LOVE LETTERS FROM A WIDOWER: THE MYSTERY OF SOUL MATES IN LIGHT OF ANCIENT WISDOM

(Quoted from the book:)  A lone Romantic poet, Hölderlin had a difficult life: he was hounded by financial problems, misunderstood by his contemporaries, and, towards the middle of his life, he suffered from a mental illness that prevented him from living a normal life. But all these tribulations were eclipsed by the joy he felt when he met Susette Gontard, the companion soul he had been seeing in dreams ever since he was a child, and with whom he would be united by a love he would describe as “sacred and eternal”.   Recognition was instantaneous and reciprocal (“Is it you, is it really you?!”). Their encounter was a typical case of synchronicity. The same circumstances of their meeting were predicted, with astonishing precision, in the first drafts of his novel Hyperion . Hölderlin would see his female protagonist embodied in this woman, who was of a sensitivity so close to his, as we can read in the beautiful letters that she wrote him after their forced separation. Their ...

(Quoted from the book:) “By heavenly chance express”, Blanca. Meaning that encounter, while coincidental in appearance, was actually arranged. Heaven scheduled an appointment, so to say, and put them both in that place at that exact time so they could meet. You know, the last two verses also make me think about your beauty. Because before and after that afternoon – the one we met -, I had seen   women who were more beautiful than you. Yet, it’s strange; none of them looked so to me. Those two verses - “Unveils to him that loveliness / Which others cannot understand” - suggest an idea that I posit as the starting point to these letters: the idea that beyond objective beauty exists a subjective hidden beauty; a mysterious beauty that reveals itself only to its predestined eyes. (One must not confuse this subjective beauty with the set of spiritual qualities a person might possess, qualities we call “inner beauty”: while inner beauty, my dear, is certainly superior to outer beauty, it...

Today we would celebrate... Correction; today we celebrate fifty years of marriage. Our golden anniversary. To celebrate it, I took my pen (your pen, the one you gave me) and started writing to you. First, I want to apologise for not having done this before. Or, to be fair, for not being able to continue beyond the first line, because the fact is I tried, co untless times, without success. It wasn’t because I didn't have anything to say to you. It just so happens that sorrow is a great obstacle for words; it stops them from flowing out of your mouth or pen. Even the more pressing ones. One's life could be in grave danger, and it would still be a superhuman effort just to ask for help. This could h sound like an excuse, but believe me: it’s not an excuse, it’s a good reason. Anyway, since this time I was able to go beyond the cursed threshold of the first line, you can deduce that I have found some consolation to my sorrow. And it's precisely about that, my love, about the f...