Valentine's Day is a day to celebrate love, and it also makes people unconsciously turn their eyes to literary works that celebrate love. In some of the greatest novels and poems in the history of literature, love is an important image, if not a subject.
From Virginia Woolf, the representative of feminist writers, to Yeats, the giant of English poetry, in the writer's pen, love is gunpowder that can blow up a most numb and hollow soul; love is also sacred, guiding mortals to the eternal Garden of Eden.
In real life, the relationship between love and the writer and his creation is much more complicated:
In the widely circulated poem "When You're Old", Yeats confesses affectionately to Mode Gunn, behind which is a life of bitter love for fifty years but cannot be loved;
Behind the countless praises received by "Ulysses" is a "love fairy tale" in which a pair of loving partners have been together for decades;
Behind "The Great Gatsby", Fitzgerald married the girl of his dreams, but failed to grasp the eternity of love...
The muses who inspire writers to write
On this Valentine's Day, we combed through the romance of 5 writers, how they influenced and shaped the classic characters in literary history - they are the lovers of writers, the muse, and the bondage of a lifetime. Although their influence on writers cannot be an indicator of literary works, they can make people experience the passion and thinking of writers when creating.
In addition to the good story of the ancients, "fish passing on the ruler, Hongyan passing on the book", writing the lover into an immortal literary work, probably only a great writer can achieve this kind of romance.
Vita Sackville West
Woolf's "Orlando"
For every woman who has made literature her life's work, Woolf's husband Leonard is an ideal companion. He supported her unreservedly in his career, respected her emotionally, and cared for her. Woolf's most passionate emotional and literary life, however, was that of another woman: the English writer and poet Vita Sackville-West.
Vita Sackville-West
Vita is not an unknown person. She is the only poet to have won the Hawthorne Prize for Literature in England for two consecutive years. She was born into the nobility, was by nature, and was versatile. In addition to writing, she was also an excellent horticulturist, and Britain's most beautiful garden, Sissinghurst Castle, was built by Vita and her diplomat husband.
A corner of Sissinghurst Castle built by the Vitas
In 1922, at the age of 40, Woolf met Vita and quickly fell in love. The romantic relationship between the two lasted until Woolf's death. In 1924, after Vita's first visit to her home, Woolf wrote in his diary:
"A perfect lady with all the drive and courage of an aristocrat, but not as childish as I thought."
In 1928, Woolf published her most seminal novel: Orlando. The protagonist of the novel is entirely based on Vita: in the novel, Orlando is elegant, bold, curious, and gendered, traveling through centuries of time.
Stills from the movie Orlando
In a diary written by Woolf on October 5, 1927, we can see the beginning of the novel's conception:
"Suddenly this usual excitement broke into my heart: a biography of a character who began in 1500 and has lived to the present day , Orlando - Vita: A Story about gender transition."
Vita and Woolf
Orlando is almost the sweetest and lightest of all Woolf's novels, and as Vita's son describes it, "the longest and most fascinating love letter in the history of literature." Years later, while recalling his mother's romantic affair, he recalled:
"Woolf explores Vita in Orlando, weaving her over the centuries, switching from one gender to another, dressing her with fur and lace, putting emerald jewelry on her, flirting with her, playing, and casting a paradoxical mist around her."
Woolf's love affair with Vita is unique, like the protagonist of the novel Orlando, changing shape smoothly with the passage of time, turning into a fiery passion, into a deep and subtle intimate emotion, into the most determined friendship.
Nora Barnacer
James Joyce's only muse
One of the greatest English-language literature of the twentieth century, James Joyce's masterpiece Ulysses, describes the daily experiences of Leopold Bloom, a small citizen of Dublin, in a day and night on 16 June 1904;
In reality, this day is the day Joyce officially dates his wife, Nora Barnacker.
James Joyce with wife Nora Barnacker
Nora Barnacle is James Joyce's wife and lifelong love. Joyce is shy, glasses-wearers, and bad at words; Nora has beautiful red hair, holds her head high, and always faces the hardships of life—which makes Joyce deeply adored.
