What is the relationship between literature and the personal lives of writers?
D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) met Frieda, the wife of an English professor, in early March 1912. She was six years older than Lawrence, and the two fell in love at first sight. Their extramarital affair is vividly reflected in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, published in 1928.
At the age of 23, the young Goethe (1749–1832) met the gentle Charlotte at a village ball and fell passionately in love with her. However, Charlotte was already engaged to a lawyer named Kestner. Though Goethe suffered greatly due to his love for her, he eventually accepted that it was a hopeless romance and left her side. Two years later, he published The Sorrows of Young Werther, a novel that moved young people around the world.
When Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) lost his beloved wife to tuberculosis, he carried her body on his shoulders up a mountain to bury her himself. It was the middle of January, during a bitterly cold winter that froze both body and soul. His poem Annabel Lee was born from this painful experience.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944) crashed his plane in the Libyan desert, but was rescued by a passing caravan. This harrowing experience inspired many of his works. In particular, The Little Prince breaks away from heroism and explores the mysterious bonds that form between people.
Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), at the age of 61, fell in love with an 18-year-old girl named Emilie Bardach. This late-life romance had a profound influence on his later works, following A Doll’s House.