Writers and Unrequited Love

[Anstasia]

Hi all,

I would appreciate it very much if you let me know of authors who have suffered through the pangs of unrequited love.

Also, if you know of authors who lost but were reunited with their loved one, please let me know of them as well.

If you also know of the works where they explore these feelings, that would be awesome.

Thanks!

[kiki1982]

Charlotte Brontë had taken a liking to her Belgian teacher Mr C Héger, but he resolutely refused to answer her letters, in the same manner at least, and tore them up finally, after which his wife saved them (and now we know what she actually wrote :p).

Some have likened Jane Eyre's feelings for Rochester and some of his traits to Héger or at least Brontë's perception of him. (book with the same name, of course)

And there it was again :svengo:.

I seem to remember that there was some unrequited love issue in Austen's life and something to do with Wentworth/Darcy.

Goethe is bound to have some unrequited love somewhere, but I am not sure...

[cyberbob]

The first name that comes to my mind is Hans Christian Andersen.

This is from wikipedia on his love life:


In Andersen's early life, his private journal records his refusal to have sexual relations.[8][9]

Andersen often fell in love with unattainable women and many of his stories are interpreted as references to his sexual grief.[10] At one point he wrote in his diary: "Almighty God, thee only have I; thou steerest my fate, I must give myself up to thee! Give me a livelihood! Give me a bride! My blood wants love, as my heart does!"[11] A girl named Riborg Voigt was the unrequited love of Andersen's youth. A small pouch containing a long letter from Riborg was found on Andersen's chest when he died. Other disappointments in love included Sophie Ørsted, the daughter of the physicist Hans Christian Ørsted, and Louise Collin, the youngest daughter of his benefactor Jonas Collin. The most famous of these was the opera soprano Jenny Lind. One of his stories, "The Nightingale", was a written expression of his passion for Lind, and became the inspiration for her nickname, the "Swedish Nightingale". Andersen was often shy around women and had extreme difficulty in proposing to Lind. When Lind was boarding a train to take her to an opera concert, Andersen gave Lind a letter of proposal. Her feelings towards him were not the same; she saw him as a brother, writing to him in 1844 "farewell... God bless and protect my brother is the sincere wish of his affectionate sister, Jenny."[12]

Just as with his interest in women, Andersen would become attracted to nonreciprocating men. For example, Andersen wrote to Edvard Collin:[13] "I languish for you as for a pretty Calabrian wench... my sentiments for you are those of a woman. The femininity of my nature and our friendship must remain a mystery." Collin, who did not prefer men, wrote in his own memoir: "I found myself unable to respond to this love, and this caused the author much suffering." Likewise, the infatuations of the author for the Danish dancer Harald Scharff[14] and Carl Alexander, the young hereditary duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach,[15] did not result in any relationships.

[cyberbob]

And you might even say Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell if you believe in that rumor.

[Anstasia]

Hi guys,

Thank you for your responses so far. It's very intriguing. I also wanted to know about writers who were happily married, but I'll post that in another thread.

In the meantime, I wanted to say that I know that Kierkegaard rejected a girl whom he loved and who loved him dearly. This is not quite an unrequited love though...

I am also interested in earlier writers as well.

Please keep your answers coming. I am very grateful for your responses. Many thanks again!

[Pecksie]

Unrequited passions --- that's easier than the happy marriages :)

Philip Sidney's love for Penelope Devereux was, according to some rumours, unrequited. Others think that she returned his love --- but, whatever the truth, the two never managed to consummate it.

Emily Dickinson, who was famously reclusive, was probably in love with some married gentleman or other in her neighbourhood. Her cryptic poems hint at a secret love.

Alexander Pushkin was very much in love with his wife, who didn't much care for him and flirted with everyone else... He died in a duel with a French man-about-town over her 'honour'.

Sir Thomas Wyatt is rumoured to have been in love with Anne Boleyn around the very dangerous time when she caught the king's eye.

Federico García Lorca had a succession of painful infatuations, one of them with Salvador Dalí who, if I remember rightly, used him and laughed at him.

And, last but not least, Cesare Pavese, perhaps the greatest Italian novelist of the twentieth century, killed himself, aged 42, over a failed affair with a second-rate American actress... That's life for you (***sigh***).

