Vladimir Nabokov to Véra Nabokov

I won’t hide it: I’m so unused to being — well, understood, perhaps, — so unused to it,
that in the very first minutes of our meeting I thought: "this is a joke", but then...
there are things that are hard to talk about.
You are lovely.

Yes, I need you, my fairy-tale, because you are the only person I can talk with about the shade of a cloud,
about the song of a thought  and about how, when I went out to work today and looked a tall sunflower in the face,
it smiled at me with all of its seeds.

How can I explain to you, my happiness, my golden wonderful happiness, how much I am all yours-with
all my memories, poems, outbursts, inner whirlwinds? Or explain that I cannot write a word
without hearing how you will pronounce it.
And I know: I can’t tell you anything in words — and when I do on the phone then it comes out
completely wrong because with you one needs to talk wonderfully, the way we talk with people
long gone in terms of purity and lightness and spiritual precision.

I swear by all that’s dear to me, all I believe in, I swear that I have never loved before as I love you.
With such tenderness (to the point of tears) and with such a sense of radiance.
I’ll tell you with my love I could have filled ten centuries of fire, songs, and valor — ten whole centuries,
enormous and winged,  legends about giants and fierce Troys and orange sails and pirates and poets.
I simply want to tell you that somehow I can’t imagine life without you.

I love you, I want you, I need you unbearably.
Your eyes which shine so wonder-struck when, with your head thrown back,
you tell something funny-your eyes, your voice, lips, your shoulders — so light, sunny.
You came into my life not as one comes to visit but as one comes to a kingdom where all the rivers
have been waiting for your reflection, and all the roads for your steps.

I love you very much. Love you in a bad way (don’t be angry, my happiness).
Love you in a good way.
I love you, my sun, my life, I love your eyes with all the little tails of your thoughts,
your stretchy vowels, and your whole soul from head to heels.

I love you.