LOVE LETTER: Alban Berg to Helene Nahowski

When someone writes a letter to a very good friend, or even more, to his beloved,
he puts on his best attire as well as he may. For in the quiet of his letter, on the tranquil blue paper,
he can express his truest feelings. The tongue and the spoken word have become so soiled by their every-day use,
they cannot speak out loud the beauty which the pen can quietly write.
Only in my dreams can I gaze on the meadows with their mauve forget-me-nots and black bugles
and the precipices with their scattered tree-stumps and branches, and flocks of grouse under stunted dwarf-pines.
All that is your realm, in which you are Queen.
And we who live in the plains can only look fondly up at those heights in envy or admiration.
Yet I know the paths which lead up there, the less frequented paths too and somewhere far above, admist the cloud and winds,
I shall be waiting for you-my hands outstretched in greeting-cold as ice yet warm with life in its love.
And woe betide anyone else who crosses my path whistling Wagner! I'll soon strike his top note off his shoulders!
But now out of my best attire (which looks a bit like a tourist dress) and into every day clothes, for the postman waits!
It is no pose or deceit if lovers souls should show up better in their letters to each other than in real life.
Nor is the love false in his love letters. He is not making himself out better than he is; he is becoming better.
He is truly himself in such moments, the greatest moments life can bestow on us.

All yours,
Alban.