Author: Maria Popova / Source: Brain Pickings
“What is happiness, anyhow? … so impalpable — a mere breath, an evanescent tinge,” Walt Whitman wondered in his most direct reflection on happiness. Thirty years earlier, another genius of letters and pioneering poet of the era made a sublime case for happiness as a moral obligation — even, and especially, in the midst of suffering.
By the time Elizabeth Barrett Browning (March 6, 1806–June 29, 1861) became one of the most celebrated authors of her time, she had endured an inordinate amount of suffering — from a litany of losses to a rare, debilitating chronic illness that left her bedridden for much of her life. And yet she adamantly renounced the dangerous myth of the suffering artist and instead played the cards she’d been dealt with a remarkable buoyancy of spirit. That radiance of mind beneath her creative and intellectual genius is what enchanted Robert Browning when the two commenced the secret epistolary courtship that would unfold into one of history’s most beautiful real-life love stories.
In one of her early letters to Robert, penned the day…
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