[JCamilo]

The poems of Yeats certainly show his passion and rejection by Maud Gonne (who said : the world will thank me for this, because some of the best poems of Yeats are about the rejection).

Dante love for Beatrice is one of different kind, but well...

Borges had his passions. Estella Canto for example got The Alleph for her.

Hans Christian Andersen was in love with some singer, she had an affair with Chopin. Some say his nightingale was a bit a homage to her.

[Anstasia]

so, besides suicide, how else did the writers who experienced the pangs of unrequited love deal with it? My second question is--do you know if they've discussed their feelings in a published diary or a collection of letters?
As always, thanks!

[JCamilo]

Suicide? How many really did it?
The romantic poets have a considerable collection of letters and works about it, many dealt wiht impossible love due to social condition, then the early death due to disease (like Keats), Dante Gabriel Rossetti had to deal with his wife suicide...

[Anstasia]

And, last but not least, Cesare Pavese, perhaps the greatest Italian novelist of the twentieth century, killed himself, aged 42, over a failed affair with a second-rate American actress... That's life for you (***sigh***).

I do not know who else committed suicide because of unrequited love, but may be the list longer?


JCamilo, can you please point to the works and letters of the romantic writers you have in mind?

[JCamilo]

I am trying to recall any suicide due to love among writers, besides duel deaths like Pushkin and Euclides da Cunha, my memory just cann't bring one. Shelley bluffed about it...

Anyways, the two poets I think you may find anything interesting are Keats and Shelley. If you can find Keats works organized by date, his lyrical poetry has several allusions to Fanny Brawne and their letters were published.
And Shelley has many poems to Mary Shelley, plus some essays, one called About love or To love...

[Kafka's Crow]

Posted on 11th of March 2111:
This poem was recently found in a treasure-trove of old and forgotten internet pages from the last century. Experts believe the unknown author to have suffered great pain and though his love (not quite fully 'unrequitted' in the 22nd Century sense of this word) must have caused him a lot of angst to manifest itself in this manner:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36126&highlight=clio

[Desolation]

Goethe may well be the most prominent example of all this, given that his unrequited love for a lovely young lady provided the basis for the bible of unrequited love, The Sorrows of Young Werther.

I can't think of a lot of other specific examples, but I would imagine that a lot of writers have suffered from bouts of unrequited love. Part of the territory of being a writer...or an artist of any kind...is an unhealthy romanticizing of mundane real world issues. It's easy to put women on pedestals when you're full of big lofty poetic ideas. Unfortunately, all this tends to have an alienating effect on people, and the reality of any given situation can never actually live up to the ideal that one has created.

[Seasider]

In As You Like It Rosalind says

Men have died from time to time
and worms have eaten them...but not for love

[de Maistre]

Petrarch.

[Pecksie]

Heinrich von Kleist carried out a suicide pact with a woman friend (perhaps his lover) who had cancer. I don't know if he did it because he loved her and couldn't bear to lose her, or for some other reason...

[Seasider]

Is that unrequited love? Killing yourself in an arrangement with someone else doesn't fit my notion of unrequited love.

[mal4mac]

Schopenhauer is the poster boy for unrequited love in Alain de Botton's "Consolations of Philosophy". He fell for several society women but was rejected by them. At 43 he feel for 17 year old Flora Weiss and tried to charm her by offering her grapes during a boating party. Flora Weiss recorded in her diary, "I didn't want them. I felt revolted because old Schopenhauer had touched them, and so I let them slide into the water..." Ouch! Read de Botton to see how the old pessimist dealt with such rejections, and then read Schopenhauer himself...

[Anstasia]

Hm, great idea re Schopenhauer. Is there anyone who 'moved on' after unrequited love? or by definition the love is unrequited as long has one has not 'moved on'?

[Pecksie]

Is that unrequited love? Killing yourself in an arrangement with someone else doesn't fit my notion of unrequited love.

It is if one of the persons in question is killing him/herself out of unrequited love for the other. Apparently, the woman killed herself because she was terminally ill and didn't want to suffer the indignity of a protracted death --- and Kleist killed himself because he was in love with her. Like I said, I'm not sure about the motives, and apparently scholars aren't either, which is why I offered this as a possibility only.