Katherine Mansfield and Continental Europe: Katherine Mansfield Studies, Volume 1 9781474465885

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Katherine Mansfield Studies Volume 1 · 2009

Katherine Mansfield and Continental Europe Edited by

Delia da Sousa Correa and Gerri Kimber

Edinburgh University Press

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How to order Subscriptions can be accepted for complete volumes only. Print prices include packing and airmail for subscribers in North America and surface postage for subscribers in the Rest of the World. All orders must be accompanied by the correct payment. You can pay by cheque in Pound, Sterling or US Dollars, bank transfer, Direct Debt or Credit/Debit card. The individual rate applies only when a subscription is paid for with a personal cheque, credit card or bank transfer. To order using the online subscription form, please visit www.eupjournals.com/kms/page/subscribe Alternatively you may place your order by telephone on +44 (0)131 650 6207, fax on +44 (0)131 662 3286 or email to [email protected] using your Visa or Mastercard credit card. Don’t forget to include the expiry date of your card, the security number (three digits on the reverse of the card) and the address that the card is registered to. Please make your cheque payable to Edinburgh University Press Ltd. Sterling cheques must be drawn on a UK bank account. If you would like to pay by bank transfer or Direct Debit, contact us at [email protected] and we will provide instructions. Advertising Advertisements are welcomed and rates are available on request, or by consulting our website at www.eupjournals.com. Advertisers should send their enquiries to the Journals Marketing Manager at the address above.

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Contents

Foreword Vincent O’Sullivan: President, Katherine Mansfield Society

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Introduction Delia da Sousa Correa: Editor, Katherine Mansfield Studies

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Articles GUTS – Katherine Mansfield as a Reviewer Angela Smith

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‘Illness in Absence’: Mansfield and Murry’s Collaborative Text: 1918 Sydney Janet Kaplan

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‘And he handed her an egg’: The Art of Memory in ‘Feuille d’Album’, Katherine Mansfield and Proust Anne Mounic

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Katherine Mansfieldová: The Reception of Katherine Mansfield in the Countries of Former Czechoslovakia Janka Kašˇcáková

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Katherine Mansfield and French Philosophy: A Bergsonian Reading of Maata Eiko Nakano

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‘We are not solitary palm trees’: Katherine Mansfield and Cosmopolitanism Erika Baldt

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Creative Writing Wellington Journal Kirsty Gunn

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Poetry Jenny Bornholdt: ‘Tea’ Riemke Ensing: ‘Love Affair’ Kevin Ireland: ‘Visit to a German Pension’ Anna Jackson: ‘Just a little corrupted’ Jan Kemp: ‘Visite-patrimoine – Villas’ Kath MacLean: ‘Doo–Da–Doo–Da’ Gregory O’Brien: ‘The order in which waves reach the beach at Menton:’ Vincent O’Sullivan: ‘Author’s Bluff’ Helen Shaw: ‘Today At The Villa Isola Bella’ C. K. Stead: ‘Isola Bella’ Report The Great Painting Penelope Jackson Reviews Clare Hanson: The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Vol. 5, 1922–1923 Michael Hollington: Nicole Seifert, Von Tagebüchern und Trugbildern: Die Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen von Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf und Sylvia Plath [Of Diaries and Deceptions: The Autobiographical Writings of Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath] Anne Mounic: Katherine Mansfield: The View from France Sarah Ailwood: Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married life in London Literary Circles 1910–1939

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Review Article Isabel María Andrés Cuevas: An Overview of Mansfield’s Studies in Spain and a Review of Rodríguez Salas’s Hijas de la Diosa Blanca

