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Reading of the Epitaph by Carl Nelson
The Love Letter
-by Nikolay Alekseyevich Nekrasov
Letter of love so strangely thrilling
With all your countless wonder yet,
Though Time our heart's hot fires have mastered,
Bringing a pang of pained regret!
The while your blest receiver holds you,
His banished passions still rebel,
No longer reason sacrifices
His sentiment,--so then farewell!
Destroyed be this love-token treasured!
For if 'tis read when time has flown,
Deep in the buried soul 'twill waken
The torment vanished days have known.
At first but a light scorn arousing
For silly childishness,--at last
With fiery yearning overwhelming,
And jealousy for all the past.
O Thou, from whom a myriad letters
Speak with the breath of love to me,
Though my gaze rest on thee austerely,
Yet, yet,--I cannot part with thee!
Time has revealed with bitter clearness
How little thou with truth wert blessed,
How like a child my own behaviour--
Yet, dear to me I still must save
This flower scentless, without colour,
From off my manhood's early grave!
I saw
Love Letters, a 1983 movie, twice and would like to watch it again.
Rating: R · Genre: Drama · Run time: 1 hrs 38 min
Synopsis: Unmarried disc jockey Jamie Lee Curtis happens across a packet of love letters, written by her late mother. As she peruses these missives, she learns that her mother had carried on a lengthy extramarital affair. At firt appalled by mom's "double life," Curtis is slowly brought around to another way of thinking. Soon she has embarked on her own romance with an older man, the very married James Keach. Well cast and sensitively directed, Love Letters is a purposely "small" films that deserves a larger audience. The film was also released as My Love Letters and Passion Play. [Source: Bing Movies]
The following video is a real blast from the past for many American television viewers. From an episode of the John and Leeza from Hollywood show (1993-94), here they are interviewing Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers about their starring roles in the play
Love Letters. My mother and I saw Wagner and Powers in the play in Portland and they were fabulous. The play -- not to be confused with the
movie mentioned above -- is the famous two-character play written by A. L. Gurney.
Love Letters is a Pulitzer Prize for Drama nominated play by A. R. Gurney. The play centers on just two characters, Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III. Using the epistolary form sometimes found in novels, they sit side by side at tables and read the notes, letters and cards - in which over nearly 50 years, they discuss their hopes and ambitions, dreams and disappointments, victories and defeats - that have passed between them throughout their separated lives. [Source: Wikipedia]
- My own love letters? I saved nearly every one of them written to me by others and wish I had made copies of the ones I wrote.
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