Today, however, I know and understand that love

"Today, however, I know and understand that love is made for the humble, that the proud can never love. The proud imagine they have no need for heart; they will only conquer, always overcome; they believe, finally, that in love too, success is all. Their desires may be fulfilled, their lusts may be satisfied, yes. But, alas, love will never know it!

For love requires obedience, blind obedience as faith. In love you will never be convinced. All that is obedience and devotion is not love. You have to live a lot, you have to suffer a lot, you have to have a great deal of cognition so your heart is able to receive love. Those ambitious, proud, naughty and ungrateful can not know what love is, and so most of us at the age of fifty we begin to understand love, then when it's too late.

Life on me hasted me, humiliated me; my life has multiplied my voice. So I did not say that they do not deserve to be loved, but cry out everywhere: I know to love, because I learned to cry, to sigh and to resign!

Today I would like not to love, I would like to be again proud, ambitious, conquering. From this I see I'm in love! If I would sing syrinx, I would take you to a drenched bowl of moon in a clearing where human pride has not yet been locked, and I would whisper to your loved song. Then perhaps you also understand that love does not know what the world calls "being loved."

I love you because you love me: this is a change, but it is not love. I love you because I love you, and nothing more; I love you only because I love you: love begins here. I thank you from my soul for loving you: this is the song of love. The loved man does not say, I love you because you are a fool; Nor do I love you because you are good. The loved man says, "I love you with all that you are, though you are good, and I would love you even if you were blonde or if you were evil.

Poetry, I say, has falsified love. The poetry has made songs, statues, lyrics from the simple and natural feeling that was once love, made fools from people who, and somewhat, were a bit crazy, made gourmets of the people who were hungry before. But I say there is no poet, musician, painter or sculptor bigger than a lovers. For the artist to understand the great poetry of suffering must first have been in love. Not the poets did love but love made the poets! And I who gladly read in the stars and make my pleasure from the word litter beside the word, I can swear that in our humble words all the mysterious mysteries of the starry sky are written.

O, vanitas, vanitatum vanitas! Said the Prophet. All sufferings are vain! A voice whispered inside. Kisses, tears, love: all are big vanities, painful things.
And yet, for these vain things, for these unassuming vanities I would now be able to give all that I dear to the world, I would be able to give my life.

I do not know if what I do or what is wrong is good, but I feel that among all the worldly vanities I have chosen the most beautiful, which is the most beautiful, because it is the most vain of all. "

By Mărturisire – Liviu Rebreanu