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Notes on Contributors

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Acknowledgements

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FOREWORD

Honorary President of the Katherine Mansfield Society Vincent O’Sullivan Katherine Mansfield is one of the few early-twentieth-century writers whose work has never been out of print. For more than eighty years, her stories have remained among the most read in the language. In the last thirty, biographies and editions of her letters and notebooks have added depth to what we know of her, and she is now recognised as one of the essential and enduring Moderns. She has come a long way since Wyndham Lewis, a few months before she entered the Gurdjieff Institute, dismissed her as ‘the famous New Zealand Mag.–story writer, in the grip of the Levantine psychic shark’. The recently established Katherine Mansfield Society and the enthusiasm of its world-wide membership has prompted the founding of this Mansfield journal. Part of that earlier condescension sprang from her stories being so liked by ‘ordinary’ readers. There was the feeling that as a mere short story writer, she was not up there with ‘the clever ones’. Her own last letters had voiced her deep suspicion of the intellectual life. Play less chess, do more gardening, she advised her husband. In a note meant only for her own eye, she hit on a deadly image for a life whose values rose only from books, and scuttled back to them: ‘I do not want to be a bookworm. If the book is taken away from it the little blind head is raised, it wags, hovers, terribly uneasy, in a void until it begins to burrow again’. Mansfield was, as the saying goes, ‘a born writer’. She was also a born enthusiast for living life to the full. Writing – ‘work’ as she liked to call it – was of central and defining importance to her; but it was part of life, not a substitute for it. When a writer a few years ago in the New York Times Book Review singled her out as ‘the most emblematic woman writer of her time’, it was that alert, embracing commitment to the day, to what was possible and at hand on her own terms, that was celebrated: a woman set on shaping her destiny, whether or not she was able to bring it off. At the core of Mansfield there is an existential toughness: ‘The little boat enters the dark fearful gulf and our only cry is to escape – “put me on land again.’’ But it’s useless. Nobody listens.

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Katherine Mansfield Studies The shadowy figure rows on. One ought to sit still and uncover one’s eyes’. It is something like this ‘uncovering’ that also defines the élan and the stringency of her prose. As both life and fiction made clear, to be modern was a risky business. Her contemporary H. D. astutely put it like this: “‘I believe in intelligent women having experience’’ was then a very, very thin line to toe, and a very, very frail wire to do a tight-rope act on’. Mansfield was up to the performance. It took a generation, perhaps even two, for her reputation to break free from Middleton Murry’s sincere but saccharine moulding of her image. The stories were read, as ever, but only slowly did Mansfield take her place among those Modernists credited with recasting English fiction. There were always a few of course who knew what was going on. The Irish short story writer Frank O’Connor, who so deeply disliked what he knew of her personality, and quite misread much of what she wrote, nevertheless declared that at her best, she can be linked with Proust and Joyce. Elizabeth Bowen, in the 1950s, mourned her as her missing contemporary. She made, so Conrad Aiken believed, ‘the reflection of the moment’ her particular domain. This new journal will attend to the writer and to the woman, to the social and literary and imaginative worlds she moved in, to the divagations of fashion, to the recovery of texts, and to fresh responses to what she wrote. It will aim to do this with scholarly rigour, with openness, and as the editors intend, with something of Mansfield’s deft example from her own critical writing – to be serious is a quite different thing from being solemn or doctrinaire.

DOI: 10.3366/E204145010900002X

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Introduction Delia da Sousa Correa

