Told Mother and Sister tonight of my Heloise and Abelard obsession. Strangely, neither of them is as taken as I am with Heloise’s bold sexuality. When I hear her refer to herself, a respected abbess, as Abelard’s “concubine or whore,” I’m awed by her complete lack of shame, her bravery in claiming her own love and desire. But Mother is stuck on her insistence that all she’s ever done has been for Abelard, that she’s done everything at his command, that she’d enter the gates of Hell for him. I’m just as interested in her insistence on what Abelard owes her, and her demand that he give it. And to me, the fact that he’s no longer capable of giving it is the tragedy.
Still transcribing H’s first letter. Her writing (and this translation by William Levitan) puts me in a trance.