Nora and Joyce are on their way to register their marriage
Joyce and Nora also suffer from the lack of family warmth. Nora's witty language and clever manner often make Joyce laugh; Nora flees her native family alone, without friends, and Joyce is all she has. When Joyce says she wants to leave Ireland, which he hates, Nora offers to take her with her:
"The fact that no one has been so close to my soul as you have, and the fact that you have voluntarily stood with me in this way, in my adventurous career, makes me feel immensely proud and relieved."
Nora is Joyce's only muse, and although she hasn't read one of his books in its entirety, she can find what she's said in Exile and see her past in Dubliner. At the end of Ulysses, the protagonist Molly's large, unpunctuated monologue is a linguistic version of the sentence nora written by Nora on the letter paper with violet decoration:
"I've felt so lonely since we separated last night..."
Joyce must have studied these letters and learned this warm pattern of feminine discourse from them. The unpunctuated text allows Joyce to see a passionate woman who loves not only her soul, but also her words, so much so that in the final chapter of Ulysses, he also arranges a large unpunctuated monologue for the charming heroine Molly Bloom:
"I'm a flower in the mountains Yes when I put a rose in my hair like the girls of Andalusia or I'm still wearing a red dress Yes he kisses me under the walls of the wasteland I think he's as good as another..."
With the publication of Joyce's works, in order to enable the children to obtain legal inheritance rights, in 1931, 27 years after eloping, Joyce and Nora held a wedding. She finally became the real "Lady Joyce".
Joyce and the Nora couple
In 1941, Joyce died of a perforated stomach ulcer in Zurich, Switzerland. 10 years later, Nora died and the two were buried together in a cemetery in Zurich. Nora was destined to live and die with him, and her last name was Barnacle, which in Irish means follower.
Mode Gunn
The Soul of Yeats's Poetry
The American writer Jim Dwyer once said that Mody Gund was "the object of Yeats's fifty-year fascination and the source of inspiration for his desire for poetry." Yeats, who first met the 1.8-meter-tall stage actor, feminist, and sophistician at the age of 23, described the first meeting between the two:
Proud and beautiful Modd Gon
"She stood by the window, and beside her bloomed a large clump of apple blossoms; she was dazzling, as if she were a petal sprinkled with sunlight."
In ireland at that time, the enthusiastic Modd Gunn actively participated in various democratic movements, but Yeats believed that it should not be too radical, but to adopt a soft strategy. Despite their disagreements, the two often wrote letters to each other, in which Yeats shared his poems with Mod gan, who told Yeats about her fiery ideals.
According to statistics, Yeats once sent more than 150 letters to ModGan. Although they had always been close and Yeats had always used her as inspiration to write poetry, Yeats proposed to Modd Gon four times before and after, all of which were rejected.
Young Yeats
Perhaps nothing inspires nostalgic poetry more than unrequited love. Yeats devoted his deep affection to the creation of poems. In the decade from 1891 to 1901, Yeats wrote countless classic poems for Mod Gon, perhaps the most moving of which was the famous "When You're Old":
"How many people love the cheerful hours of your youth, your beauty, your falsehood and sincerity. There is only one man who loves the soul of your pilgrim, the painful wrinkles on your aging face. “
When Yeats wrote this poem, Modd Gang was still in her prime, preaching her twilight years to a young girl who was enjoying the fruits of youth, which was too cruel but an irresistible law of nature.
The English version of "When You're Old"
In the face of this beautiful girl with stars and the moon, Yeats did not praise her obvious beauty, but as a knight willing to accompany her for a lifetime, he expressed his unswerving love to her in this way. The love of others, whether true or false, may be mostly out of love for her face, and the only poet loves her noble soul.
Beatrice
The "Goddess" of the Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri, the pioneer of the European Renaissance era, is known as the "Supreme Poet" and "Father of the Italian Language", and his epic poem "Divine Comedy" has had a profound influence on the poetry of later generations in Europe.