Welcome to the first issue of Katherine Mansfield Studies. The rapid development of the Katherine Mansfield Society since its formation in January 2009 has been tremendously exciting. It is indicative that the time is more than ripe for the foundation of the Society and for a specialist journal of Mansfield studies. Our first issue opens with an article by Angela Smith on Mansfield as a reviewer, in which she also reflects on Mansfield’s own subsequent fate at the hands of reviewers. This is a timely subject, given the recent flurry of responses to the final volume of Mansfield’s correspondence, edited by Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott. That publication is in turn reviewed for this journal by Clare Hanson. The articles that follow Angela Smith’s take up the special theme of this first issue of Katherine Mansfield Studies, ‘Katherine Mansfield and Continental Europe’. Sydney Janet Kaplan’s essay, part of her forthcoming study on the collaborative writing life of Mansfield and John Middleton Murry, focuses on their exchange of letters at the point, in 1918, when Mansfield was trapped in Paris whilst the city was under German bombardment. Mansfield’s absorption of French literature and thought is explored in essays by Anne Mounic and Eiko Nakano; both illuminate her affiliation with Henri Bergson’s interpretations of consciousness. Anne Mounic also uncovers a rich seam of affinity with the writings of Marcel Proust. Two further essays widen the focus of this issue beyond the already far-reaching connections with France. Janka Kašˇcáková provides an intriguing viewpoint onto Mansfield’s literary and critical afterlife in Czechoslovakia, whilst Erika Baldt’s essay celebrates the cosmopolitanism that characterised Mansfield’s life and writing – a particularly apposite theme for the first issue of the Katherine Mansfield Society’s journal: as the notes on contributors make plain,

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Katherine Mansfield Studies the authors of these essays are as fittingly international as the Society’s membership. Mansfield’s writing has inspired successors from Elizabeth Bowen to Ali Smith. A particular feature of Katherine Mansfield Studies is that it solicits creative contributions as well as scholarly essays and reviews. In this inaugural issue, Kirsty Gunn’s ‘Wellington Journal’ brings together diary-writing and fictionalised prose; its successive sections nest within one another, echoing the layers of memory and imagination that the piece invokes. There is also a rich haul of poetry which resonates with the theme of this issue, with several contributions by eminent New Zealand writers. Penelope Jackson reports on the fascinating life-history of Anne Estelle Rice’s famous portrait of Mansfield which features on the front of this first issue of Katherine Mansfield Studies. We are fortunate to have this as our cover image and to have the iconic ‘Daisy’ photograph of Mansfield as a frontispiece. Mansfield’s relationship with Continental Europe is also variously represented in several of the publications under review in this first issue. Following Clare Hanson’s review of Volume 5 of the Collected Letters, which largely deals with Mansfield’s final months in Switzerland and France, Michael Hollington reviews a work by a German scholar, Nicole Seifert, whilst Anne Mounic reviews Gerri Kimber on the importance of French literature and culture for Mansfield’s work and her critical afterlife in France. A combined review/article by Isabel Andrés Cuevas provides an insight into Mansfield’s reception in Spain and Sarah Ailwood reviews Katie Roiphe’s recent study of seven literary marriages, including that of Mansfield and Murry. The creation of this journal has been made possible thanks to an enormous amount of dedicated and skilled collaboration by Society members, to generous development support from The Open University, and to Edinburgh University Press’s enterprise in adopting a new periodical. We have much to celebrate, and the combined scholarly and creative contributions to this first issue of Katherine Mansfield Studies have ensured that this is truly a celebration of the abundant afterlife of Mansfield’s work. We hope that this and our future issues will be enjoyed by the diverse community of Mansfield readers.

DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000031

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GUTS – Katherine Mansfield as a Reviewer Angela Smith

Abstract The paper begins by engaging with recent reviews of volume five of The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, challenging the principles on which the reviews were written and questioning the assumption of personal intimacy that reviewers, critics and biographers often make in relation to Mansfield. Her role as a reviewer for the Athenaeum is then analysed, principally using reviews that were not covered by Clare Hanson in her selection of Mansfield’s critical writing. Initially the paper considers Mansfield’s experience as a reviewer and editor during the Rhythm period, and the significance for her of the Fauvist aesthetic of that journal. Mansfield’s ruthless scrutiny of the fiction of contemporaries is examined for what it reveals about her own practice, and is then applied to two particular themes in her fiction, the depiction of children and of the secret self, here specifically in relation to tuberculosis. The opportunities that were not offered to Mansfield, perhaps because she was seen as an uneducated woman, are discussed as well as the dimension that her witty and incisive reviewing adds to our assessment of her literary achievement. Key words: Katherine Mansfield, reviewers, Athenaeum, Rhythm, Fauvism, childhood, tuberculosis In a prophetic sentence that would come to apply to readers of her own stories after her death, Katherine Mansfield wrote of Jane Austen’s fiction that ‘every true admirer of the novels cherishes the happy thought that he alone – reading between the lines – has become

