Letter to D. A Love Story by André Gorz

 What a wonderful, intense, tremendous testament of Love is Letter to D.

A Love Story by André Gorz, translated by Julie Rose, published by Polity.  I hadn't never read more beautiful words, more moving words, for describing the love of the existence of spent by mr.Gorz, with his british Dorine, wife from 58 years.

Love at first sight, this Jew from Austria, was catapulted in the intense world of Dorine, a fearless girl, plenty of enthusiasm and joy de vivre. Sometimes André tought that maybe Dorine was too much to him but Dorine simply loved him with all herself, and passionately asked him of marrying her, without thinking too much. Dorine, english, was a girl in grade of attracting a lot of people in her orbit, close to her; it was more difficult for Groz, who left to the wife the direction of their existence. If at first they lived pretty humbly and without too many financial resources, with jobs bringing uncertainties and not too much food on the table, the meeting with crucial men like Sartre will open to André Groz many opportunities. Dorine will, in the while, stay always be close to him, suggesting, inspiring, and devotingly encouraging him in his writings.

No one has been more important than Dorine in the existence of Groz and this celebration continues when he tell us that later they went to live in the french countryside at 30 km from Paris.

Dorine loved simple life, it was a kind of manifesto for this couple. When she started to suffering of a chronic illness caused by a substance injected her years before in the spinal chord because of an operation and never "deleted" by the organism, she will start practising yoga, taking under control pains and sufferances harmonically and without the help of too many strong medical remedies. Another important step for this couple the cervical cancer of Dorine, sorted out successfully. 

They lived frugally, remembers André, with a budget that Dorine prepared every month for their expenses, but, at the same time Dorine, a strong character, refused any kind of dictaction from fashion; she wears what she wanted to wear. They didn't afford in expensive places when in vacation. There is a strong critic at the modern system and at a way of living, in a too dissolute and irrational way, where extra-aboundance is lived abnormally in particular in certain countries like the USA, remembers Groz. 

Dorine lived a long life, but later, when she was sick, and the possibility of dying always more close, Gorz, as anticipated at the end of this letter in this passage "I don't want to be there for your cremation; I don't want to be given an urn with your ashes in it...Neither of us wants to outlive the other. We've often said to ourselves that if, ny some miracle, we were to have a second life, we'd like to spend it together" will commit suicide with his wife; they were found peacefully lying in their bed in 2007. This book was released when Gorz and his wife still alive, in 2006 and at first André Gorz thought that maybe it wouldn't have had a great success, while it became a real bestseller for the reasons that you will discover!

Oh, you must read this book. It's intense, romantic, written with great passion, love! Not only: Gorz gives the best idea in words of all the intensity with which a man can loves his woman. 

I thank Polity for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori