyscrapers appear again and this time they are the stars of the show. Again, in the foreground of the painting we see the snow-capped roofs of vibrantly coloured buildings of the industrial part of town, and then, over a visual layer of water, the skyscrapers appear, so otherworldly and awe-inspiring, like mirages almost, seen through the snowflakes that further brings a hint of magic into an otherwise drab scene.

Harry Shokler, Skyline, 1942

Petrus van Schendel – Reading by Candlelight

Petrus van Schendel, Reading by Candlelight, date unknown, c. 1840s-50s

I recently rediscovered the wonderful paintings of a Dutch-Belgian painter Petrus van Schendel. I say rediscovered because I remember seeing some of them before, and forgetting about them, but now my eye was truly ready to take in all their beauty and magic. Van Schendel specialised in nocturnal scenes lit by candles or lamps. A daylight scene wouldn’t provide him with an opportunity to paint such mesmerising effect of the candlelight, and in Van Schendel’s paintings the beauty of light is truly mesmerising. I really love his painting “Reading by Candlelight” painted c. 1840s or 1850s. The clear date isn’t given, by the lady’s hairstyle gives the time period away. The painting is a simple genre scene of a young girl reading a book at nighttime. The light of a single candle lightens the room and illuminates the space around her while the rest of the chamber descends into darkness. You can just feel the warmth and the coziness of that room.

The girl is seen from the profile and her face shows calmness, she doesn’t even know she is being watched. The way her head is painted and her clothes remind me of the girls from Vermeer’s, or even better Geritt ter Borch’s paintings, who are shown reading or writing a letter. But in those paintings the cold light of a grey day is falling on the girls, while here we have the light of a candle which colours this simple genre scene in warmth, dreaminess and mystery. Night is always more mysterious than day, and in the light of the flickering candle, which may extinguish at any moment, the contours of things fade away and things may seem different than they are, more enchanting or eerie. The vase full of vibrant flowers on the girl’s table is very pretty in shape and I love the detail of its shadow falling behind.

And another interesting thing is the faint, barely noticeable portrait of a bearded man on the wall above. Who is he? Her father, or perhaps old ancestor who had died. Regardless, his ghostly face is keeping an eye on the girl like a stern, yet protective father-figure. The whole scene oozes intimacy and warmth, as if we are watching into a private world of this girl without her even knowing it. The beauty of the candlelight as the main focus of the scene naturally brings to mind the French Baroque painter Georges de La Tour who is very famous for his chiaroscuro scenes where the candle is the only source of light. We are spoiled for light today and it is easy to forget just how precious the light was in the past ages when you couldn’t just press a light switch; when a candle burns out, the darkness rules again until the dawn’s faint light comes again.

Edgar Degas: I can see that you are lonesome just like me

“I can see that you are lonesome just like me
And it being late, you’d like some company
Well I turn around to look at you, and you look back at me
The guy you’re with, he’s up and split, the chair next to you’s free
And I hope that you don’t fall in love with me…”

(Tom Waits, I hope that I don’t fall in love with you)

Edgar Degas, L’Absinthe, 1876

Muted colour palette of greys, beige and browns instantly conveys the drab and depressing mood of the café. The café portrayed is the Café de la Nouvelle Athènes; a famous meeting place for the Impressionists and many other artists and composers such as Erik Satie and Ravel. The angle from which the man and the woman sitting in the café are seen also adds to the mood of the painting; it’s almost like a film scene and we are in the place of the camera, we see the lonesome pair as if we are sitting at the table across of them, we are the voyeurs observing them, trying to untangle the tale of their lonesomeness and detachment. The model for the pipe-smoking man with a hat and a beard was Marcellin Desboutin, a fellow artist, and indeed he has a bohemian, untamed look to him. The woman is dressed in a more fashionable way and the model for her was the actress Ellen Andreé who posed for other Impressionist artists as well.

They both look lonely and despite being physically close, they seem emotionally distant from one another. They are both silently staring into the distance. The man is smoking a pipe, only a half of which is painted because Degas used the very popular Japanese ukiyo-e style method of strange angles and perspectives and the result is a more intimate, direct and natural scene. They don’t look like they are posing, they look like they were caught in their natural habitat. There is a glass of absinthe on the table in front of the lady, but she seems to be thinking of something other than her drink. They both look tired; tired from life in general and perhaps tired from the night before. In contrast to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s vibrant, lively and garish scenes from cafés and cabarets, this painting has a grey, party is over, hangover mood. The grey morning after which doesn’t have the flashy lights and vibrant colours that the evening parties have. I spent a lot of time gazing at this painting lately and two songs kept coming to my mind, especially the lyrics, Tom Waits’ “I hope I don’t fall in love with you” and Johnny Cash’s song “She used to love me a lot”. First the lyrics to Tom Waits’ song:

“Well I hope that I don’t fall in love with you
‘Cause falling in love just makes me blue
Well the music plays and you display your heart for me to see
I had a beer and now I hear you calling out for me
And I hope that I don’t fall in love with you

(…)
Well if you sit down with this old clown, take that frown and break it
Before the evening’s gone away, I think that we could make it
And I hope that I don’t fall in love with you

Well the night does funny things inside a man
These old tomcat feelings you don’t understand
Well I turn around to look at you, you light a cigarette
I wish I had the guts to bum one, but we’ve never met
And I hope that I don’t fall in love with you…”

And now very similar lyrics of Johnny Cash’s song “She used to love me a lot”:

