Cartas de amor de la monja portuguesa Mariana
Alcoforado
by Gabriel Joseph De Lavergne Guilleragues
If Christina Rossetti spoke metaphors in her highly erotic poem "Goblin Market," the Portuguese nun here,
Mariana Alcoforado, wrote from her own direct, heartbreaking experience of tasting the sweet fruits and juices of
a goblin man (a French officer), then being deserted by him, then pining endlessly for him. And if Christina
Rossetti was a horny, god-fearing English spinster, Mariana Alcoforado was a horny, god-gearing Portuguese nun.
But both were great writers. "Goblin Market" made Rossetti famous, while these five short letters of Alcoforado to
her dashing lover who had left her took Paris by storm when it was first published in that city in 1669, one
hundred sixty-one years before Rossetti was born in London.
How good was Alcoforado? Here she made his lover remember their first time:
"It will be a year in a few days since I gave myself to you without reserve, your passion seemed to me very ardent
and sincere and I never would have thought that my favors would so annoy you as to force you to travel five
hundred leagues and that you would rather encounter shipwrecks only to flee from me- I did not deserve such
treatment. You can remember my modesty, my shame, and my confusion, but you do not remember what made
you love me in spite of yourself."
She was truly under the spell of this goblin. She tells him here what she could have done for him:
"...I would have followed you, and I would have assuredly served you with more heart. I wish for nothing in this
world but to see you. At least remember me. I am content if you remember me, but I dare not be sure even of this,
I did not restrict my hopes to you remembering me when I saw you everyday. But you have taught me well that I
"...I would have followed you, and I would have assuredly served you with more heart. I wish for nothing in this
world but to see you. At least remember me. I am content if you remember me, but I dare not be sure even of this,
I did not restrict my hopes to you remembering me when I saw you everyday. But you have taught me well that I
must be subject to your will. Yet, I do not repent having adored you. I am glad you seduced me. Your cruel
absence, and possibly eternal, does not abate the passion of my love! I want for all the world to know it- I do not
make a mystery of it, and I am happy to have done all I have done for you against all sense of propriety. My honor
and religion is now in loving you fervently all my life, since I have begun loving you."
Like Laura's first experience with the goblins in Rossetti's "Goblin Market," the French officer here was the nun's
first experience of passion. She blames herself for it:
"Will I not learn that a loving heart once affected never forgets the one who quickened emotions unknown and
unattainable till then?That all its impulses belongs to its first love. That its first thoughts, its first wounds cannot be
cured or blotted. That all these passions that offer help and that take pains to renew and content, promise feelings
the heart can no longer experience? That all the pleasures it seeks with no real wish to find them, only serve to
show that nothing is more dear to it than the remembrance of its pain?"
Ah, nun love. If only the nuns were pretty here in the Philippines.|Na realidade já as tinha lido anteriormente, mas
não sei se tinha lido todas e com o espírito com que as li agora. Estava em Beja, com as minhas duas irmãs, e senti
necessidade de as ligar àquela cidade tanto quanto lhe sou ligada. Aproveitei as tecnologias para baixá-las da
internet e ler-lhas, visto que no dia seguinte iríamos ao Convento da Conceição ver a janela que, afinal, não está
no local original. Apenas os ferros são os mesmos.
Os franceses reinvindicam a autoria destas cartas, originalmente publicadas em 1669 em França e, posteriormente,
na Alemanha. Não acredito que a profundidade deste retrato psicológico feminino pertença a um qualquer
"escritor". Creio realmente que estes queixumes partem da mão da pessoa que sofreu, na pele, as agruras dum
amor enganado, não correspondido.
Nas duas primeiras cartas, Mariana transparece o sopro nefasto da esperança, do desengano. Está apaixonada e
crê que o Marquês de Chamilly sente igualmente a sua falta. Com o avançar das cartas, um ano depois, menciona
o engano de que foi vítima. Lamenta ter-se-lhe entregado (é assim que entendo as alusões a prazeres e entrega),
praticamente o acusa de ter sido oportunista e de a ter escolhido para desgraçar. O tom lamurioso torna-se
aborrecido, como uma amiga que sofre por amor e nos enche os ouvidos. Já fui essa pessoa. A dada altura só nos
apetece dizer: esquece-o, anda para a frente, já viste que ele não volta, que não vale a pena. Contudo a sua
angústia é justificada e dói na alma.
Mariana referencia a D. Brites, madre do convento, a janela de Mértola, a cidade de Beja, os cavaleiros franceses.
Isto sem o pretensiosismo dum escrito e com a veracidade de uma situação real.
Mariana nasceu em 1640, ingressou no Convento da Conceição aos 11 anos e lá morreu, em 1723. Não faço ideia
se terá sido algum dia confrontada com algum leitor curioso a respeito das suas supostas cartas de amor.|At work
I've been going through the main library and looking at all the pre-1830 books to decide if they should be moved
over to Special Collections. One of the books on my list was this one. It is fascinating- it's the first ever epistolary
fiction to turn up in France at the end of the 17th century. It was claimed to be translated from the Portuguese by
a French editor who "lost" the original letters. It is now commonly believed that he made it up, but I'm not so sure.
This edition is a translation of a later French edition which also includes a separate series of letters from a
noblewoman to her lover. In this version there is no difference between the two, and the noblewoman's letters are
presented first, and then the nun's with no separation in numbering. I imagine this would be very confusing if you
didn't know the background as the sender went from being a woman out in society to living in a nunnery. The first
series reminded me a bit of Dangerous Liaisons as the woman clearly got quite jealous of her lover and tried to
get him to feel the same. They were amusing but not nearly as emotional as the nun's letters. There was
something terribly realistic and heart-breaking about the letters. I'm sure fiction can be written this well, but not
sure these are. Either way they're realistic enough to stand the test of time. I thought it interesting that she had
failed to hide the affair from her family and the convent and mentioned casually how she had gotten into trouble.
They end with her, after being firmly rejected by the man, saying that she'd try and find another man. Fantastic
doomed love.|"Não sei eu por experiência que um coração enternecido nunca mais esquece quem lhe revelou
They end with her, after being firmly rejected by the man, saying that she'd try and find another man. Fantastic
doomed love.|"Não sei eu por experiência que um coração enternecido nunca mais esquece quem lhe revelou
prazeres que não conhecia, e de que era suscetível?, que todos os seus impulsos estão ligados ao ídolo que criou?
que os seus primeiros pensamentos e primeiras feridas não podem curar-se nem apagar-se?"|J'ai trouvé
intéressant et troublant au même temps que romantique car on peu comprendre le sentiment qu'inspire
l'abandon et la tristesse de n'avoir pas réponse de notre amoureux, mais je vois qu'il y a de gens que ne seraient
pas ému pour ça… alors je recommande au romantiques perdus strictement.