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chuckletits t1_j6k29se wrote

I started to read them today.

I think they are beautiful, which makes me sad that he felt the need to release a statement that he never loved her.

That makes 1 of 2 things the truth - 1) everything he ever wrote to her was bullshit, or 2) he did love her and lied to save face.

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daedelus23 t1_j6k9jx1 wrote

I didn’t read his statement as he “never loved her” more of he loved her at one time but had changed and realized he was in love with who she was, and who he was, back when he first fell in love with her. Can confirm this happens and it can be heartbreaking to realize and difficult to admit to one’s self.

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SeanyDay t1_j6ka0n7 wrote

One has to imagine this was more common before telephones and internet made it easier to remember the current version of a person vs the memory that was held on to

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piquedinhighschool t1_j6kfwjk wrote

Still remember when I was young, my family going to the same vacation spot and seeing my summer friends once a year. The changes between a full year are so much more pronounced, especially for growing kids. I guess at this point this experience is almost entirely gone now, with people uploading selfies daily. Would have been nice to have the internet then but I enjoyed that experience as well.

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dosedatwer t1_j6lwd6p wrote

Definitely happened to me at least three times in my life already. Remembering someone that used to exist for years after I've lost touch with them, only to realise the person I loved doesn't exist anymore. They changed.

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SeanyDay t1_j6mma58 wrote

You probably did too 😉

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MajesticMetaphor t1_j6o1rsi wrote

Also lust is very strong in the beginning of relationships. You begin to see more of people as that fades and sometimes it’s unsettling.

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DankBlunderwood t1_j6kik7w wrote

He is very clear in the letter that he did love her before he left for England. What he's saying is that he was naive about matters of love and continued to idealize her even as he outgrew those feelings. Eventually his "love" was nothing more than the memory of having loved her once. As an older and wiser man he realized marrying her would have meant living the prosaic life of a professor, never excelling at anything, which was most important to him.

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ymcameron t1_j6lwbgz wrote

His feelings were made of jade. What I mean by that: I knew a girl who I had a huge crush on. She was just so cool and gorgeous and good at everything. I’d get so nervous anytime she was in the room. When I did talk to her, I was honestly a little intimidated by her intensity and the sort of things she spent her time doing. The more I got to know her the more I realized we really didn’t have anything in common, but I still felt these intense feelings towards her, not all of them pleasant. I somehow felt upset at her for not being like I wanted her to be. I realized I’d built up this idea of her in my mind and was more attracted to that than I was to her. She was named after a jewel, and so after I had a moment of clarity about how I was feeling, I renamed the idea of her after a different jewel, Jade. Now whenever I start to have these parasocial feelings or start to put someone up on a pedestal I stop and remind myself that those things aren’t real, they’re just made of jade.

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grubas t1_j6l1ezd wrote

Yup. It becomes a memory of love, he was fond of her still, but he couldn't grow with her.

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softsnowfall t1_j6klfgs wrote

I read his statement, and my take was a bit different from yours but more in line with your second option. When he mentions early in the statement that he could never write an autobiography and explains why - that along with his love for Valerie and his request that his letters to Emily Hale be destroyed, makes me believe that he did love Emily Hale.

I think perhaps at some point he realized that Emily Hale would be detrimental to his being a poet. I can understand this. I’m with a very grounded science fellow who has no interest in poetry. The difference is he cares about me so much that he cares about what inspires me. If Emily did not respect the soul of a poet within Eliot, I can see where marriage to her would mean the death of the poet within him.

Meanwhile, if he didn’t marry Emily, her very presence in a off-limits way would allow him to love her from a distance and allow that love to serve as a muse. Also, he clearly loved Valerie and did not want her to feel that his love for her was diminished or less.

I question if he would have requested his letters to Emily be destroyed if he had felt completely confident in the letters not being made public for fifty years after his death. I wonder if perhaps Emily went against his wishes in sending the letters to Princeton while they both yet lived and that was the final thing that made him decide she did not value him as he had her. His statement, I think, wouldn’t mention Emily valuing her uncle’s opinion more and perhaps caring more about his reputation than for him IF he wasn’t nursing some wounded feelings over the letters being given to Princeton early.

This is of course just my own thinking about the circumstances. I might be completely in error.

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lsop t1_j6l5l26 wrote

His request was that her letters to him be destroyed.

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softsnowfall t1_j6ol42a wrote

I’m editing this as I’ve now read all the letters. In 1956, Eliot agreed with Emily Hale’s decision to hand over the letters to Princeton with the stipulation that they not be read by anyone for 50 years. Emily agreed until she made a formal visit to Princeton where she was talked into agreeing that the letters should be read by current scholars. Eliot wrote her back feeling betrayed and very understandably upset at the thought of anyone reading the letters while he and people mentioned were still living. He points out in his letter to Emily that fifty years is the typical modus operandi. Emily writes back saying no one had yet read his letters (I doubt her honesty as Eliot received a letter from the Librarian at Princeton about how they were cataloguing the letters and the “richness” of the material), and she says she will tell Princeton they must do the fifty years.

I assumed all along that I’d side with Emily, but in the end, I would feel betrayed and upset like Eliot. He and Emily became quite stilted and terse in the next couple of letters.

Six weeks after having been faced with Emily’s initial (She later agreed again to 50 years) choice to go against their agreement on the time of the letters, Eliot was suddenly married to his secretary Valerie.

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jracka t1_j6l6t68 wrote

He never said he didn't love her, did you read his note? He thought he did love her and those notes were sincere, but he realized that he loved the ghost of her. So your 1 of 2 things is just not true.

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LadyAsharaRowan t1_j6lql29 wrote

Ha that's what I said in my comment above. He spends his whole letter vindicating her and saving face.

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