【1806】I love you but you never recognized me

       By Eleanor (ailinuo)

     The novel is written by the novelist—Stefan Zweig, 1881-1942, the author was born in a wealthy Viennese family, but he spent the rest of his life displaced by the World War I.

     The book《Letter from an Unknown Woman》is one of his famous novel. The novel told a story about an unknown woman falling in love with a man whom had never known her, but she could not stop love the man throughout her life, she even gave birth to their son quietly. When her son unfortunately got ill and died because of the Influenza, she finally couldn't bear it, even could not stay live alone anymore, so she wrote to the man she loved to tell the truth. What a sad story!

     I have to say that the author is very good at describing the psychology of the woman. I almost want to write down all the sentences that are exquisitely descriptive of the woman’s mental activity.

     For example:

     1) I need hardly tell you that henceforward in my restricted world, you were the only thing that interested me; that my life revolved round yours with the fidelity proper to a girl of thirteen.

     2) To love anyone but you, even to play with the thought of loving anyone but you, would have been so utterly impossible to me, that the mere tender of affection on the part of another man seemed to me a crime.

     3) Then, all in a moment, I felt as if my heart had been seized by an icy or a burning hand.

     4) Everyone, everyone, has been eager to spoil me; everyone has loaded me with kindness. But you, only you, forgot me. You, only you.

                                 (The movie-letter from an unknown woman, 1948)

      During reading this book, I always want to write down my feeling immediately, and here are some of my thoughts.

20/3

      The unknown woman was all crazy and humbly in loving the man, I cannot totally understand why she just love him so, so much without letting him know her, and even give herself absolutely to him without any desired love from him. I really cannot imagine this kind of love, it is far from my concept.

23/3

       Everyone may be selfish in his/her own insight, especially when they fall into love. The unknown woman kept silent all through her life about the real fact of her son, she thought that she could understand the man even more than the man himself. She lost the man but she kept their son as her replaceable lover. 

26/3

       Most of our readers in our reading group cannot bear to read the story for the ending. The woman's love is almost something like the belief, even more, it seems that her loving is going into the wrong way, very strange about it.

27/3

        Falling in love with the man is a quite sorrow thing. At the last time he did not recognize the woman, even he said that: "Good things are not forgotten, and I shall not forget you.” but he did forget the woman directly. What I thought of was the sentence: Passionate people are really the most ruthless.

28/3

        Even the man finished reading the woman's letter, he could neither thought of the woman in detail, none of her appearance or her character could he remind. The woman would die in the end because of the fever and the liberation of an unknown love. And what's more, her death would not influent the man in his joy-life, his life will not change a little with the woman's own love story, yes, it's only the woman's own love story all along.

        I still have a lot to tell among this novel, and I would like to read it a few times more.