Portrait of Dante
Beatrice, the goddess who rescued Dante in the Divine Comedy, was also Dante's lifelong "literary goddess". And the origin of the two people actually originated from the "glimpse of the amazing" of Dante's green plum bamboo horse period:
It was a bright spring day, specifically on May 1st, when nine-year-old Dante met Beatrice, who was only eight years old at the time, while playing with his friends. At this first meeting, Dante's heart spontaneously sprouted a strange emotion, a feeling of admiration. Years later, Dante described his feelings at that time in his poetry collection The New Life:
"At this time, the spirit of life, hidden in the deepest part of life, began to tremble violently, and even the very weak pulse felt the vibration."
This kind of admiration cannot be understood by the modern definition of love. From the end of the Middle Ages to the early Renaissance, great poets and writers such as Boccaccio and Petrarch had a woman in their hearts. This affection is not a worldly love, but a spiritual love, like the Christian piety to the Virgin.
This love can cultivate their emotions, wash their souls, and sublimate their minds, which is a great spiritual and moral force that makes them purer and nobler.
Eight years after their first encounter, 17-year-old Dante is reunited with Beatrice again on the banks of a bridge over the Arno River in his hometown of Florence.
Dante reunites with Beatrice, who wears a long pale yellow dress
But Cupid's arrow did not hit the two. Later, Beatrice married a woman and died at a young age. In the midst of grief, Dante connected the poems and essays he had written for her into his early masterpiece, The New Life.
The New Life is a collection of poems about Dante's "noble and fiery love" for Beatrice, in which Dante says that Beatrice is the "embodiment of love" and that she has "indescribable tenderness, indescribable elegance".
If "New Life" is a "love poem" dedicated to Beatrice, in the Divine Comedy, Beatrice is placed on a higher spiritual level by Dante.
Illustration of the Divine Comedy
In the Divine Comedy, Dante is lost in the misty forest and suddenly encounters three fierce beasts of lion, leopard and wolf, at this moment, Virgil, one of the three great poets of ancient Rome, appears and saves Dante, saying that he has been entrusted by the goddess Beatrice to rescue him.
After Dante's journey to Purgatory and heaven, it was Beatrice who led him up to the Ninth Heaven. As can be seen from the arrangement of the Divine Comedy, Beatrice had a profound influence on dante's thoughts and spirit throughout his life.
Beatrice and Dante were never really a couple when she was alive, and perhaps Dante's love for her was more like an imagination of the perfect partner, projecting all his desires and dreams, and not having to bear any disappointment of loving a real person.
Although we cannot know the relationship between the two, through the Divine Comedy, the world will know that there is a girl named Beatrice in the former Florence, who will always remain in Dante's works and guide Dante to the temple of faith.
Zelda Fitzgerald
A realistic version of "Daisy Buchanan"
Is love crazy or destructive? This question has been echoing through Fitzgerald's marriage to Zelda. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a spokesman for the "Jazz Age" of the 1920s and a representative writer of the "Lost Generation" in the United States. However, throughout the indulgent glitz of the Jazz Age, the carnival and despair that alternate between Fitzgerald and Zelda's love form the complete story.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald was born into a depressed middle-class family in Minnesota. In 1917, during World War I, Fitzgerald left school, enlisted in the Army, and was stationed in Alabama. There he met Zelda Sayre, the daughter of a state high court judge.
Zelda, who was 18 at the time, was like a spoiled girl by God, and at the same time, she was crazy, intelligent and calm. When Fitzgerald stepped straight up to the prom to introduce himself, Zelda "was like staring into his own eyes in a mirror."
