In front of him, she was humbled to the extreme—"It was I who squeezed myself into you, threw myself into your arms, and plunged headlong into my fate." "All the people pampered me, they pampered me, everyone was good to me—only you, only you forgot me, only you, only you never recognized me!"
——"Reader", Issue 7, 2014, "Those Stubborn Unrequited Love"
Austrian writer Stefan Zweig has been called "the most knowledgeable writer in the world about women".
He is good at using delicate and exquisite words to portray the love and anger, joy and sorrow of female characters.
And his most famous work is "Letter from a Strange Woman", which portrays a secret love to the extreme.
Zweig himself received two heartfelt letters from an anonymous woman, which inspired him to write this book.
In the book, the heroine dedicates her life to a fiery crush, paranoid chasing the ideal love in her heart, and abandons everything for it, until she loses her life.
But until the end of her life, she failed to leave her name, and what she left to her lover was only a letter that condensed her life's infatuation and a hazy outline.
Her tragedy is a reminder to the world: love yourself before you love your neighbor.
Take love as salvation and bury the footnotes of tragedy
Before meeting Writer R, the girl felt that her life was bleak.
Her father died early, and she lived a poor life with her mother since she was a child.
Her mother was depressed all day and had no time to take care of her, and her neighbors were poor and rude, which disgusted her.
Just then, writer R moved across the street from the girl's house.
He was personable and gentle, and the girl's heart was instantly captured.
After that, the girl's life was reduced to observing the writer.
She spent the afternoon in the cold porch, because she could peek through the keyhole of the door to the writer's door;
She kissed the doorknob that the writer had touched, secretly picked up the cigarette butt he had thrown away, and ran downstairs countless times with excuses, just to guess his routine from the lights in the writer's room.
She sees love as a belief and hopes that her feelings for writers will redeem her.
But what ushered in was a slap in the face.
Source: Visual China
When her mother remarried and was about to take her out of Vienna, the girl was so distressed that she couldn't help but run downstairs to the writer for an answer.
However, after waiting all night in the cold wind, it was the writer who came home with a woman in his arms.
The girl's hopes were completely shattered, and she followed her mother to Brooklyn with a dead heart.
In the two years since she left the writer, the girl lived like a walking corpse, unwilling to study, refusing to communicate with anyone, and missing the writer in a daze every day.
But the girl had better options in life, and her stepfather saw her as his own, and she could have studied hard and enriched her knowledge at the best possible age.
But she turned a blind eye to all the good things in life, paranoid that only love for the writer could redeem herself, and plunged headlong into this doomous love.
As everyone knows, love has never been the antidote to the crux of life.
As the American poet Dickinson wrote, "If I had not seen the sun, I might have endured the darkness, but now the sun has made my loneliness even more desolate." ”
In reality, there are many people who are frustrated in life, so they project their hopes on love, hoping that their lover can save them from fire and water.
They take love as a life-saving straw and grasp it tightly, but in the end, they find that it is often love, which is the most bruised.
With every point of expectation of love, the scars of disappointment deepen.
Instead of consuming yourself while waiting to be rescued, you should climb out of the abyss with your own hands.
Love that is low to the dust cannot bloom beautiful flowers
Driven by intense longing, at the age of eighteen, the girl gave up her studies and returned to Vienna despite her family's objections.
She works as a low-level clerk in a clothing store, doing heavy work, but she is happy because she is close to the writer.
Every day after work, she rushed to the writer's downstairs and hugged the writer with her eyes, even if it was wind, frost, rain and snow, it never stopped.
Finally, one day, the writer saw her, but it was just an affair with Pingshui, inviting the girl to dinner, and then spending the Spring Festival together.
Three nights together was just a dewy marriage for the writer, but it became the happiest time in the girl's life.
Soon after, the girl found out that she was pregnant.
She knew that the writer was a playboy, and she didn't want to drag him down, so she chose to go away alone and give birth.
