The language of love letters

SINCE Valentine’s Day is on Wednesday, I shall take a break from talking about world Englishes and Philippine English and write something related to the day of romantic love. Today, I wish to discuss the language of love letters. Since I am a linguist and writer by profession, writing love letters has a special place in my (love) life. I am always fascinated by well-written love letters, those expressing affections and emotions in the most vivid and artistic way. I remember, when I was a teenager, I had a book that compiles love letters written by historical figures. I was too young to know what love was then (not that I know it too well now), but I did enjoy flipping through its pages, amused at how people in the past wrote about their feelings. I do not have the book now, but such letters can easily be searched on the internet. And so, in talking about the language of love letters, I shall use extracts from love letters of historical figures, too.

Love letters often describe their recipient in overstated, hyperbolized language. Actor Richard Burton once wrote to fellow actor Elizabeth Taylor:

“You don’t realize, of course, E.B., how fascinatingly beautiful you have always been, and how strangely you have acquired an added and special and dangerous loveliness.”

The emotions felt by the letter writer are often written in an elaborate and dramatic manner, and you would expect famous American author Mark Twain to have the best words to describe his feelings for his future wife Olivia Langdon:

“Out of the depths of my happy heart wells a great tide of love and prayer for this priceless treasure that is confined to my life-long keeping.

“You cannot see its intangible waves as they flow towards you, darling, but in these lines you will hear, as it were, the distant beating of the surf.”

Typically, love letters contain certain depictions that definitely sound unreal and purely imaginary. Yet, in these quasi-fictional lines, love is best expressed. I particularly like this one from Abigail Adams to her husband, former United States president John Adams:

“…should I draw you the picture of my heart it would be what I hope you would still love though it contained nothing new. The early possession you obtained there, and the absolute power you have obtained over it, leaves not the smallest space unoccupied.”

It is definitely important to talk about your love and relationship in those letters. Obviously, that is what those letters are for. And nothing could be more glorious to lovers than their love for one another. Former British prime minister Winston Churchill wrote in a letter to his wife Clementine:

“Time passes swiftly but is it not joyous to see how great and growing is the treasure we have gathered together, amid the storms and stresses of so many eventful and, to millions, tragic and terrible years.”

American novelist Ernest Hemingway would not be outdone, professing his love to actor Marlene Dietrich with these words:

“I can’t say how every time I ever put my arms around you, I felt that I was home. Nor too many things. But we were always cheerful and jokers together.”

As those letters were written in a time when it could possibly take days, or even weeks and months, before the recipient could actually read the letter, expressions of missing the beloved are written in such a way that separation from the recipient has meant catastrophe for the writer, as in this letter of Prince Albert to the United Kingdom’s Queen Victoria:

“Dearest, deeply loved Victoria, I need not tell you that since we left, all my thoughts have been with you at Windsor, and that your image fills my whole soul. Even in my dreams I never imagined that I should find so much love on earth. How that moment shines for me still when I was close to you, with your hand in mine. Those days flew by so quickly, but our separation will fly equally so. Ernest [my brother] wishes me to say a thousand nice things to you. With promises of unchanging love and devotion, Your ever true Albert.”

And this one is from the other side of the English Channel, from French emperor and military commander Napoleon Bonaparte sending his love to Joséphine de Beauharnais:

“Since I left you, I have been constantly depressed. My happiness is to be near you. Incessantly I live over in my memory your caresses, your tears, your affectionate solicitude.”

I also like this by German composer Ludwig van Bethoveen to an unknown recipient:

“Even in bed my ideas yearn toward you, my Immortal Beloved, here and there joyfully, then again sadly, awaiting from Fate, whether it will listen to us.”

Irish poet Oscar Wilde wrote this to another man, Lord Alfred Douglas: “My Own Boy,

“Your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red rose-leaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing. Your slim gilt soul walks between passion and poetry. I know Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly, was you in Greek days.

“Why are you alone in London, and when do you go to Salisbury? Do go there to cool your hands in the grey twilight of Gothic things, and come here whenever you like. It is a lovely place and lacks only you; but go to Salisbury first. “Always, with undying love, yours, Oscar”

My personal favorite is how Josephine Bracken would close her letters to our national hero Jose Rizal:

“Love I will love you ever, love I will leave thee never, ever precious to thee never to part heart bound to heart or never to say good bye. So my darling receive many warm Affection and love. From Your Ever faithful and True till death Josephine Bracken.”

Sadly, the art of writing letters — handwritten love letters, more so — is dying, if not already dead. Younger generations would now simply refer to how they fall for the other as “dead na dead” (“head over heels”), possibly an allusion to the forgotten art of writing love letters. Would you write a letter to your beloved this Valentine’s, and how?

PS. I am writing one for my M. xoxoxo

Ariane Macalinga Borlongan is one of the leading scholars on English in the Philippines who is also doing pioneering work on language in the context of migration. He is the youngest to earn a doctorate in linguistics, at 23, from De La Salle University. He has had several teaching and research positions in Germany, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Poland, Singapore and Taiwan. He is currently an associate professor of sociolinguistics at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in Japan.