Maiden Zelda
The two soon fell in love and became engaged. After the war, Fitzgerald came to New York, where he worked as a meager advertising clerk during the day and novels at night. Out of his fascination with Zelda, Fitzgerald even rewrote the "Paradise on Earth" he was working on, adding several shadows of Zelda to the heroine Rosalyn. He once wrote to Zelda:
"The heroine's resemblance to you is more than everywhere. —Fervent F. Scott Fitzgerald"
In 1919, the publication of "Paradise on Earth" made Fitzgerald famous overnight, becoming a genius writer who was robbed by the American literary scene. Along with the triumphant song of victory, there is also a wedding march. The following year, Fitzgerald and Zelda had a grand wedding.
The Fitzgeralds eventually became dependents
After marriage, they went in and out of the social scene in New York and quickly became the most concerned pair of golden girls at that time, not only because of their good looks, but also because of the couple's profligate and profligate lifestyle.
The Fitzgeralds in the movie Midnight in Paris
Like all the people of the "charming, self-destructive" Jazz Age, Fitzgerald and Zelda plunged into this glorious but short-lived era: they spent their nights on the roof of a taxi, they were evicted by the police for noise in hotels, they drove speeding down the streets in the middle of the night... To awaken his numb nerves, Zelda began to take drugs, while Fitzgerald indulged in alcohol.
Zelda was undoubtedly one of the most obsessive women of the 1920s. She is brash and avant-garde, and loves literature and art. Although famous as Fitzgerald's muse to later generations, Zelda himself wrote and painted. Extraordinary inspiration for talent can be seen in many of her paintings. However, these creations never brought zelda any fame during her lifetime. Sexy, desperate Zelda begins to become hysterical and develops schizophrenia.
Zelda Fitzgerald after marriage
At the same time, Fitzgerald was exhorting him to keep his life from falling apart. Zelda's shadow can be found in many of his novels. The novels also make extensive use of Zelda's daily life material. For example, in The Marvelous Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan says to her newborn daughter, "I wish she were a fool — the best thing a girl could do in the world, a beautiful little fool." That's exactly what Zelda said when her daughter Scotty was born.
The once-happy Fitzgerald family
Fitzgerald's marriage to Zelda was a cycle of torturing each other, arguing, and reconciling. After Zelda's illness relapsed, Fitzgerald wrote in a letter to her: "We destroyed each other" Perhaps, in the novel Song of Alabama, a tribute to Zelda, Gilles Leroy summed it up best:
"People say it was madness that caused the separation of the two of us. I know the opposite: our madness connects us together. It is sobriety that separates us. ”
*The pictures in this article are from the network
Read the recommendation
Books Recommendation
"We Were in Love and Really Ignorant" (English-Chinese Version)
Author: [English] William Shakespeare / [English] W· H. Auden et al
Publisher: Century Wenjing | Shanghai People's Publishing House
Translator: Bian Zhilin
Seventy-four poems are selected from thirty English poets, from Shakespeare to Auden. These poems are both masterpieces of the past and works that are rare in general popular anthologies, translated by Bian Zhilin according to the original poetic style, and the rhythmic beauty of the original poems is preserved to the greatest extent.
Selected poets in the book include: William Shakespeare, John Dorne, John Milton, Byron, Shelley, John Keats, Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Hugh McDilmed, W. Miller, and W. Miller. H. Auden et al. The selected articles are arranged in chronological order, compared with English and Chinese, and with annotations, which are primer books for ordinary readers to appreciate British poetry, and are also important reference materials for English learners and literature lovers to collect.
"I Love You, Waste Wood"
Author: [Israel] Raphael Bob-Wackersberg
Publisher: Beijing United Publishing Company
Translator: Qi Yue
The first collection of short stories by Raphael Bob Wackersberg, the screenwriter of "Bojack the Horseman", tells the story of 18 urban men and women who are clumsily in love, they are lonely, shy, kind, afraid of being hurt, and afraid of hurting others, but the eternal desire for love in their hearts brings them closer to each other.
These stories achieve magical effects that only good works can achieve: making your heart tremble, making you tears in your eyes, raising the corners of your mouth, or all three. After reading this book, you will find that in every moment when you screw things up, in the flawed life, there are people who love you.
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