With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, LOVE is in the air! The internet is aglow with flower bouquet deals. TV is running jewelry store commercials. The newspapers are full of “what buy your sweetheart” ads. Local drugstore shelves are lined with boxes of chocolates, “lovable” stuffed animals, and miscellaneous red and pink junk.
But I have a better idea for a Valentine’s Day present: a gift of YOURSELF – a handwritten love letter or love poem. That’s what I ask for. I usually get a Dr. Seuss-like version. Works for me. People can buy their own stuff. Plus who needs more sugar in their life? Perfume can give you a headache. Flowers don’t last. Words do. Especially romantic ones.
If you’re romantically inclined, now’s the time to try your hand at pouring out your heart. If you’d like to, but don’t know how, don’t ask me. But I can point you in the right direction.
If you live near Hartford, CT, you could stop by the Mark Twain House and Museum on Saturday night. They’re staging a dramatic performance with two actors called “Long Distance Romance: The Love Letters of Sam and Olivia Clemens.” Yes, Mark Twain wrote mush, too—and quite passionately! (Although he would detest that “ly” adverb I just used.) The show includes a champagne and chocolate reception afterwards. This is the kind of show that I (and Frankie) love—great words and delicious treats!
If you live far away and can’t make the presentation, here’s an example of Mr. Twain’s love-lorn prose:
“I do love you, Livy, as the dew loves the flowers; as the birds love the sunshine; as the wavelets love the breeze; as mothers love their first-born; as memory loves old faces; as the yearning tides love the moon; as the angels love the pure in heart.”
“I am grateful—gratefuler* than ever before—that you were born, and that your love is mine and our two lives are welded together!”
I bet that worked for Livy.
Another gentleman of letters who was hot with passion was the British poet John Keats. Due to illness, he was separated from his love, Fanny Brawne. Here’s a portion of a letter he wrote her in 1819:
“My dearest Girl,
This moment I have set myself to copy some verses…I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in diminishing you from my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my Soul I can think of nothing else…I cannot exist without you. I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again…my Life seems to stop there…You have absorb’d me…I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you…I have no limit now to my love…..”
Keats’s poetry as well contains some of the most astonishing proclamations of love. This is from “Bright Star:”
“Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art…
No – yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever – or else swoon to death.”
Yikes!
“Bright Star” is the name of a recent movie directed and written by Jane Campion about the life of John Keats. It has just been released on DVD. It is a barn-burner of a love story. The acting is superb. The way John looks at Fanny throughout the movie tugs at your heartstrings. You can turn the volume off and still feel their love just by watching them. You don’t even need to hear what they say. But the words are Keats’s. And they are mighty words.
There is also a wonderful scene in the movie where Fanny goes to John’s house for a lesson on poetry. She says she has trouble “working out a poem.”
John gives her an intense philosophical explanation about what poetry does:
“You don’t jump in the lake to swim to the other side. You jump in the lake to luxuriate in the water.”
This is one of my favorite parts of the movie. I wrote down the dialogue verbatim. Now, if I could just find where I put the paper, I’d insert it in this blog. I’ll be on the look-out for it.
In the meantime, hope Keats or Twain inspires you to write a lovely Valentine. Good luck!
*According to dictionary.com, there is no such word as “gratefuler.” But who am I to argue with Mr. Twain?
John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) - Totally smitten!
Movie trailer:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3141144/bright_star_movie_trailer/
Jane Campion's Bright Star
