Letters of a Portuguese Nun: Uncovering the Mystery Behind a Seventeenth-Century Forbidden Love

by Myriam Cyr and Miriam Cyr

Book Overview

This title reveals the passionate affair of a beautiful nun and a daring marquis in the 17th century. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786869119
• ISBN13: 9780786869114
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Miramax Books
• Length: 236 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

An Inescapable Pleasure

Let it be known that Simon Schama (The Embarrassment of Riches; A History of Britain) has very recently chosen Myriam Cyr's LETTERS OF A PORTUGUESE NUN as one of his "top reads" for the 2006 London's GUARDIAN Summer Reading List. This surely says it -- this book tops many well-researched literary offerings in a very long time. It is no wonder that the Kirkus Review dubbed it "Pulp romance for the Masterpiece Theater set." Scholarship and imagination have indeed prevailed -- all in a perfect piece of beautifully written non-fiction. In addition to her detailed and carefully attended and written literary history, and to the subtle nuances of a love relationship still quivering in its newness, Myriam Cyr tends to the unfolding darker corners of this mysteriously entangled love story as she interprets the searingly passionate LETTERS: Cyr draws the reader closer and closer to the beating pulse of what makes love real for each of us -- then she sweeps us away, and we are breathless. Four years of critical work by the author -- scouring with painstaking care the books, letters and papers in the old libraries of Europe and beyond, checking data and facts -- have blossomed into this lovingly researched first novel. As well, Ms. Cyr has an irresistible speaking voice for listening audiences: In her Boston speaking tours she reads the Portuguese Nun's LETTERS with a surge of such poetic passion, beauty and emotion that it is as if she wrote these letters herself. LETTERS echoes in the feeling heart of the contemporary reader --and lingers. The tender power of this haunting 17th century love story reaches to our essence and activates an empathic compassion for the longing and desire for what is fundamentally vital to our souls in our search for love.

A Romantic Mystery

They were an international bestseller when they were published, five love letters from a devastated woman who had been left by her lover as he went on to military duties. It does not matter that this was more than three hundred years ago; the theme is one that is immediate. The letters were so piercing that immediately a controversy arose over their authorship; no woman could have written them, it was said, because women generally didn't write, never wrote well, and never felt love as deeply as men. The controversy has persisted, and will persist, because there is no proof on either side, but in Letters of a Portuguese Nun: Uncovering the Mystery Behind a 17th Century Forbidden Love (Miramax Books), Miriam Cyr argues the case for authorship by the nun herself. This is Cyr's first book; she has had a successful career as an actress, and first heard of the letters when they were performed as a play. She determined to translate them herself (unaware that they were hugely famous and had been translated many times), and performed them on stage herself. She could not answer questions from those who heard her readings about the authenticity of the letters, but sympathized with a woman who told her the letters expressed her feelings during a painful breakup and was outraged that anyone thought they were fictional. Cyr, probably motivated by the same sort of feeling, did three years of research, and even though her conclusions are not watertight, her advocacy of the nun's authorship is convincing. More importantly, she has brought the heartbreaking letters to a new audience and supplied them with sufficient context to understand their themes. Mariana Alcoforado was born in 1640 in the picturesque town of Beja, Portugal, and was put in a convent at the age of ten. The Marquis of Chamilly was a Frenchman, a born soldier who was helping the Portuguese fight incursions from Spain. He was garrisoned in Beja in 1666, and the nuns looking out on the fields around them were entertained by the sight of officers exercising their horses. Mariana was captivated by Chamilly's dash in such capers, and inevitably the officers were invited into the convent. As she often has to do, Cyr invites us to imagine details, such as their meeting and growing acquaintance; even in the letters there are few details about any courting. We also have to imagine how the pair eluded detection, or how Chamilly might have been able to sneak into Mariana's quarters before she was locked inside for the night, and how he sneaked out again. Cyr summarizes, "Unsuspected and unseen, Chamilly and Mariana entered a world more intimate than a prayer and more ethereal than air." There was no dramatic discovery of the affair by authorities, but it ended when Chamilly was called back into the official service of his king, Louis XIV. He simply chose duty over love. In her letters to him, Mariana wrote, "It may be you will find greater beauty, but never will you find such love, and all

A new look at an old history

History is a messy place. A lot gets lost, and a lot is saved that would perhaps be better off lost. When looking back on the scrambled fog of the past, people often see only what they want to, and only what they can believe to be true. Unfortunately this means that a lot of what actually happened becomes distorted by the biases of the day. And in the shuffle, it's often the stories of the individuals that are lost, invalidated or claimed to be something they are not. Luckily, there are those such as actress Myriam Cyr who are willing to work to give a voice to those individual stories that are distorted by the warped mirror of time. In her first book, Letters of a Portuguese Nun, she explores the story of Mariana Alcoforado, a seventeenth century nun who fell in love with a French officer. Gracefully intertwining their individual stories and the cultural events of the time, Cyr takes us on a journey back over three hundred years ago into the heart of a forbidden passion. Against the claims that the 1669 publication of a volume of love letters entitled Portuguese Letters was the fabrication of a (male) French aristocrat, Cyr asserts that the 27 year old nun Mariana was the real author and the letters did, in fact, come from the heart of longing and of loss. In spite of all the passion and drama of the story, what struck me most in reading the book was the passion of its author. Through the work, the reader can feel the author's irresistible drive to tell the truth as she sees it. A quote from the introduction lingers with me, she writes: "...I thought of the times when, as women, we are not heard, and how after 300 years Mariana, whose words have changed so many lives, is not allowed the most basic of rights, the right to claim her own voice." Myriam Cyr gives her that right, and in turn validates the whole contested history of female authorship from Sappho to Dorothy Wordsworth, giving the privileges of ownership back to a millennia of women who could not claim them for themselves. For that I am cannot help but feel both inspired and grateful for her work.

Letters of a Portuguese Nun

Enjoyed the historical portion of the book that takes place in Beja, Portugal. I worked in Beja with the Portuguese Air Force for 9 months and ws familiar with the convent and the surrounding Alentajo cities and landscape

Fascinating Story

This is a beautifully produced book and a fascinating story. Myriam Cyr relates history with an engaging style that kept me turning pages compulsively. Along side the story of a nun's forbidden love for a French officer, she gives all sorts of interesting facts about life in 17th century Portugal and in the courts and salons of France. Ultimately, she draws a lively portrait of her main subject- a woman who reaches across the centuries and touches our hearts and minds with her potent words and story.