http://polaroid41.com/love-letters/

Saturday, February 29th, 2020 - 4:11pm.

I had a theory in my early twenties that “I’ll go with you” was the most romantic phrase, the best proof of love, even better than saying “I love you.” My boyfriend at the time thought my theory was cute and kind of dramatic (“cute and kind of dramatic” was, and pretty much is, my trademark).  “I’ll go with you” implies that I am willing to abandon whatever it is that I’m doing in favor of being with you. It means that I will quit the here and now of my experience and follow you into yours.  Granted, at 22 in Iowa City, “I’ll go with you” probably meant forsaking my homework assignment to follow my then boyfriend to get fountain Cokes from the Casey’s on the corner of Market and Dubuque.  But still! “I’ll go with you.” There’s something special in that.

Recently I was gifted a massive collection of love letters between Albert Camus and his lover, Maria Casarès. The book contains no less than 865 letters, 1266 pages, and spans from June 1944 when they first met until December 1959, a final letter just days before his accidental death at age 46. Nine years younger than Camus, Maria Casarès was an actress, a film and stage star of the Parisian theatre scene.  He won a Nobel Prize for literature but astonishingly her letters are just as beautiful as his.

Despite his marriage to someone else, they loved each other deeply and for years. The letters, which were published by Camus’ daughter, are a testament to the dizzying intensity of their feelings for each other.   As I said, the letters stretch across a decade and a half, however they only wrote to each other in times of separation. The gigantic book offers an incredibly detailed account of two lovers, but we only witness them apart.   They make references in their letters to times spent together :  a perfect evening spent at the lake in Ermenonville, a terrible fight before his trip to South America, evenings spent near the fireplace in her little apartment on rue Vaugirard and mornings when he awoke before her and watched her sleep. But the letters are mostly filled with longing, with passionate declarations of love and agonizing moments of doubt. They spent weeks, sometimes months apart, counting the days until they were reunited, there are dozens of letters and then suddenly a short letter or even a telegram with the details for the arrival of a train or plane and it all goes dark. I turn the page and the next letter is months down the line when they find themselves separated again for work or for the moments in life that are reserved for his wife and children : summer holidays, Christmas and New Years.

Over and over they profess their love, they say how much they miss each other, they speak of how they crave each other.  Post-war Paris is the backdrop and we have a rare behind the scenes look at the arts and cultural scene, we are invited into the heart and mind of Camus himself as he talks about his work and his struggles. He asks her advice about his writing, she talks about her rehearsals and her performances.

She writes, “When you lay yourself bare before me, I understand why I’ve been put on this earth.”

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