Writing romantic love letters can really feel like a prehistoric apply in an age the place we classify a 2am “you up?” textual content as “romance.” However there was as soon as a time in our not so distance previous the place eloquent prose professing a burning affection (and written by hand!) was the norm. And never simply the stuff of delicate, heterosexual artist sorts both. Historical past is crammed with achingly romantic love letters between two girls and between two males, from former kings, presidents, and conflict generals, and to between two greatest associates.
For a bit inspiration to heat your chilly Tinder-hardened coronary heart, we have rounded up the ten most romantic love letters of all time, from George H.W. Bush’s candy notes to his spouse Barbara, to the steamy letters between Virginia Woolf and her feminine lover. Right here: A grasp class in affectionate prose.
1. Ernest Hemingway to Marlene Dietrich
Nobel Prize-winning American novelist Ernest Hemingway was a prolific, assured author, identified for his stoic masculinity. However in his letters to actress Marlene Dietrich, he exhibits a extra weak aspect. Hemingway wrote Dietrich, his greatest buddy, roughly 30 letters between 1949 to 1959. “I am unable to say how each time I ever put my arms round you I felt that I used to be residence,” he wrote in a single. (Dietrich’s daughter, Maria Riva, maintained in a New York Occasions article that the 2 have been merely shut associates.)
2. Napoleon to Joséphine
Whereas identified for his ruthlessness as a ruler, French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte additionally possessed a softer aspect. In letters to his spouse, Joséphine, the army chief reveals a vulnerability not present in his autocratic strategy to increasing the French empire. Earlier than you swoon: he divorced her when she couldn’t have youngsters. However Napoleon nonetheless continued to jot down to Joséphine for years after their separation. In a single explicit letter, penned whereas Napoleon was commanding the French military close to Italy a number of months after their marriage, he expressed how a lot he missed his spouse.
“Since I left you, I’ve been continuously depressed. My happiness is to be close to you. Incessantly I dwell over in my reminiscence your caresses, your tears, your affectionate solicitude. The charms of the incomparable Joséphine kindle regularly a burning and a glowing flame in my coronary heart. When, free from all solicitude, all harassing care, shall I be capable of cross all my time with you, having solely to like you, and to suppose solely of the happiness of so saying, and of proving it to you?”
3. Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera
It is no secret that Frida Kahlo and her husband, fellow artist Diego Rivera, had a tempestuous relationship, however in her love letters to Rivera, you see solely an intense love. Kahlo’s letters to Rivera stretch throughout the 27-year span of the couple’s relationship, and underscore the highly effective if tumultuous connection the 2 shared. In a single letter from The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait, Kahlo wrote of that deep emotional intimacy.
“Nothing compares to your fingers, nothing just like the green-gold of your eyes. My physique is crammed with you for days and days. You’re the mirror of the night time. The violent flash of lightning. The dampness of the earth. The hole of your armpits is my shelter. My fingers contact your blood. All my pleasure is to really feel life spring out of your flower-fountain that mine retains to fill all of the paths of my nerves that are yours.”
4. Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz
One other artist who excelled at writing spicy love letters: famed painter, Georgia O’Keeffe. Over the course of her 30-year romance with celebrated photographer Alfred Stieglitz, O’Keeffe exchanged greater than 5,000 letters (that is roughly 25,000 pages) on every thing from the mundane ongoings of her every day life to a few of her extra passionate encounters with Stieglitz. In all, the letters present a much more seductive aspect to the artist than her flowery work could initially recommend.
