Love Letters - Glimpses of the Heart
by Heather Long | More from this Blogger
 
Love letters reveal a great deal about how you feel or how someone else feels. The love letter is a romantic device in films, books and reality. Love letters are an enduring part of our history and our culture. So I thought we'd take a moment today and enjoy some glimpses of love letters from the past.

Sullivan Ballou served in the Union Army and he wrote this letter to his wife Sarah shortly before he died at the First Battle of Manassas during the Civil War. The letter was never mailed, but it was recovered and later given to her. Viewers of Ken Burn's Civil War documentary may remember this beautiful letter.

Excerpt: I cannot describe to you my feelings on this calm summer night, when two thousand men are sleeping around me, many of them enjoying the last, perhaps, before that of death -- and I, suspicious that Death is creeping behind me with his fatal dart, am communing with God, my country, and thee.

I have sought most closely and diligently, and often in my breast, for a wrong motive in thus hazarding the happiness of those I loved and I could not find one. A pure love of my country and of the principles have often advocated before the people and "the name of honor that I love more than I fear death" have called upon me, and I have obeyed.

Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield.

Catherine of Aragon

Catherine of Aragon was King Henry VIII first wife and mother to Queen Mary. Though Henry divorced here in 1533, Catherine remained devoted to him until her death in 1538. She wrote this letter prior to her death.

My Lord and Dear Husband,

I commend me unto you. The hour of my death draweth fast on, and my case being such, the tender love I owe you forceth me, with a few words, to put you in remembrance of the health and safeguard of your soul, which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and tendering of your own body, for the which you have cast me into many miseries and yourself into many cares.

For my part I do pardon you all, yea, I do wish and devoutly pray God that He will also pardon you.

For the rest I commend unto you Mary, our daughter, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I heretofore desired. I entreat you also, on behalf of my maids, to give them marriage-portions, which is not much, they being but three. For all my other servants, I solicit a year's pay more than their due, lest they should be unprovided for.

Lastly, do I vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.

I suppose these letters are sad, the last loving thoughts of those destined to die soon, yet the love is palpable in both and a reminder that love endures if only as letters on paper.

Prince Charles and Princess Diana

06 May 2006 06:03 AM
Charles & Diana: A Love Story?

by Heather Long | More from this Blogger
 
We've been talking about marriage and wedding planning here at the Marriage blog this month and I don't think any wedding planning would be complete without talking about some of the great weddings of the last century. And I do mean the last century, not the current one. When I think of the great weddings of the last century, one of the first weddings to come to mind is that of Charles, Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer. I was just nine years old when they were married in the summer of 1981. I remember my mother waking me up at a little after 3 in the morning to come downstairs because they were going to air the wedding on television.
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My grandmother, my mother and I all settled onto the sofa in our living room. There were reporters, there were cameras everywhere and London itself seemed to be decked out in festival. There were hundreds and thousands of people thronging the streets between the Palace and St. Paul's Cathedral. We saw the chain of coaches as they left the palace carrying the royal family to witness the long-expected nuptials.

Lady Diana Spencer, herself, appeared as a vision in her flowing white gown with its mile long train. She arrived in a glass sealed coach and who did not see Cinderella? Can it really have been twenty-five years ago that the world was invited to witness the ceremony? 

The couple were married at St Paul's Cathedral before an invited congregation of 3,500 and an estimated global TV audience of 750 million.

No matter what your personal thoughts are on the Royal Family, the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer was an experience that colored my childhood. They were a fairy tale brought to life and the fairy tale continued in the love affair the public had with the newly crowned Princess Diana. Her death in 1997 left me mourning as though I'd truly known her. That acquaintance began with her engagement to the Prince, culminated in a wedding and continued through numerous photographs, stories and more. 

In ways, I feel like we are diminished still by her loss and yet, when I remember the wedding - not even the knowledge that the fairy tale crashed and burned can diminish the feeling of hope and love the ceremony was imbued with. I think every wedding should leave you feeling that way --- an experience that can still take your breath away twenty-five years later.

The love story of Salim and Anarkali is a story that every lover knows. The Mughal prince Salim falling for a courtesan Anarkali is the stuff that legends are made of. The relationship of Salim and Anarkali outraged the Mughal emperor Akbar so much that both father and son decided to go on war.

