(A week late for Valentine’s Day, but irresistibly sweet nonetheless.)
“How happy your recent letters have made me, especially the one on Christmas! I have all kinds of words for you, but I know of none more beautiful than a little one, ‘dear’–but it has to be spoken in a special tone….If only I could do something to please you, my Clara. The knights of old really had an easier time; they could go through fire or slay dragons for their beloved–but we today have to gather our pennies together, one by one, in order to deserve our girls, and smoke fewer cigars and such things–but we can love each other without the knights, of course, and so, as usual, only the times have changed, and hearts have remained the same.” – Robert Schumann, to Clara Wieck, January 2nd, 1838
Source: The Complete Correspondence of Clara and Robert Schumann, edited by Eva Weissweiler (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1994).
