Franz Liszt's Love Letter to Marie d'Agoult

"My heart overflows with emotion and joy!

I do not know what heavenly languor, what infinite pleasure permeates it and burns me up.

It is as if I had never loved!

Tell me whence these uncanny disturbances spring, these inexpressible foretastes of delight, these divine, tremors of love.

Oh! all this can only spring from you, sister, angel, woman, Marie!"

Henri Lehmann | Marie d'Agoult, 1843 | Petit Palais, Paris
Marie Catherine Sophie, Comtesse d'Agoult (née de Flavigny; 31 December 1805 – 5 March 1876), was a Franco-German romantic author and historian, known also by her pen name, Daniel Stern.
Her first stories (Hervé, Julien, and Valentia) were published in 1841–1845. Her best-known work (written as "Daniel Stern") is the Histoire de la révolution de 1848 (appearing from 1850 to 1853, in 3 volumes). D'Agoult's other works include the novel Nélida (1846), Lettres Républicaines in Esquisses morales et politiques (1849, collected articles), Trois journées de la vie de Marie Stuart (1856), Florence et Turin (1862), Histoire des commencements de la république aux Pays-Bas (1872), A Catholic Mother Speaks to Her Children (1906, posthumously) and Mes souvenirs (1877, posthumously).

"All this can only be, is surely nothing less than a gentle ray streaming from your fiery soul, or else some secret poignant teardrop which you have long since left in my breast..."

Franz

Josef Kriehuber (1800-1876) Portrait de Franz Liszt, 1846
Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger and organist of the Romantic era.
He was additionally a philanthropist, Hungarian nationalist and Franciscan tertiary.

Josef Danhauser | Franz Liszt Fantasizing at the Piano, 1840 | Alte Nationalgalerie
L'incontro immaginato mostra Alfred de Musset od Alexandre Dumas seduti, George Sand, Franz Liszt, Marie d'Agoult; in piedi Hector Berlioz o Victor Hugo, Niccolò Paganini, Gioachino Rossini; un busto di Beethoven al pianoforte a coda (un "Graf"), un ritratto di Lord Byron sul muro, una statua di Giovanna d'Arco all'estrema sinistra.

"Il mio cuore trabocca di emozione e di gioia!

Non so quale paradisiaco languore, infinito piacere lo riempie e mi riarde.

E' come se non avessi mai amato!

Tutto questo non puo che nascere da te, sorella, angelo, donna, Marie!

Non puo che essere, di sicuro non e, null'altro che un delicato raggio partito dalla tua anima ardente, o una qualche lacrima segreta e straziante che tu hai lasciato tempo fa sul mio petto".

Franz