According to legend, Salim, the son of the great Mughal emperor Akbar, fell in love with a beautiful courtesan named Anarkali as a young prince. Anarkali, whose title means "pomegranate blossom" (a title bestowed for her beauty) was famed for her dancing skills as well as her great beauty. It is believed that her original name was Nadira or Sharf-un-Nisa.He was mesmerized by her beauty and fell in love as soon as he saw her. But Anarkali was a 
mere dancing girl, and dancing girls were not of noble birth. They were considered to be low-born and keeping any relation with them were looed dow and strictly prohibited by the society. Anarkali knew that their romance was forbidden in the eyes of the prince's father, Mughal Emperor Akbar. So she tried to keep away from Salim. But how could she hold herself back from the prince's charms for long? Love knows no rules, and soon Anarkali too was deeply in love with Salim.

But such an intense love can't be concealed forever. The emperor could not digest the fact that his son was in love with an ordinary courtesan. He started pressurizing Anarkali and devised all sorts of tactics to make her fall in the eyes of the young, love smitten prince. When Salim came to know of this, he declared a war against his own father. But the mighty emperor's gigantic army proves too much for the young prince to handle. He gets defeated and is sentenced to death. 

This is when Anarkali intervenes and renounces her love to save her beloved from the jaws of death. She is entombed alive in a brick wall right in front of her lover's eyes. It is, however, said that she did not die. The tomb was constructed on the opening of a secret tunnel unknown to Salim. It is said she escaped through that tunnel and fled the place, never to return again. The heartbroken Salim lives on to become emperor Jahangir.


But he could never forget his one true love Anarkali, in his lifetime. When he died, her name was on his lips. 


Thus ends the tragic love story of Salim and Anarkali. Even today, these two lovers are remembered by people and held in esteem by lovers all over; such exemplary their love was.

Love is known to be an overwhelming, all-consuming, intense passion. But just how intense can love be? No one knows the answer, and examples of such a love are rare. But whenever one talks about the depth of love, the intensity of passion, two names almost immediately come to mind- Laila and Majnu.

The love story of Laila and Majnu is a very famous one and is no less than a legend. Even today, people know them as Laila Majnu; the "and" in between is missing. They were two in flesh, but one in spirit. It is based on the real story of a young man called Qays ibn al-Mullawah from the northern Arabian Peninsula, in the Umayyad era during the 7th century. The love story of "Laila and Majnu" is an eternal one albeit a tragic one. 

Laila was a beautiful girl born in a rich family. Being no less than a princess, she was expected to marry a wealthy boy and live in grandeur and splendor. But love is born from the heart; it knows no rules. Laila fell in love with Qays and he too loved her dearly. Qays was a poet and belonged to the same tribe as Laila. He composed splendid love poems and dedicated them to his lady-love, telling in them his love for her and mentioning her name often. Qays' friends knew about his affair with Laila and they often teased and made fun of his love. But such taunts had no effect on Qays. He was deeply in love with Laila and it was her thoughts alone that possesed his mind for all time.

It had been for quite sometime that Qays toyed with the idea of seeking Laila's hand in marriage from her parents. One day, he went up to them and put the big question before them.

But Qays was a poor lad. And when he asked for Laila's hand in marriage, her father promptly refused him as he didn't want her daughter to marry below her status. It would mean a scandal for Laila according to Arab traditions.

As fate would have it, the two lovers were banished from seeing each other. Soon after, Laila's parents married her off to a wealthy man and she went on to live in a big mansion.

When Qays heard of her marriage he was heartbroken. He fled the tribe camp and wandered in the surrounding desert. His family eventually gave up on his return and left food for him in the wilderrness. He could sometimes be seen reciting poetry to himself or writing Laila's name in the sand with a stick. Day and night, he pined for her. 

Laila was no better. Seperated from Qays, she was shattered in mind, body and spirit. Not long afterwards, in 688 AD, she moved to Iraq with her husband, where she fell ill and died eventually. 

When Qays' friends came to know about Laila's death, they went looking for him all over to give him the news. But they could not find him. 

Not much later, , their search for him came to an end. Qays was found dead in the wilderness near Laila's grave. On a rock near the grave, he had carved three verses of poetry, which are the last three verses ascribed to him.

