My Dear Maxine,

        I lost my missive on this item, so I will have to keep this one 
short and sweet...
       
         I was tellling you how I felt at first sad upon reading this 
item, thinking that indeed I've become the 'old fool" again, who, like 
Prince Vessantara, has his Jungian  "life question" or connundrum in 
that the  more kind and generous he is, the more he's resented out of 
villager insecurity, until his entire nation turns on him and banishes 
the baffled man...

        No one seems to have any "use" for romance anymore...

        I'll write you tomorrow about the "kangaroo court' with Herr 
"Bo-bo" Valencia, who committed perjury by claiming before Jennie Rhine 
(?!?) in an otherwise empty courtroom that I "fabricated" my claim 
against him...

         But for now let me say that do not ever forget that my love for 
you is the "secret of my strength" and that I will perservere,no matter 
how badly things continue to go.  I don't think that I exaggerate, and I 
am quite aware of "other" females,[***********] , who 
have made certain claims upon my person as well...And yet I have this 
quality, one that even I find troublesome, of being able to have love 
for more than one woman--each in a different and yet simultaneous 
way--so that you may rest assured (if my adorations do said matter for 
you) that I will always love you and find a way to reach you no matter 
what...

love,
tom 


>Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 00:38:13 -0700
>To: <raudra9@hotmail.com>
>From: elisa vandernoot <elisav@wiesenthal.com> (by way of Jack Kolb 
<KOLB@ucla.edu>) (by way of Jack Kolb <KOLB@ucla.edu>)
>Subject: Love's labour lost
>
>The Irish Times
>Wednesday, July 29, 1998
>
>Love's labour lost 
>
>Perusing a collection of Simone de Beauvoir's just-published love 
letters,
>Arminta Wallace laments the decline of passion on a handwritten page. 
Emails
>and phone calls are just not quite the same. . .
>
>It begins the moment you recognise the handwriting on the envelope:
>definitely not a bill, then. You turn it over a few times, just for the 
joy
>of holding it - and then you open it, and the day is changed forever. 
Few
>things can lift the human heart as effortlessly as a letter from a 
loved
>one; but as an unstoppable wave of technology carries us, crashing and
>foaming, into the 21st century, the gentle art of letter-writing seems 
to
>have been well and truly beached.
>
>But would it matter, really, if the love letter were to vanish off the 
face
>of the Earth? Has the old-fashioned thrill of pen and paper not been
>properly superseded by the excitement of being able to pick up the 
phone and
>speak to any beloved at any time, whether they're in the shower or 
half-way
>up Mount Everest? Doesn't email, instant, cheap and blissfully simple - 
no
>danger of messages getting "crossed in the post" - contain a 
considerable
>potential for post-modern passion?
>
>Maybe. Until you see, laid out before your eyes, a series of 
incomparable
>love letters written over a period of more than 15 years and tracing, 
with
>almost unbearable poignancy, the curves of a doomed relationship.
>
>Published here last week under the title Beloved Chicago Man, a 
collection
>of letters from Simone de Beauvoir to the American novelist Nelson 
Algren
>caused quite a stir when they were released in France last year - not
>because the affair had been kept secret, for it was well documented in
>accounts of de Beauvoir's life by both herself and others, but because 
the
>tender, vivid and incredibly regular missives revealed a side of the
>feminist writer whose existence nobody had really suspected.
>
>Taken as a whole - and the hardback book runs to some 575 pages - the
>letters are an astonishing outpouring of emotion from a woman who is 
more
>usually seen as the epitome of the pragmatic intellectual.
>
>De Beauvoir met Algren in Chicago in the winter of 1947. She was in the
>middle of a lecture tour of American universities, and looked him up at 
the
>suggestion of a friend. The attraction was immediate and mutual, and 
when
>the tour was over she returned to Chicago for a brief visit. This was 
to be
>the pattern of their relationship, for Algren could no more bring 
himself to
>leave the US than de Beauvoir could have been prised out of Paris; 
hence the
>hundreds of letters, in which she tries to bridge the distance between 
them
>by sharing the details of her daily life with him, providing a unique
>commentary on French literary, intellectual and political events of the 
late
>1940s and early 1950s in the process.
>
>If this was all the letters contained, they would be remarkable enough, 
but
>the depths of emotion displayed in them is a revelation. Though she 
chose to
>write in English as Algren's French was, to say the least, rudimentary, 
de
>Beauvoir was aware of her limitations in the second language and often
>worried that this lack of linguistic sophistication would let her down.
>
>Instead it seems to have liberated her, for who would have thought that 
the
>somewhat po-faced author of The Second Sex and The Mandarins could 
really
>have written, to the taciturn and spiky chronicler of Chicago low-life:
>"Darling, now it is midnight, I have worked very much today and seen 
some
>people and I am back in the little pink room and I just read your 
letter
>once more. It happens very often I just should have to copy your own 
letters