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GUTS – Katherine Mansfield as a Reviewer Angela Smith

Abstract The paper begins by engaging with recent reviews of volume five of The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, challenging the principles on which the reviews were written and questioning the assumption of personal intimacy that reviewers, critics and biographers often make in relation to Mansfield. Her role as a reviewer for the Athenaeum is then analysed, principally using reviews that were not covered by Clare Hanson in her selection of Mansfield’s critical writing. Initially the paper considers Mansfield’s experience as a reviewer and editor during the Rhythm period, and the significance for her of the Fauvist aesthetic of that journal. Mansfield’s ruthless scrutiny of the fiction of contemporaries is examined for what it reveals about her own practice, and is then applied to two particular themes in her fiction, the depiction of children and of the secret self, here specifically in relation to tuberculosis. The opportunities that were not offered to Mansfield, perhaps because she was seen as an uneducated woman, are discussed as well as the dimension that her witty and incisive reviewing adds to our assessment of her literary achievement. Key words: Katherine Mansfield, reviewers, Athenaeum, Rhythm, Fauvism, childhood, tuberculosis In a prophetic sentence that would come to apply to readers of her own stories after her death, Katherine Mansfield wrote of Jane Austen’s fiction that ‘every true admirer of the novels cherishes the happy thought that he alone – reading between the lines – has become

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Katherine Mansfield Studies the secret friend of their author’.1 Reviewers, critics and biographers of Mansfield often convey a sense of personal intimacy with her, referring to her as ‘Katherine’ and reading the stories through the life, as if the enigma of much of her short fiction could be explained away by an actual event. Recent reviews of the fifth volume of her Collected Letters,2 imply that the writers even have an inside track on Mansfield’s experience that was unavailable to the editors of the letters. Beginning with observations on this phenomenon I explore Mansfield’s development as a reviewer, focusing particularly on specific reviews that are not included in Clare Hanson’s fine edited selection, The Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield,3 and reading parts of two of the stories through them, rather than through my own impressions of Mansfield’s emotional life. Jeffrey Meyers’ brief review of the fifth volume of Mansfield’s Collected Letters in Times Higher Education,4 summarises his own reading of Mansfield’s life rather than what emerges from the subtle and sometimes contradictory letters. In Meyers’ view Murry is ‘weak and selfish’ and Ida Baker ‘irritating and inept’. Meyers claims that Gurdjieff, whose Institute at Fontainebleau Mansfield entered in October 1922, was an exploitative and ‘fraudulent mystic’ although she herself writes that the place ‘is like a dream – or a miracle’,5 and that it ‘has taught me so far how unreal I am’. She sees ‘no hope of escape except by learning to live in our emotional & instinctive being’,6 and writes carefully to explain her view to Murry and Baker. The implication of Meyers’ attitude is that she might have survived if she had not entered the Institute; as this seems improbable, readers can follow the complex story her letters tell of her life there, and engage with her analysis of the divided self: ‘I am always conscious of this secret disruption in me’.7 Meyers asserts that ‘she raged against the dying of the light’, but this distorts to one dimension the variegated strands that Mansfield weaves painstakingly together in her last letters. His review is about his own judgment that Mansfield ‘played Marlowe to Virginia Woolf’s Shakespeare’ and ‘was overtaken by the rival who lived for another 18 years’. The league table approach to literary reputation is undermined by Woolf herself, when she writes at Mansfield’s death, ‘where is she, who could do what I can’t!’8 It would belie my argument if I were to speculate on what Mansfield would think about the assertive confidence of these pronouncements. A similarly authoritative judgment is made by Trev Broughton in the Times Literary Supplement review of the final volume of the letters.9 She asserts that the letters show Mansfield ‘stuck in a kind of

