The excerpt reads:

Really, while I’ve been here, I’ve been letting it run through my head a little, the question of our relationship, and when I return I’m going to take you in my claws so sharply that it will make you squeal, you’ll see. I will terrorize you completely. You will have to submit [pokorit’sa]. You will have to give in and bow down. That is the condition for our living together further. I must break you, [and] grind the sharp edges off your horns, or else I can’t continue with you. You are a bad-tempered person, and now, within myself, I am as sure of that as that the sun is in the sky, after having thought about your entire spiritual physiognomy. And I’ll smother this rage and fury that you have in yourself as sure as I’m alive. Such weeds can’t be allowed to get in among the cabbages. I have the right to do this because I’m ten times better than you, and I quite consciously condemn this very salient aspect of your character. I am now going to terrorize you without any mercy until you become gentle, and begin to feel and conduct yourself toward other people as any ordinary good person would. At one and the same time I feel a boundless love for you and an implacable strictness toward the failings in your character. Therefore note well—get a hold of yourself! Because I’m already standing here with the carpet beater in my hand, and as soon as I arrive I’m going to start beating the dust out of you. Undoubtedly there’s a lot in the words above that you don’t understand, but I’ll explain it to you after I get back. And now, as the beginning of my reign of terror: think about it, be good! Write kind and gentle letters, and don’t address me with the formal “you,” which is a tactless piece of crudity on your part. Don’t pick apart my letters, be humble, and tell me you love me without being afraid that you will be demeaning yourself if, say, just for today, you give me three pennies more than I give you. Don’t be afraid and don’t be ashamed to express your feelings for me (if you still have them, because I will use no force on you in that regard), and don’t have any anxiety that I may not accept them with the accustomed respect. Learn to kneel down in spirit a little, and do it not only at those moments when with open arms I call to you but also when I’m standing with my back to you. In a word, be more generous, more magnanimous, relate to your feelings in a more noble way. I demand it! Unfortunately I feel certain deficiencies of character in myself from constantly being around you, but that only spurs me on to struggle with you more vigorously than ever. Think about it. You must submit, because I will force you to through the power of love.

Maybe she was one of us?

  • @Quark
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    21 year ago

    One of us! One of us!

  • monnui
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    1 year ago

    Lovely. I want to say that it did trigger my antennae a bit in some places—looking at this with a contemporary eye, some of the things she mentions are a job for a therapist, not a partner—but for a time when therapy didn’t even exist, and for not knowing the unspoken context in the letter (could be tongue in cheek, could be roleplay…), this is a very welcome read. ^^