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violet to vita

august, 1918

“i want to see you. i want to hear your voice. i want to put my hand on your shoulder and cry my heart out. mitya, mitya, i have never told you the whole truth. you shall have it now: i have loved you all my life, a long time without knowing, years knowing it as irrevocably as i know it now, loved you as my ideal…”

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“to vita sackville-west

15 september

my dear vita,

i like the story very very much — in fact, i began reading it after you left. . . went out for a walk, thinking of it all the time, and came back and finished it, being full of a particular kind of interest which i daresay has something to do with its being the sort of thing i should like to write myself. i don’t know whether this fact should make you discount my praises, but i’m certain that you have done something much more interesting (to me at least) than you've yet done...

i am very glad we are going to publish it, and extremely proud and indeed touched, with my childlike dazzled affection for you, that you should dedicate it to me. we sent it to the printers this morning.”

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“to virginia woolf

5 may

darling, darling virginia, it’s quite incredible that i shall see you tomorrow...”

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“to virginia woolf

30 august

dear me, i do wish i had you always in the house. have you read oroonoko? do you like it? do you like me? would you miss me if i disappeared? have you been depressed? do you still think you are a bad writer?

sheep are bleating on the road outside. that sound whisks me straight back to the bakhtiari road. how hot it must be there now, and how deserted. i wish i were there in camp, with you.”

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violet to vita

august, 1918

“my days are consumed by this impotent longing for you, and my nights are riddled with insufferable dreams… i want you. i want you hungrily, frenziedly, passionately. i am starving for you, if you must know it. not only the physical you, but your fellowship, your sympathy, the innumerable points of view we share. i can’t exist without you, you are my affinity, the intellectual ‘pendent’ to me, my twin spirit. i can’t help it! no more can you!… we complete each other…”

“my beautiful, my lovely, i want you so… cast aside the drab garments of respectability and convention, my beautiful bird of paradise, they become you not. lead the life nature intended you to lead.”

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“to vita sackville

30 august

why need you be so timid and pride-blown, both at once, over writing your novel? what does donkey west mean about her ambition and failure?. . . surely, for the last ten years almost, you have cut back and pruned and root dug — what is it one should do to fig trees? — with the result that you write sometimes too much like a racehorse who has been trained till his tail is like a mouses tail and his ribs are like a raised map of the alps. please write your novel, and then you will enter into the unreal world, where virginia lives — and poor woman, can’t now live anywhere else. . .”

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“to vita sackville-west

30 august

i’ve just stopped talking to you. it seems so strange. it’s perfectly peaceful here — they’re playing bowls — i’d just put flowers in your room. and there you sit with the bombs falling round you.

what can one say — except that i love you and i’ve got to live through this strange quiet evening thinking of you sitting there alone. dearest — let me have a line. . .

you have given me such happiness. . .”

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“september 27.

[virginia and i] went out to look at the cathedral, and view from the terrace; then lay in a field not talking much, but just listening to the crickets”.

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violet to vita

march, 1919

“i want you every second and every hour of the day… sometimes i am flooded by an agony of physical longing for you… a craving for your nearness and your touch. at other times I feel I should be quite content if i could only hear the sound of your voice. i try so hard to imagine your lips on mine. never was there such a pitiful imagining…

nothing and no one in the world could kill the love i have for you. i have surrendered my whole individuality, the very essence of my being to you. i have given you my body time after time to treat as you pleased, to tear in pieces if such had been your will. all the hoardings of my imagination i have laid bare to you. there isn’t a recess in my brain into which you haven’t penetrated. i have clung to you and caressed you and slept with you and i would like to tell the whole world i clamor for you… you are my lover and i am your mistress, and kingdoms and empires and governments have tottered and succumbed before now to that mighty combination — the most powerful in the world.”

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