Nehring quotes Ortega y Gasset on the curiosity that “both Stendahl and Chateaubriand took their love affairs much more seriously than their work.” It is peculiar, the Spanish philosopher considers, “that only those incapable of producing great work believe that the contrary is the proper conduct: to take science, art, or politics seriously and disdain love affairs as mere frivolities.” In this light, it seems possible that Fuller’s letters were the most original of her writings; that Frida Kahlo “used her painting to feed the artwork that was her love life”; that the structural core of Hannah Arendt’s monumental thinking was welded in a lifelong conversation with her second husband, Heinrich Blücher, that was itself a magnum opus.

Miriam Markowitz, “A Fine Romance: On Cristina Nehring”