We recently received a note from Tamara Harchanko asking for help finding a passage from Adrienne Rich. I did some searching. I found several references to this passage:
An honorable human relationship–that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love”–is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying for both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.
It is important to do this because in so doing we do justice to our own complexity.
It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.
It was written by Adrienne Rich and is attributed to several sources that include:
- “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying,” spoken by Adrienne Rich at the Hartwick Women Writer’s Workshop, 1975;
- Published as a pamphlet by Motheroot Press, Pittsburgh,1977
- Published in Heresies: A Feminist Magazine of Art and Politics, vol. 1, no. 1, 1979
- Published in French by the Québecois feminist press, Les Editions du Remue-Ménage, 1979
- Published in On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1979
The last reference appeared most often in my searches, but I could not find the entire essay in full online. Only one source referred this passage as a poem, which it said is entitled On Love. You can see that here.
I was not able to find any reference to the ensuing line “the question is not what to tell or how much to tell.” But, then, I didn’t read the passage from the original essay. So it may very well be addional text.
I hope that helps.
P.S. I did have Adrienne’s name misspelled in my categories list. I’ve corrected that.
All those references are to reprintings of the same essay, “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying,” of which this passage is very near the end. To my knowledge, there are no changes between the various printings. It does not appear to be in full text online anywhere. The most easily accessible version (carried in a wide variety of bookstores) is probably in The Best American Essays of the Century, Oates, ed. Most academic libraries & a lot of public libraries will have the Rich collection mentioned above, so this would be your next easiest bet.
Is there any way I can contact Adrienne Rich?
Thank you, Angel. I found the entire essay in my local library in Adrienne Rich’s book “On Lies, Secrets, and Silence – Selected Prose” published in 1995 by W. W. Norton & Company. In this book, the essay is entitled “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying (1975). The introduction cites the same sources as I’ve listed in my post.
Liz, the best suggestion I have for you is to contact Adrienne Rich’s agency. I found a link on her wikipedia entry
http://www.barclayagency.com/rich_a.html
tooo bad tamara can’t live by those word.she has no idea what love is .burnt bridges all along the way
I was gifted Ms. Rich’s book, On Lines, Secrets, and Silence in 1981 and had Ms. Rich sign it after a poetry reading. I wrote her a love/fan letter, the only one I’ve ever written. The book is not in good shape these days because I have read parts of it over and over, especially “Women and Honor …”. It is still meaningful today.
this is also found on the book, “The Best American Essays of the Century” edited by Joyce Carol Oates and Robert Atwan
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u did a superb work. Thanks for your time ,Katie