Qays went mad for his love; for this reason he came to be called "Majnu", or "Majnun Layla", which means "Driven mad by Layla".

Such a love is hard to find today. So if ever you love someone, try to love like these two did. Even today, lovers swear by their name. It is their love affair that has made Laila and Majnu immortal in the accounts of great love stories.

The legend of the exquisitely beautiful Shakuntala and the mighty king Dushyant is a thrilling love story from the epic Mahabharata, which the great ancient poet Kalidasa retold in his immortal play 'Abhijnanashakuntalam'.

While on a hunting trip, King Dushyant of the Puru dynasty meets the hermit-girl Shakuntala. They fall in love with each other at first sight and, in the absence of her father, Shakuntala weds the king in a ceremony of 'Ghandharva'-a form of marriage by mutual consent with mother Nature as the witness. When the time comes for Dushyant to return to his palace, he promises to send an envoy to escort her to his castle.As a fond remembrance he gives her a signet ring.

One day when hermit Durvasa stops at her hut for hospitality, Shakuntala, lost in her love thoughts, fails to hear his calls.The temperamental sage turns back and curses her: "He whose thoughts have engrossed you would not remember you anymore." On the plea of her companions, the enraged sage relents and adds a condition to his curse-statement: "He can only recall you upon producing some significant souvenir."

Days roll by and nobody from the palace comes to fetch her. Her father sends her to the royal court for their reunion, as she was pregnant with Dushyant's child. While travelling, Shakuntala's signet-ring accidentally drops into the river and gets lost.

When Shakuntala presents herself before the king, Dushyant, under the spell of the curse, fails to acknowledge her as his wife. Heart-broken, she pleads to the gods for help. The spell is broken when a fisherman finds the signet ring in the stomach of a fish - the same ring that Shakuntala had lost on her way to the court. The king suffers from an intense feeling of guilt and injustice. Shakuntala forgives Dushyant and they are reunited happily. She gives birth to a male child. He is called Bharat, after whom India gets her name.

The Radha-Krishna amour is a love legend of all times. It's indeed hard to miss the many legends and paintings illustrating the Radha-Krishna affair is the most memorable. Krishna's relationship with Radha, his favorite among the 'gopis' (cow-herding maidens), has served as a model for male and female love in a variety of art forms, and since the sixteenth century appears prominently as a motif in North Indian paintings. The allegorical love of Radha has found expression in some great Bengali poetical works of Govinda Das, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and Jayadeva the author of Geet Govinda. 

Krishna's youthful dalliances with the 'gopis' are interpreted as symbolic of the loving interplay between God and the human soul. Radha's utterly rapturous love for Krishna and their relationship is often interpreted as the quest for union with the divine. This kind of love is of the highest form of devotion in Vaishnavism, and is symbolically represented as the bond between the wife and husband or beloved and lover.

Radha, daughter of Vrishabhanu, was Krishna's lover during that period of his life when he lived among the cowherds of Vrindavan. Since childhood they were close to each other - they played, they danced, they fought, they grew up together and wanted to be together forever, but the world pulled them apart. He departed to safeguard the virtues of truth, and she waited for him. He vanquished his enemies, became the king, and came to be worshipped as a lord of the universe. She waited for him. He married Rukmini and Satyabhama, raised a family, fought the great war of Ayodhya, and she still waited. So great was Radha's love for Krishna that even today her name is uttered whenever Krishna is refered to, and Krishna worship is though to be incomplete without the deification of Radha.

One day the two most talked about lovers come together for a final single meeting. Suradasa in his Radha-Krishna lyrics relates the various amorous delights of the union of Radha and Krishna in this ceremonious 'Gandharva' form of their wedding in front of five hundred and sixty million people of Vraj and all the gods and goddesses of heaven. The sage Vyasa refers to this as the 'Rasa'. Age after age, this evergreen love theme has engrossed poets, painters, musicians and all Krishna devotees alike.

Classic Love Stories

Perhaps no other faith glorifies the notion of love as Hinduism. This is evident from the amazing variety of mythical love stories that abounds Sanskrit literature, which is undoubtedly one of the richest treasure hoards of exciting love tales. 

Classical love legends from Hindu mythology and folklore of India are both passionate and sensuous in content, and never fail to appeal to the romantic in us. These fables stretches our imagination, engage our emotions and, entertain us.