Because of poverty, the girl was confined to a humble private clinic, where she endured the harassment of doctors and gave birth in humiliation.
But all these hardships disappeared the moment I saw the child's face like a writer.
She hopes to give herself and the writer's flesh and blood the best conditions for growth, so she does not hesitate to sell her body and move between different men.
Every year on the writer's birthday, she will send a bouquet of white roses on time, hoping to leave a mark in the writer's heart.
However, the writer was unaware of her silent dedication, and the roses that were delivered on time never evoked the writer's memory of her.
Source: Visual China
This self-sacrifice of love only touched the girl herself in the end.
Her love, as Mu Xin said: "Love is hopeless, willing not to seek to be heard, and there is no blessing to be rewarded." Love in the heart, die in the heart. ”
Many people are accustomed to compromises in love, putting each other's joys, sorrows, and sorrows at the top, and living carefully by themselves.
However, the moth's efforts to put out the fire cannot be exchanged for the same return, and the desperate investment cannot wake up the lover who pretends to be asleep.
Humbly ingratiating yourself may win the favor of the other party for a while, but it is difficult to really enter the other party's heart.
You are willing to bow down to the dust for love, but no one will look down at you in the dust.
Good love is not prostrate at each other's feet and look up humbly, but equal to each other and cherish each other.
The greatest practice in one's life is to learn to love oneself
A few years later, the two met again at a ball.
At this time, the woman is already a veteran in the Fengyue field, and there is no shortage of men who are infatuated with her.
But the woman clings to her love for the writer and refuses to accept anyone.
As soon as the writer appeared, she lost her mind again. The writer casually invited, and she left her companion and went happily.
When they got along, she stubbornly concealed her past, hoping that the writer would remember her, but the writer only regarded her as a fireworks woman and stuffed her with some money before parting.
The woman, who felt humiliated, stuffed the money to the housekeeper at the door, and left in tears.
Since then, women have not appeared in the writer's world.
She turned her unwillingness to writers into cherishing her children.
But a sudden flu took the child's life.
Seeing that the child stopped breathing, her last hope of survival was gone.
She began to give up on herself and live in a self-destructive way, until she became seriously ill and died soon after.
At the moment of her death, the woman turned her lifelong infatuation with the writer into a long letter.
However, even after reading this letter, which was full of the affection of a woman's life, the writer could not recall what she looked like. This strange woman only left three or two ripples in his heart, and soon disappeared without a trace.
The strange woman gambles her life and rushes to this tragedy of love. Respectable, but also pitiful.
She values love above all else, which is also a misunderstanding that many people are prone to fall into when facing love.
You know, there is no relationship in this world that can occupy your entire life;
There is no relationship in this world that can replace your self-growth.
Losing one's love will only make oneself bruised.
Source: Visual China
Imagine, if she can let go of her obsession as soon as possible and live for herself, her life will definitely be different.
As Coco Chanel said, "Instead of caring about the betrayal and injustice of others, it is better to manage your own dignity and beauty." ”
In this world, no matter how strong the feelings are, they can't be at the cost of losing themselves.
If you love someone again, don't forget to love yourself, and if you put in a relationship, don't forget to keep the bottom line.
Instead of consuming life in vain in love, it is better to let yourself live an abundant and noble life.
In this life, only by loving oneself can one be loved by others.
As spectators of the story, we cannot blame the tragedy of the strange woman on the writer's lack of affection.
She is trapped in a self-directed and self-acted love one-man show, disappointing and hurting herself for a wisp of love.
The humility, twisting and paranoia of the strange woman in the book are very similar to many "love brains" who are crazy about love in reality.
And her bleak ending also reminds us that no matter how much we love someone, we must not forget to cherish ourselves.
As Zhang Ailing said: "All women eventually have a place to live, not others, only themselves." ”
In this world, relationships are fragile, people's hearts are unpredictable, and only oneself is the real backer.
Loving oneself is the greatest practice in life.
Author: Ink dyeing, pen splashing ink, freehand life.