Marriage Contract (1918)
from: Natalie, to: Élisabeth
dated: 1918
Marriage Contract stipulated after nine years of life together, joys and worries shared, and affairs confessed. For the survival of a bond that we believe – and wish to believe – is unbreakable, since at its lowest level of reciprocal emotionalism that is the conclusion reached.
The union, sorely tried by the passing years, failed doubly the faithfulness test in its sixth year, showing us that adultery is inevitable in these relationships where there is no prejudice, no religion other than feelings, no laws other than desire, incapable of vain sacrifices that seem to be the negation of life itself.
We are, however, strong in the knowledge that we can, without delusion or exaggeration, live or die for each other. So much so that while we recognize that one is not sufficient for the other, we are indispensable one for the other.
Our love passion – which knew no obstacle, pure, exclusive, devouring, free as fire – has become love love – another sort of beauty, a different purity: mature, patient, pitiful, supple, cruel, logical, human and complex, as is life.
We accept it as such, since a mutilated victory is better than no victory at all – and we believe that time affords only mutilated victories (which are the only living and durable ones. Ours has lost its freshness, but not its dominating faith, nor its purity, nor its wings).
Being free to choose and not free to choose, we choose: a continuity that seems to us preferable to a mosaic. And who has either of us found to be preferable in the long run to the other?
It has often been clear and proven to us that as we change so must our love change – that our love involves indestructible habits that we must keep out of danger, above momentary fluctuations.
This love that we know is the only one worthy of representing our hearts, minds and bodies at the same time, asks us, all three (heart, mind and body) coming together here, to protect it against our predictable whims, wanderings and changes through the following resolutions:
Since the danger of affairs is ever present and impossible to foresee, one will just have to bring the other back, neither out of revenge, nor to limit the other, but because the union demands it.
No other union shall be so strong as this union, nor another joining so tender – nor relationship so lasting.
As a token of this promise let us place our ring as wide as the universe around the horizon of the future and of ourselves. This exclusive ring must be green, shining and unbreakable.
And the one I marry shall not be called my wife, nor my slave, nor my spouse, which are sexual terms for fleeting times – but my one, my eternal mate.
Source: Transcribed in Francesco Rapazzini, "Élisabeth de Gramont, Natalie Barney's 'eternal mate'." South Central Review 22.3, 2005.