Soulmates: Edith Wharton and Leo Tolstoy (mystery man solved?) (when Edith was born, Leo started War and Peace)🕊️
when Claire turned 15 while she was living as Edith, she wrote a novella in her bedroom - “fast and loose.” at the same time, in Russia, I wrote about the same exact theme. (Scroll for more audio)
Something bothering me about the mystery man:
Did Leo Tolstoy put an idea into the ethereal realm that then possessed this man?
Conclusions from my thoughts on the mystery man: could dark forces be manipulating people around us, as Tolstoy deranged this man?
Walter Berry: How Tolstoy answered Edith‘s cry?
Walter Berry: further animated by Edith’s own cries?
“Intense Love’s Utterance,” 1889
By Edith Wharton / Caroline
“As we sit, you and I, in the twilight
And breathe the soft breath of the roses
That mingled with lily and iris
Steals up from your quaint garden-closes;
In the mystical, soft evening weather
When the sunset burns amber and clear
I think that a life-time together
Would not be half long enough, dear!
I long — how I long, my heart's Lady,
To call you a name that is dearer,
To be — always your slave and your lover
And in time something fonder and nearer.
Come home to me, darling, my Lady!
Let the name that I call you be wife.
The house stands there waiting and ready,
It waits for its light and its life!
So I long in the twilight to tell you —
But there, if I pause and dissemble,
Or turn with a jest to the roses,
It is that I inwardly tremble
At the vision of taking you, Sweetest,
To a home where I could not provide
High art, the highest, completest,
To welcome my utterest Bride.
How far would a poor fellow's income
Extend in your dados and friezes,
Your Chippendale table, your ceiling
From a study of Paul Veronese's,
Your old Venice glass opalescent,
Your golden stamped leather from Spain,
Your majolica ware iridescent —
Yet to live without these would be pain.
And how could I furnish your boudoir
With sweet silver tissues (cash payment)
And make your portieres out of chasubles
And ecclesiastical raiment?
And how could I give you gold panels
With wailing wan women in rows,
And sunflowers worked on green flannels,
And triptychs with carved doors to close?
You are used to a Crown Denby tea-set,
And your tea pot is always Queen Anne, dear;
Could you bear to pour out from Britannia
Into plain white and gilt — if you can, dear —
But, no! for I know that your sideboard
Has always been classic " Empire " ,
And though I could always provide board
You must count out such luxuries, dear.
And the Japanese vases, and palm-leaves,
The dim-silver church-lamp and censer,
The church-stall with wormy intarsia,
All the treasures intense and intenser,
From the bit of Limoges like a jewel
To the altar-lace under the frieze —
My Love, it were cruelly cruel
To ask you to live without these!
No, no — what is life? A succession
Of fleeting pulsations (as Pater
Has told us in Renaissance Studies)
Which must cease for us sooner or later,
And Art can alone make them precious,
And lovely and dear as old plate —
Go back to your dados and friezes,
For love is a thing out of date!”
soul mates 1:
Leo Tolstoy started writing War and Peace very soon after Edith was born
The tendency to write a semi-autobiographical (links with Emily Brontë 1847, Edith Wharton 1862, Claire Cottrill 2011)
the moment Edith turns 15, she has a life ahead of her in which she will be trapped in a marriage that annihilates her as a person. she secretly writes a novel — “fast and loose.” and what is Leo doing?
Soul mates 2:
Above screenshots: Wikipedia
a shared obsession with tearing down convention, just like Claire and I today
Below: spark notes
edith trapped in a marriage where she can’t fully be herself / art as the escape into a dream world?
Caroline’s love for Henry James:
The conventions keeping them apart:
Source: https://lithub.com/the-secret-love-of-edith-whartons-life/
