Friday Letters: An intense unclassifiable relationship

As part of my ongoing Friday Love Letters of great minds, I would like to introduce the complex love story of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller. Both intellectuals sensed that magnetic pull they exert on each other even at the very beginning of their interaction. Being proponents of the sweeping movement of Trancendentalism in the US, Waldo (1803) was seven years senior of Margaret (1810), but in each other they found a kindred spirit when it came to looking at the world, its intricacies and complexities. The major theme of their love story resided in their difference in definition of intimacy. Both sensed that within each other, their souls could communicate, that their minds could reach highs and depths together where never before could they imagine that it was really possible. An astounding revelation to both of them, and knowing full well that they could never find the same intensity in another person, that kind of mystery could only happen to the both of them.

Eventually, this kind of intimate connection must be put in speech, therefore both had started to venture discussing who they were in each other’s lives. A bit of a background, Waldo at that time was married, although he was announcing to the world that his marriage was dragging him to emotional and intellectual death, labeling it as Mezentian marriage. He could never hold a conversation with his wife the way he conversed with Margaret. He could never find the spark of mental stimulation and perhaps romantic awakening in his domestic relations with his wife, which consequently fueled the fire of intense relationship with his intellectual soulmate, Margaret.

“He and Margaret found themselves on one side of an invisible wall, the rest of the world on the other. But neither knew what to make of this uncommon bond that didn’t conform to any existing template. The richest relationships are often those that don’t fit neatly into the preconceived slots we have made for the archetypes we imagine would populate our lives — the friend, the lover, the parent, the sibling, the mentor, the muse. We meet people who belong to no single slot, who figure into multiple categories at different times and in different magnitudes. We then must either stretch ourselves to create new slots shaped after these singular relationships, enduring the growing pains of self-expansion, or petrify,” Maria Popova, Brainpickings

For Margaret, being a free-thinking, open-minded creature, she also had a parade of lovers while having her friendship with Waldo. Being fluid in her gender, she shared intimacies with both men and women, however she mentioned in many impassioned letters sent to Waldo that she felt, “so at home” with him alone. As mentioned earlier, the labeling of their unclassified relationship balled into a larger issue between them: she wanted to define the relationship, he didn’t want to. Mainly, he was afraid of jumping from a dead-weight marriage to another one if they indeed wanted to formalize their coupledom, he thought that it would be too much to be caged the second time. Although in his most demonstrative letter, Waldo told Margaret, “O divine mermaid or fisher of men, to whom all gods have given the witch-hazel-wand… I am yours & yours shall be.”

It is interesting to note how Maria Popova, an essayist, highlighted the definition of intimacy:

This false notion of the body as the testing ground for intimacy has long warped our understanding of what constitutes a romantic relationship. The measure of intimacy is not the quotient of friction between skin and skin, but something else entirely — something of the love and trust, the joy and ease that flow between two people as they inhabit that private world walled off from everything and everyone else.

If we will use this definition intimacy as our measuring scale to label the relationship between Waldo and Margaret, then we can say that they were definitely and unquestionably a couple already. Judging from their letters alone we know that both of them deeply knew the undeniable intimate relationship that they had. But refusing to be boxed in classification, the couple quietly agreed that they need not go through the rituals of marriage or living together. They just allowed the relationship to naturally grow and take flight.

Let us once again look at one of the letters Waldo sent to Margaret and marvel at his romantic words:

Let us live as we have always done, only ever better, I hope, & richer. Speak to me of every thing but myself & I will endeavor to make an intelligible reply. Allow me to serve you & you will do me a kindness; come & see me… let me visit you and I shall be cheered as ever by the spectacle of so much genius & character as you have always the gift to draw around you.

~

Something to ponder on:

If you were Margaret, would you let this relationship go on without both parties defining it? Don’t we need grounding, and definitely to achieve grounding, we must define something, only then can we achieve a clear look of its limits, its scope and its parameters?

Source
https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/06/05/ralph-waldo-emerson-margaret-fuller-letters-figuring/