As time goes by, love letters are lost art
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I am writing this on Valentine's Day, and all around me, unseen, cupids fly unleashing their little arrows. If I do not feel their sting, it is because they are looking for younger prey.
Thank goodness. There are few blessings in growing older, but this has to be one. Who wants to be out there dating in today's impersonal hook-up culture? (Well, other than you frisky young people.)
As I write this nostalgic commentary freighted with remembrance of love's labors lost, the old song from "Casablanca" reassures me:
You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.
To which I say, maybe, but what about love letters? They were once a fundamental thing. Now I fear that this great literary art form has gone the way of the passenger pigeon or the liberal Republican.
It was not always thus. Once upon a time, a young man had to write romantic letters because he would go off into the service for years and letters were the only means to help fan the flickering candle of love back home.
And you know what? The young woman would keep those letters tied with a pink ribbon in a special box until he returned. Then she would sell them to one of his friends for blackmailing purposes and use the proceeds to go overseas herself.
When asked for an explanation, the young woman would have to explain as kindly as possible that it was his flowery metaphors that put her off -- that and the flowery analogies.
Ah, those were the days.
What has caused me to think of love letters in the absence of receiving any lately is an Associated Press story concerning 573 love letters exchanged by 19th-century poet Elizabeth Barrett and fellow poet Robert Browning, her future husband.
Here's an example of a letter written from her to him on June 4, 1846: "You are too perfect, too overcomingly good & tender -- dearest you are, & I have no words with which to answer you."
How sweet! How like something Newt Gingrich, the famous lover and historian, would write to himself -- except the part about having no words to answer.
Starting on Valentine's Day, the story said, the Brownings' famous love letters would become available online to be viewed just as they were, written with quill pens, thanks to a collaboration between Wellesley College in Massachusetts and Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
First Published February 15, 2012 12:00 am
