1915

. . . the amount of minute and delicate joy I et out of watching people and things when I am alone is simply enormous--I really only have 'perfect fun' with myself. When I see a little girl running by on her heels like a fowl in the wet, and say "My dear, there's Gertie," I laugh and enjoy it as I never would with anybody. Just the same applies to my feeling for what is called "nature". Other people won't stop and look at the things I want to look at, or, if they do, they stop to please me or to humour me or to keep the peace. But I am so made that as soon as I am with anyone, I begin to give consideration to their opinions and their desires, and they are not worth half the consideration that mine are.

1918

I pose myself, yet once more, my Eternal Question. What is it that makes the moment of delivery so difficult for me? If I were to sit down--now--and just to write out, plain, some of the stories--all written, all ready, in my mind 'twould take me days. There are so many of them. I sit and think them out, and if I overcome my lassitude and do take the pen they ought (they are so word perfect) to write themselves. But it's the activity. I haven't a place to write in or on--the chair isn't comfortable--yet even as I complain this seems the place and this the chair. And don't I want to write them? Lord! Lord! it's my only desire--my one happy issue. And only yesterday I was thinking--even my present state of health is a great gain. It makes things so rich, so important, so longed for. . . changes one's focus.

. . . When one is little and ill and far away in a remote bedroom all that happens beyond is marvellous. . . . Alors, I am always in that remote bedroom.

October 21, 1921

The last few days what one notices more than anything is the blue. Blue sky blue mountains, all is a heavenly blueness! And clouds of all kinds--wings, soft white clouds, almost hard little golden islands, great mock-mountains. The gold deepens on the slopes. In fact, in sober fact, it is perfection.

But the late evening is the time--of times. Then with the unearthly beauty before one it is not hard to realise how far one has to go. To write something that will be worthy of that rising moon, that pale light. To be 'simple' enough, as one would be simple before God . . . .

October 1921

I look at the mountains, I try to pray and I think of something clever. It's a kind of excitement within one, which shouldn't be there. Calm yourself. Clear yourself. And anything that I write in this mood will be no good; it will be full of sediment. If I were well, I would go off by myself somewhere and sit under a tree. One must learn, one must practice, to forget oneself. I can't tell the truth about Aunt Anne unless I am free to enter into her life without self-consciousness. Oh God! I am divided still. I am bad. I fail in my personal life. I lapse into impatience, temper, vanity, and so I fail as thy priest. Perhaps poetry will help.

November 21, 1921

But then, stronger than all these desires, is the other, which is to make good before I do anything else. The sooner the books are written, the sooner I shall be well, the sooner my wishes will be in sight of fulfillment. That is sober truth, of course. As a pure matter of fact I consider this enforced confinement here as God-given. But, on the other hand, I must make the most of it quickly. It is not unlimited any more than anything else is. Oh, why--oh, why isn't anything unlimited? Why am I haunted every single day of my life by the nearness of death and its inevitability? I am really diseased on that point! And I can't speak of it. If I tell J. it makes him unhappy. If I don't tell him, it leaves me to fight it. I am tired of the battle. No one knows how tired.

November 26, 1921

(after quoting Hegel and commenting on him; I think she agrees) That is to say, reality cannot become the ideal, the dream; and it is not the business of the artist to grind an axe, to try to impose his vision of life upon the existing world. Art is not an attempt of the artist to reconcile existence with his vision; it is an attempt to create his own world in this world. That which suggests the subject to the artist is the unlikeness to what we accept as reality. We single out--we bring into the light--we put up higher.

January 17, 1922

Tchehov made a mistake in thinking that if he had had more time he would have written more fully, described the rain, and the midwife and the doctor having tea. The truth is one can get only so much into a story; there is always a sacrifice. One has to leave out what one knows and longs to use. Why? I haven't any idea, but there it is. It's always a kind of race to get in as much as one can before it disappears.

January 29, 1922

Tidied all my papers. Tore up and ruthlessly destroyed much. This is always a great satisfaction. Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order. This is what life has taught me.

1922

(in an unposted letter) I must reply about Ulysses. I have been wondering what people are saying in England. It took me about a fortnight to wade through, but on the whole I'm dead against it. I suppose it was worth doing if everything is worth doing . . . but that is certainly not what I want from literature. Of course, there are amazingly fine things in it, but I prefer to go without them than to pay that price. Not because I am shocked (though I am fearfully shocked, but that's 'personal'; I suppose it's unfair to judge the book by that) but because I simply don't believe . . . .

July 4, 1922

It's only now I am beginning to see again and to recognize again the beauty of the world. Take the swallows to-day--their flitter flutter--their delicate forked tails--the transparent wings that are like the fins of fishes. The little dark head and the breast golden in the light. Then the beauty of the garden and the beauty of raked paths. . . . Then, silence.

October 14, 1922

My spirit is nearly dead. My spring of life is so starved that it's just not dry. Nearly all my improved health is pretence--acting. What does it amount to? Can I walk? Only creep. Can I do anything with my hands or body? Nothing at all. I am an absolutely hopeless invalid. What is my life? It is the existence of a parasite. And five years have passed now, and I am in straiter bonds than ever.

Ah, I feel a little calmer already to be writing. That God for writing! I am so terrified of what I am going to do. All the voices out of the 'Past' say "Don't do it". Bogey says "M. is a scientist. He does his part. It's up to you to do yours." But that is no good at all. I can no more cure my psyche than my body. . . . Isn't Bogey himself, perfectly fresh and well, utterly depressed by boils on his neck? Think of five years' imprisonment. Someone has got to help me to get out. If that is a confession of weakness--it is. But it's only lack of imagination that calls it so. And who is going to help me? . . . . Do I believe in medicine alone? No, never. In science one can be cured like a cow if one is not a cow. And here, all these years, I have been looking for someone who agreed with me. I have heard of Gurdijief who seems not only to agree but to know infinitely more about it. Why hesitate?

. . . .

I want to be all that I am capable of becoming so that I may be (and here I have stopped and waited and waited and it's no good--there's only one phrase that will do) a child of the sun. About helping others, about carrying a light and so on, it seems false to say a single world. Let it be at that. A child of the sun.