“I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love,” said Darcy.
“Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away” said Elizabeth.
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
A new romance, one that is just an inkling of affection yet, a few conversations exchanged, is not very much different to an older and more mature love that has withstood its trials and endured its monotonies in that both are nourished with attention. The new love profits from its novelty because every aspect of the lover is fresh to the senses. The way that they smell, the shape of their hands, the curve of their gait, or the sound of their voice, are all intense to the senses. When you are really in love, all of these things combine to inebriate the heart into a state of childlike joy and folly and the love letter is effortless. But as time goes on, the novelty wears and the love letter becomes more necessary than ever to remind us of what we have; what we would lose ourselves to lose.
Whether your love story is just at its delicate beginning stages or you are many years deep into the relationship, the question of the nourishment of romance is a significant one to consider. What food does love need anyway? In the quote above, Elizabeth, from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, comments that romantic gestures can suffocate a new love as perhaps good steak and potatoes would cause problems for a newborn baby even though they would be nourishing later on. We profit from the different words “newborn” and “toddler” because they name the different stages of life that require different care. There ought to be such names for love as well, if we care about our love and wish to see it thrive as well!
New love must be distinguished from new affection. It is only when the mere inclination has developed into proper affection that the love letter will nourish rather than kill. When you are already attracted to each other, the romantic gesture serves to enhance. When the attraction is still developing, the love letter’s intensity can be catastrophic to the delicate ember not yet ignited. That ember is tended with real physical presence alone. In order to write a good love letter we must remind ourselves of the love when it was new and like a mirror that magnifies candle-light, the love letter magnifies the earliest attractions so that they can be seen again and again as they were seen once in the sparkling glow of novelty. The woven knots of old love are softened by nostalgia.
But writing a good love letter is not so simple, even Vladimir Nabokov struggled:
“My tenderness, my happiness, what words can I write for you? How strange that although my life’s work is moving a pen over paper, I don’t know how to tell you how I love, how I desire you.”
Vladimir Nabokov started writing letters to his beloved the day that they met in July 1923. He was 24 and his wife 21 when they got married but they had been courting since she was 19. He so adored her that he wrote her regularly throughout their marriage. His achingly romantic and brilliantly composed letters may be out of reach for mere mortals without his literary skill; nevertheless, there is something about the truth of love that we may glean from his letters. Nabokov’s letters may hold the secret that give us the tools to express our own love, which is no less magnificent despite the misfortune of not belonging to a poet.
Caption: Nabokov and his wife Vera pictures in 1968. When Vladimir finally became a famous and scandalous American writer, his wife kept a small pistol in her purse to protect him from assassination.
Lately, the idea of love letters has become popularized because of Erika and Charlie Kirk’s little tradition coming to light. However, in this world of instant messages and further, a secular materialistic world where things like romance are not taken so seriously, can we expect most people to even know how to write a love letter anymore? Indeed, this is not something that can be taken lightly, because the love letter, if poorly executed, can lead to embarrassment, resentment and, as Elizabeth Bennett puts it, “starve the love entirely away”. There is an etiquette to love letters. There is a way for a man to express his feelings without appearing either too cold, or too undignified. More importantly, this is for those whose love is mature and already “old”...because the right kind of love letter can rejuvenate it in ways that make it feel new again.