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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Abelard to Heloise (translated, paraphrased, and summarized)
━━━━━━━┛ ✠ ┗━━━━━━━━
Could I have imagined that a letter not written to you could have fallen into your hands, I would have been more cautious not to have inserted anything in it which might awaken the memory of our past misfortunes.
I purpose here to dry up those tears which the sad description occasioned you to shed: I intend to mix my grief with yours, and pour out my heart before you; in short, to lay open before your eyes all my trouble, and the secrets of my soul, which my vanity has until now made me conceal from the rest of the world, and which you now force from me, in spite of my resolutions.
It is true, that given what has befallen us, and knowing that no change of our condition was to be expected; that those prosperous days which had seduced us were now past, and there remained nothing left to do but to erase out of our minds, by painful endeavours, all marks and remembrance of them, I had wished to find in philosophy and religion a remedy for my disgrace; I searched out an asylum to secure me from love.
I was come to the sad experiment of making vows to harden my heart. But what have I gained by this? If my passion has been put under a restraint, my ideas yet remain.
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I promise myself that I will forget you, and yet cannot think of you without loving you; and am pleased with that thought.
My love is not at all weakened by those attempts I make in order to free myself from it.
The silence I am surrounded by makes me more sensible to your absence; and in the busy-ness of my vocation, I begin to persuade myself that it is a superfluous trouble to drive to free myself; and that it is wiser, instead, if I can conceal from every one but you my confusion and weakness.
For still, despite my efforts, it is there.
I removed to a distance from your person and yet I incessantly seek for you in my mind; I recall your image in my memory; and in thinking of you I betray and contradict myself. I hate you: I love you. Shame presses me on all sides: I am at this moment afraid both to seem indifferent to you and afraid you will discover the intensity of my troubles.
