A Million Burning Kisses

Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us - I can live only wholly with you or not at all - Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits - Yes, unhappily it must be so - You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart - never - never - Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V is now a wretched life - Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men - At my age I need a steady, quiet life - can that be so in our connection? My angel, I have just been told that the mailcoach goes every day - therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at once - Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together - Be calm - love me - today - yesterday - what tearful longings for you - you - you - my life - my all - farewell. Oh continue to love me - never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.

ever thine

ever mine

ever ours

So wrote Beethoven to a woman history forgot. Beethoven's love letters were found in his desk after his death, never addressed and never sent. It is thought now that his beloved was a married woman... Cad!

Sex & The City resurrected my interest in love letters when Mr Big quoted part of Beethoven's love letter to Carrie on their wedding day. Swoon! SATC also created a hole in the market - the book from which Big read - Love Letters of Great Men - was a fictional prop. Quick on its toes Pan MacMillan, like wonder putty on rental inspection day, saw the gap and quickly filled it after countless book-lovers searched their favourite bookshops for Mr Big's book.

But I wonder... Is the love letter dead? Is it relegated now to what is essentially a history book? I was recently on holiday and discovered the pleasure of writing letters again (OK, postcards - but I wrote a lot, and combined they would have amounted to a decent length letter. And there's no cut & paste in the world of letters - it was all original material). You often say things in a letter that you would never say out loud.

In highschool, I had 4 pen pals. I adored receiving mail, seeing people's handwriting, and the different stationary people use. I used to have a boyfriend who sent me love letters. Somehow the feelings were more intense and honest when they were expressed through ink and paper, rather than a thoughtless email. How much effort do we put into an email versus a love letter? In this instant gratification world of text messages and email, will we ever write love letters to each other again? Some emails from past loves I've kept, but not many. It's so easy to delete and wipe them from memory, but cards and letters I will never throw away. Perhaps that's why we don't commit things to paper anymore - maybe modern lovers are too self-conscious to commit things to paper, and too frightened to vocalise in an enduring way our feelings.

As a naughty girl poking through my mother's cupboard, I discovered love letters from one of her old boyfriends - not my father - who was fighting at the time in Vietnam. The story of what happened between them is amazing, and the expression of his feelings as a soldier involved in such a controversial war is irreplacable. I would never know their story (or realised that my mother had other boyfriends apart from my father!) had I not discovered the letters. One day, I think I'd like someone to stumble across my love letters and ask me the story behind them. But who will be interested in sweet-nothing text messages and emails?