>to tell you what I feel: 'I did not think I could miss anybody so 
hardly. If
>I were to hold you just now I should cry with pain and happiness'. I am 
glad
>to suffer by you, I am glad to miss you so badly since you miss me too. 
I
>feel as if I were you and you were me. You'll believe in me as I'll 
believe
>in you, whatever happens, and we shall never feel apart anymore. There 
will
>never be anything but love between us. I wait for you, I long for you. 
Take
>me in your arms and kiss me and make me your wife once more . . . "
>
>When it comes to pages of postal passion, of course, intellectual
>considerations go out the window - and the irascibility, or otherwise, 
of
>the recipient seems to have no bearing on the matter. In 1912 Stella
>Campbell declared herself to the notorious grumpy George Bernard Shaw 
as
>follows: "No more shams - a real love letter this time - then I can 
breathe
>freely, and perhaps who knows begin to sit up and get well - I haven't 
said
>'kiss me' because life is too short for the kiss my heart calls for . 
.. All
>your words are as idle wind - Look into my eyes for two minutes without
>speaking if you dare! Where would be your 54 years? and my 
grandmother's
>heart? and how many hours would you be late for dinner? - If you give 
me one
>kiss and you can only kiss me if I say `kiss me' and I will never say 
`kiss
>me' because I am a respectable widow and I wouldn't let any man kiss me
>unless I was sure of the wedding ring . . . "
>
>Far from running a mile from such dizzy breathlessness, Shaw - the man 
who
>castigated Christmas as too soppy for words - ran straight into her 
arms.
>But if every love letter worth its salt aims for this tone of 
heightened
>emotion, not all of them achieve it. A disgruntled lover will often 
take
>refuge in a fit of the sulks, like the poet Rupert Brooke, who wrote to 
the
>actress Cathleen Nesbitt from New York in May 1913; "I'm in a beastly 
room
>over a cobbled street where there's the Hell of a noise; and I've been
>tramping this damned city all day, and riding in its cars (when they 
weren't
>too full); and it's hot; and I'm very tired and cross; and my pyjamas
>haven't come . . . " Or turn coy, like the two lasses who sent this
>mysterious missive to Philip Stanhope, second Earl of Chesterfield, in 
1657;
>"My Lord, My friend and I are now a bed together a contriving how to 
have
>your company this after noune. If you deserve this favour, you will 
come and
>seek us at Ludgate hill a bout three a clock at Butlers shop, where wee 
will
>expect you, but least wee should give you to much satisfaction at once, 
wee
>will say no more, expect the rest when you see . .. "
>
>Not all 17th-century women were so flirtatious. Certainly not Dorothy
>Stanhope, who must have dazed Sir William Temple with her list of
>requirements in a husband. "First . . . our humours must agree; and to 
do
>that he must have that kind of breeding that I have had, and used that 
kind
>of company. That is, he must not be so much a country gentleman as to
>understand nothing but hawks and dogs, and be fonder of either than his
>wife; nor of the sort of them whose aim reaches no further than to be
>Justice of the Peace, and once in his life High Sherriff, who reads no 
book
>but Statutes, and studies nothing but how to make a speech interlarded 
with
>Latin that may amaze his disagreeing poor neighbours, and fright them 
rather
>than persuade them into quietness . . . "
>
>And not all women, by any means, could turn out an acceptable love 
letter,
>as Evelyn Waugh's petulant note to his wife Laura from the military 
mission
>in Dubrovnik in January 1945 illustrates all too graphically; "Darling
>Laura, sweet whiskers, do try to write me better letters. your last, 
dated
>19 December received today, so eagerly expected, was a bitter
>disappointment. Do realise that a letter need not be a bald chronicle 
of
>events; I know you lead a dull life now, my heart bleeds for it, though 
I
>believe you could make it more interesting if you had the will. But 
that is
>no reason to make your letters as dull as your life. I simply am not
>interested in Bridget's children. Do grasp that . . . "
>
>Simone de Beauvoir's letters to Nelson Algren are, by comparison, a 
model of
>generosity, thoughtfulness and tolerance, even when she tackles topics 
like
>the difficulties of the long-distance relationship or notes that he has
>gambled away the money she intended to be saved for one of their 
precious
>holidays together. For the reader who follows the course of the affair 
from
>its magical beginnings to the wary friendliness of the later years, it 
is
>predictable and surprising and terribly, terribly sad. It's hard to 
imagine
>such a story ever being told in a series of emails - but if I ever 
receive
>an email which reads: "There is a delicate scent in my room. I have 
before
>me the second of your lovely veils, and when I press it to my face, I 
can
>almost feel the sweet warm breath from your mouth. The violets you 
picked
>for me yesterday, which nearly withered in my buttonhole, are now 
blooming
>anew, and smell soft and fresh", or words to that effect, I'll eat my 
words.
>Heck, I'll eat every love letter left on the planet.
>
>Beloved Chicago Man: Letters To Nelson Algren 1947-64, compiled by 
Sylvie Le
>Bon de Beauvoir, is published by Victor Gollancz at L25 in UK
>
>Copyright The Irish Times
>
>
>


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