“I saw her through the window today
She was sittin’ in the Silver Spoon cafe
I started to keep going
But something made me stop
She used to love me a lot

She looked lonely and I knew the cure
Old memories would win her heart for sure
I thought I’d walk on in
And I give it my best shot
She used to love me a lot

I sat down beside her and she smiled
She said where have you been it’s been awhile
She was glad to see me
I could almost read her thoughts
She used to love me a lot…“

Rilke: Your dear words have poured a holy magic into my soul

German poet and writer Rainer Maria Rilke was born on 4th December 1875 in Prague, and these days I was in a more reflective mood and I felt really drawn to his poetry and his letters which are all so beautiful and infinitely wise. Reading letters so beautiful can feel like reading letters from an old friend whom in fact you have never met and never will, unless you meet them in a ghostly form which would be eerie and fascinating both at once. I was reading certain letters that Rilke wrote to his friends and acquaintances from 1894 to 1910 and this letter written on the eve of his nineteenth birthday in 1894 to Valery David-Rhonfeld, his love-interest at the time, was particularly beautiful to me and it being Rilke’s birthday today, I thought, why no share it with you? So, that’s what I am doing, accompanied by this lovely painting by Petrus van Schendel where a girl is reading a letter in the warm light of the lantern. I imagine her as Valery reading the letter than Rilke had written to her. It’s a rather long letter so I moved some parts which weren’t particularly interesting.

Petrus van Schendel, The Love Letter, 1869

Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke (1894-1910); Letter to To Valery David-Rhonfeld, December 4, 1894 before midnight

Vally mine, mine, mine! Over there in the dining room my aunt is sitting at her evening meal; I renounced my share of supper, withdrew from the to me dismal atmosphere into my room and there, not from need, rather to have a certain taste— frankly, from a mortal craving for sweets ate three pieces of the cake in question. My heart was oppressed and out of sorts without my knowing the reason at first. Then, as I sat across from Tante G. in the dining room for a few minutes, it became evident to me that the abrupt exchange of the lightflooded sphere of your presence for the dreary, humdrum atmosphere of my so infinitely remote relatives was the weighty cause of that bad mood. But that has vanished now. My heart is light and my mind is clear. Your letter, your dear letter, has banished the clouds. It is bright. The heaven of our love shines out of the quiet flooding of my soul. Sweet sensations murmur softly like strong reeds, and longing like a rustling tree in blossom spreads out its arms within me. I don’t know how often I have read your lines. I don’t know what so overwhelms me. Is it alone the consciousness that they come from you, or is it rather the aroma of a deep, warm feeling that is wafting toward me, that intoxicates me. Vally, your dear words have poured a holy magic into my soul, yes, in it glimmers that worshipful, trembling earnestness that must have pervaded the hearts of the oracle-questioning Greeks when they awaited at the temple gate, half in hope, half in trepidation, the answer of the mysterious god. For to me too it is as though my eyes were seeing farther than usual—as though the dimming walls of the cramped little room were betaking themselves away—, as though today I were permitted to take a look into the future! But before I look out into that colorful rolling sea of mists, let me first of all gaze within myself. In this night, about half past eleven, it will be exactly nineteen years that I have been alive. You know the lack-luster story of my frustrated childhood and you know those persons who are to blame for my being able to note nothing or little that is joyous in those days of growth. (….)

Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller, The Love Letter, 1849

You often call me idealistic. Dearest Vally, if I am still that now, think what pure feeling must have shone in that little soul which, always lost in itself, was averse even to the simple, gay, innocent games of rowdy boys in the Primary School, and consider further, my love, how frightfully the onslaught of such wild, undeserved crudities must have echoed in the undefiled sanctuary of that childish spirit. (…) Yet I shall never be ashamed that my heart was empty before I found you, Vally, and leave the shame to those who had scorned to earn a place in it. Then came the time that you know (Linz Commercial School), whose bitter disillusionments and errors are buried in your forgiveness. Then came the fourth big division of my existence: the period of study. I was already prepared to renounce my scholastic future, weary of the everlasting, unsuccessful and aimless work, when I met you, beloved, dearest Vally, when you strengthened, healed, comforted me and gave me life, existence, hope, and future. On December 4th of the year in which I entered upon my high-school career in Schönfeld, I renounced this plan and, exhausted with work, wanted to fling myself into the arms of destiny’s stream, to go under or to land somewhere or other. But that today I am not straying through the world a purposeless wanderer, but rather as a confident fighter—my breast full of love, gratitude, and hope—am striding toward our happiness, our union, could I thank anyone but you for that, my divine Vally?

My whole previous life seems to me a road to you, like a long unlighted journey at the end of which my reward is to strive toward you and to know you will be all mine in the near future. (…) Then let us create, industrious in the practice of our arts, helping each other, taking counsel like two sturdy, blissful human beings—who over their love and their work forget the world and pity or despise people.—Then in six years, in the first year of the twentieth century, probably in the first or second of our official engagement, you will get, my much beloved panička, another letter like this which will contain a little backward glance over the worse times surmounted and a prophecy for better ones! Eleven o’clock at night it has already struck out there, and before I complete and read over this letter, nineteen years will certainly be full.— When I look briefly over them once more, the brightest point is that you stepped into my orbit and for life, as long as it beats, have given my poor heart, a stranger to love, the most worthy object of adoring, grateful devotion—in yourself!

René