The lyrical tragedy of unrequited love: five letters from the unfortunate Portuguese nun Mariana, addressed to the French officer who left her.
Mariana takes up the pen when the sharp pain of separation from her lover subsides and she gradually gets used to the idea that he is far away and the hopes with which he gratified her heart turned out to be “treacherous”, so it’s unlikely she will now wait for him to answer letter. However, she already wrote to him, and he even answered her, but this was when just the sight of the sheet of paper in his hands caused her great excitement: “I was so shocked,” “that I lost all my feelings more than three hours. " Indeed, only recently had she realized that his promises were false: he would never come to her, she would never see him again. But Mariana’s love is alive. Deprived of support, not being able to conduct a gentle dialogue with the object of her passion, she becomes the only feeling that fills the girl’s heart. Mariana “decided to adore” the unfaithful lover all her life and again “never to see anyone”. Of course, it seems to her that her traitor will also “do well” if she doesn’t fall in love with anyone else, for she is sure that if he can find a “beloved one more beautiful,” then he will never meet passionate passion like her love. But should he be content with less than he had beside her? And for their separation, Mariana reproaches not a lover, but a cruel fate. Nothing can destroy her love, for now this feeling is equal for her life itself. Therefore, she writes: "Love me always and make me suffer even more torment." Suffering is the bread of love, and for Mariana it is now the only food. It seems to her that she commits “the greatest injustice in the world” in relation to her own heart, trying to explain her feelings in letters, while her beloved should have judged her by the power of his own passion. However, she cannot rely on him, because he left, left her, knowing for sure that she loves him and "deserves more faithfulness." Therefore, now he will have to tolerate her complaints about the misfortunes that she foresaw. However, she would be just as unhappy if her lover had only love-gratitude for her - for the fact that she loves him. “I would like to be indebted to everyone for your only inclination,” she writes. Could he renounce his future, his country and stay forever by her side in Portugal? She asks herself, knowing full well what the answer will be.
Each line of Mariana breathes a sense of despair, but, choosing between suffering and oblivion, she prefers the first. “I cannot reproach myself for wanting at least for one moment not to love you more; you are more regrettable than me, and it’s better to bear all the suffering that I am doomed to than enjoy the miserable joys that your French mistresses give you, ”she proudly says. But her flour from this does not become less. She envies two small Portuguese lackeys who were able to follow her lover, "three hours in a row" she talks about him with a French officer. Since France and Portugal are now at peace, can he visit her and take her to France? She asks her lover and immediately takes her request back: “But I do not deserve this, do as you please, my love no longer depends on your treatment with me.” With these words, the girl is trying to deceive herself, because at the end of the second letter we learn that "poor Mariana is deprived of feelings, ending this letter." Starting the next letter, Mariana is tormented by doubts. She alone suffers her misfortune, for the hopes that her lover will write to her from each of her parking lots have collapsed. Recollections of how light pretexts were, on the basis of which the beloved left her, and how cold he was when parting, suggest that he was never "overly sensitive" to the joys of their love. She loved and still loves him madly, and from this she could not wish to suffer him as much as she suffers: if his life were full of “similar emotions”, she would die of grief. Mariana does not need the compassion of her lover: she gave him her love, not thinking either of the anger of her relatives or of the severity of laws against the nuns who violated the charter. And as a gift to such a feeling as her, one can bring either love or death. Therefore, she asks her lover to treat her as severely as possible, begs him to order her to die, because then she will be able to overcome the "weakness of her sex" and part with a life that without love for him will lose all meaning for her. She timidly hopes that if she dies, her lover will keep her image in her heart. And how good it would have been if she had never seen him! But then she herself accuses herself of lying: "I am aware, meanwhile, as I write to you that I prefer to be unhappy, loving you, than never to see you." Reproaching herself for the fact that her letters are too long, she is nevertheless sure that she needs to tell him so many more things! Indeed, despite all the torments, deep down she thanks him for the despair that gripped her, for she hates the peace in which she lived until she recognized him.
And yet she reproaches him for being in Portugal, he turned his eyes to her, and not to another, more beautiful woman, who would become his faithful lover, but would quickly be comforted after his departure, and he would leave would her "without guile and cruelty." “With me, you behaved like a tyrant, thinking about how to suppress, and not like a lover, striving only to please,” she reproaches her lover. After all, Mariana herself experiences “something like a rebuke of conscience” if she does not devote every moment of her life to it. She became hated by everyone - relatives, friends, the monastery. Even the nuns are touched by her love, they pity her and try to console her. The venerable Don Brita persuades her to take a walk on the balcony, which offers a beautiful view of the city of Mertola. But it was from this balcony that the girl first saw her lover, therefore, overtaken by a cruel memory, she returned to her cell and sobbed there until late at night. Alas, she understands that her tears will not make her beloved faithful. However, she is ready to be content with little: to see him “from time to time,” while realizing that they are “in the same place.” However, she immediately recalls how, five or six months ago, a lover with "excessive frankness" told her that in his country he loved "one lady." Perhaps now it is this lady who is hindering his return, so Mariana asks her lover to send her a portrait of the lady and write what words she says to him: maybe she will find in this “any reason to console herself or grieve even more” . Another girl wants to get portraits of her beloved brother and daughter-in-law, because everything that is “a little touched” to him is extremely expensive for her. She is ready to go to his servants, if only to be able to see him. Realizing that her letters, full of jealousy, can cause him irritation, she assures her lover that he will be able to open her next message without any emotional excitement: she will not repeat to him about her passion. Not to write to him is not at all in her power: when the lines turned to him go out from under her pen, she imagines that she is talking to him, and he "comes a little closer to her." Here the officer, who promised to take the letter and hand it to the addressee, reminds Mariana for the fourth time that he is in a hurry, and the girl, with a pain in her heart, finishes pouring her feelings on paper.
The fifth letter of Mariana is the end of the drama of unhappy love. In this hopeless and passionate message, the heroine says goodbye to her lover, sends his few gifts back, enjoying the torment that parting with them causes her. “I felt that you were less dear to me than my passion, and it was painfully difficult for me to overcome it, even after your inappropriate behavior made you yourself hateful to me,” she writes Unhappy shudders from the “ridiculous courtesy” of the last letter lover, where he admits that he received all her letters, but they did not cause “no excitement” in his heart. Flooding with tears, she begs him not to write to her anymore, for she does not know how to recover from her immense passion. “Why are blind attraction and cruel fate striving to intentionally force us to choose those who would be able to love only the other?” - she asks a question, obviously unanswered. Conscious that she herself incurred a misfortune called unrequited love, she nevertheless blames her lover that he was the first to decide to lure her into the net of his love, but only in order to fulfill his plan: to make her fall in love with herself. As soon as the goal was achieved, she lost all interest for him. And yet, absorbed in her reproaches and infidelity of her lover, Mariana nevertheless promises herself to find inner peace or decide on the “most desperate act”. “But am I obliged to give you an accurate account in all my volatile feelings?” She concludes her last letter.
