Ediciones de la Ela Geminada offers us a privilege like few others: reading texts by two excellent writers who, moreover, were written with the idea that they would never be made public. This fact, on the one hand, creates an unusual sincerity and, on the other, occasionally makes the reader feel a little uncomfortable, even if they can't stop reading.
The publisher has compiled the prolific correspondence between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West and added some entries from both of their personal diaries, all translated by Mireia Vidal-Conte. The publisher chose to title this volume Love letters, and it's a choice that becomes a declaration of principles.
The editors, Laia Regincós and Anna Noguer, admit in an introductory note that everyone has wondered about the nature of this relationship. They are aware of this and clearly state their opinion: "Lovers are two people who love each other." And if there's one thing that's certain, it's how Vita and Virginia loved each other. That's why the book is titled Love letters.
Vita Sackville-West was a writer, an aristocrat, and a great traveler. She married Harold Nicolson, but the marriage was open: Vita had relationships with both men and women.
At the other extreme, we have Virginia, who, having been abused as a young girl by her stepsisters, suffered almost total emotional and physical repression. "Did you know that it's all very well to be a eunuch like me—I mean not knowing which is the front and which is the back of your skirt? Women tell you secrets."
The friendship between these two women is deep and lasting. They both like each other very much and tell each other so, they miss each other very much and tell each other so, and at many moments they are attentive to each other like two people in love. Curious readers will find contradictory signs about the sexual relationship: there are outright denials, constant insinuations to the contrary, and some almost explicit acknowledgments.
It is also clear that Vita's husband, Harold, was jealous of this relationship (sometimes so was Leonard, Virginia's husband), and that the two of them also became jealous when one of them got too close to another woman.
But above all, there is a lot of love and complicity, mutual admiration, and many conversations about literature. Vita published with the Woolfs' Hogarth Press, and Virginia wrote her famous Orlando inspired by Vita.
The letters are interspersed with small fragments from Vita and Virginia's personal diaries. And it's here that the reader may feel as though they're violating the writers' privacy, especially when, at times, what they write in the diary doesn't quite match up with what they later write in their letters.
For readers interested in these women's writing process, there are some gems. Vita writes that she envies Virginia's enthusiasm when she's writing a new work: "If I could really get involved in something, I'd be excited about it too. But, of course, there's nothing like a novel for that: it's like conducting an orchestra or modeling clay, that sensation of truly giving shape."
Or Virginia: "Style is something very simple: it's a question of rhythm. Once you have it, you can't get the word wrong." Or "I keep uncovering my brain and looking inside, in case there's some fish slowly rising to the surface: some new book. No, for now, nothing."
