The title reminded me of the Chinese movie “一个陌生女人的来信, starred by Xu Jinglei and Jiang Wen”。Not surprising, for I watched the movie before reading the novel. Recommended by one of my colleagues, I started to know the author Stefan Zweig. “Letter from an unknown woman” was his first novel I have read.

Reading the novel, a feeling of sentiment grasped me tightly. I did not quite understand why the unknown woman loved him wholeheartedly without letting him know. At the first glance, she started the journey of devoting herself to him. After several years being apart, she still loved him with least decreased passion. Besides twice intimate physical touch, the only thing she possessed was her imagination on him. Just because he gave her 3 white roses as thank-you-message after their first being together, she sent him white roses on each of his birthdays. She did desire him to recall her, to love her back as normal men and women did. But she only hinted him instead of explicitly informing him. Was she afraid of losing him once he knew the truth? Was he like a perfect God in her heart, which was the reason she dedicated herself completely? She even gave birth to his son and managed to raise the boy by being a high-rank courtesan. Her son served as a little HIM, who carried her desperate love to him. Within a decade, they lived in the same city and bumped into each other from time to time yet he behaved like a stranger. She learned by her heart every movement he made, every glimpse he put on her and every expression on his face whenever she saw him. But he recollected few memory of her. She was just like one of women in his life, coming and leaving, fading like a flower, though she took him as her destiny until her death. Her son’s death took away her only hope and cut out the only connection between them in her heart.

Was her love toward him too unselfish to be true? Could someone lead a life only depending on missing, waiting and admiring in a distance, depending on memories? When he received her first and last letter, was he moved by her affection? Did he regret to have ignored so many clues of remembering her? No matter what, her perseverance; patience and tenacity were very touching.

The following is the song in the movie, Chinese version. The song may explain more about the story.