A re-telling of the true 12th century love story of Heloise and Abelard. Abelard is a great philosopher and theologian who has taken, like many academics of the time, a vow of celibacy. When he is hired as a tutor for the brilliant and beautiful Hel...
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Heloise to Abelard (translated, paraphrased, and summarized)
━━━━━━━┛ ✠ ┗━━━━━━━━
Your letter to your friend happened to fall into my hands and I knew, right away, your character from your words and your character from your penmanship. I had to open it. I consider myself a calm and reserved woman these days, but you cannot expect me to act that way when I hear news of my Abelard.
Oh, how much my curiosity has cost me; how much it has disturbed me. I met with my name a hundred times in your letter and never did you write it without fear, without regret, without talk of misfortune. Some heavy calamity always followed it.
But I saw your name there too, equally unhappy.
Remembering you... reading you remembering me... puts my spirits into such a violent motion that I feel I'm missing you all over again. You've set my grief afresh. Although the length of time ought to have closed up my wounds, seeing them described there by your hand was sufficient enough to make them all open again and bleed.
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Nothing can ever blot from my memory what you have suffered in defence of your writings. A cruel uncle and an injured lover will always be present in my aching sight. And I will never forget what your enemies, who envy your glory, have now raised against you. I shall never forget your reputation, so justly acquired, torn to pieces, and blasted by the inexorable cruelty of half-learned pretenders to science.
I know you. I know your enemies have imposed on you opinions quite different from your meaning. They've resolved you to be a heretic. What a storm was raised against you by the treacherous monks, when you did them the honour to be called their Brother!
This history of our numerous misfortunes, related in so true and moving a manner, made my heart bleed within me. My tears, which I could not restrain, have blotted half your letter: I wish they had effaced the whole and that I had returned it to you in that condition. Then you would know how I feel.
Upon reading your letter I felt all my misfortunes renewed. I think I hated you, when you left me. When you stopped writing to me. It's a funny thing, that in the length of time that has passed between us, that can disarm even the strongest hatred, the hatred of your enemies has only grown. Perhaps their hatred has replaced mine.
