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...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Heloise to Abelard (translated, paraphrased, and summarized)
━━━━━━━┛ ✠ ┗━━━━━━━━
I read the letter I received from you with impatience. In spite of all my misfortunes, I hoped to find nothing in it besides comfort; but how ingenious are lovers in tormenting themselves!
Why would you place the name of Heloise beside that of Abelard ? 'Twas your name only which my eager eyes sought after. I did not look for my own, which I would much rather forget if it will be used to describe your misfortune.
I see your heart has deserted me, and you have made greater advances in the way of devotion than I could wish. Alas! I am too weak to follow you. If I cannot follow you, will you have the cruelty to abandon me? The fear of this stabs my heart: but the fearful presages you make at the latter end of your Letter, those terrible images you draw of your death, quite distracts me. Cruel Abelard! you ought to have stopped my tears, and you make them flow; you ought to have quieted the disorder of my heart, and yet you throw me into despair.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
You desire that after your death I should take care of your ashes, and pay them the last duties. How could you describe them to me? Your ashes! You know it would break my heart to imagine them. No, you will not die before me. Heaven, as severe as it has been against me, is not in so cruel as to permit me to live one moment after you. Life without my Abelard is an unsupportable punishment, and death a most exquisite happiness, if by that means I can be united with him. If Heaven hears the prayers I continually make for you, your days will be prolonged, and you will bury me.
But until then, write not to me any such terrible things. Are we not already sufficiently miserable? must we aggravate our sorrows? Our life here is but a languishing death. Will you hasten it? Our present disgraces are sufficient to employ our thoughts continually, and shall we seek new arguments of grief in futurities? How void of reason are men, said Seneca, to make distant evils present by reflection, and to take pains before death to lose all the comforts of life?
When you have finished your course here below, you say it is your desire that your body be carried to me, with the intent that being always exposed to my eyes, you may be for ever present to my mind. Do you not think you are already present in my mind? Can you think that the traces you have drawn in my heart can ever be worn out? or that any length of time can obliterate my memory of you?