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GUTS – Katherine Mansfield as a Reviewer emotional stammer’ and that ‘the Prieuré months are, to the literary historian, an embarrassing postscript’. Neither reviewer provides a detached account of the content of the book; neither offers the information that most of these letters had been published previously, but that when they appeared in earlier texts they were moulded by their editors’ agendas or by the particular narratives in which they featured. Positioning them in sequence as they were written, Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott allow the reader to perceive Mansfield’s developing courage and ruthless self-scrutiny. Rather than being a postscript, her correspondence gives evidence of Mansfield’s ability to live intellectually, emotionally and physically even when she was dying, and to tell a new story through her letters. Broughton’s review asks the apparently irrelevant question, using a curiously mixed metaphor, ‘Whose letters, laid out nose to tail, would smell of roses?’ No-one’s, of course, but is that a reason for scholars and publishers to eschew the form? Would we want to be without the malice, mockery, hatred, rage and jealousy as well as the insight, wit, incisiveness, intelligence, imagination and compassion of all five volumes of the letters? Meyers and Broughton both appear to consider themselves as Mansfield’s ‘secret friend’, or possibly intimate enemy. Mansfield’s own approach to reviewing is revealed most obviously by her practice as a reviewer of fiction for the Athenaeum from April 1919, when John Middleton Murry took over its editorship, until December 1920 when she became too ill to continue as a reviewer. Michael Whitworth reports T. S. Eliot’s opinion of the Athenaeum under Murry: ‘Murry “was genuinely studious to maintain a serious criticism’’, and “had much higher standards and greater ambitions for literary journalism than any other editor in London’’ ’.10 His initiation into the role of editor had come much earlier when, at the age of 22 in 1911, he founded the little magazine Rhythm, with the Scottish painter J. D. Fergusson as its art editor. Even then he was thinking along ambitious and innovative lines; his interest in demonstrating the interaction of different art forms is evident from the magazine’s inception. In an essay in its first issue, he attempts to integrate the ‘living artistic force’ of Henri Bergson’s ‘open avowal of the supremacy of the intuition’11 into the agenda of the magazine. To explore intuition and what is repressed by bourgeois civilisation, Rhythm’s contributors would attempt to ‘rebarbarise’ themselves, as Frederick Goodyear affirmed in Rhythm’s opening essay: ‘it is neo-barbarians, men and women who to the timid and unimaginative seem merely perverse and atavistic, that must familiarize us with our outcast selves’.12 The Irish

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Katherine Mansfield Studies writer J. M. Synge’s preface to his poems, written in 1908, revealed a similar aspiration; like Murry, he wanted to shift writing away from fin de siècle Aestheticism: In these days poetry is usually a flower of evil or good; but it is the timber of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms [. . . ] It may almost be said that before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.13

Murry adapted this to become the watchword for Rhythm: ‘Before art can be human it must learn to be brutal.’ Our intention is to provide art, be it drawing, literature or criticism, which shall be vigorous, determined, which shall have its roots below the surface and be the rhythmical echo of the life with which it is in touch. Both in its pity and its brutality it shall be real.14

For Murry, Mansfield and Fergusson and many of the other contributors, this impetus to go below the surface, to search for intuitive rhythms, to address psychological disruption, was manifested in Fauvist painting with its vibrant colours, its heavily outlined shapes, its overt eroticism and mythic subject-matter. Rhythm’s editor pinned its Fauvist colours to the mast in advertisements in Poetry Review: ‘a unique attempt will be made to unite within one magazine all the parallel manifestations of modernism in every province of art, education and philosophy’.15 Rhythm appeared from 1911 until 1913. World events had given a new and terrible significance to brutality, to clay and to worms, by the time that Murry took over the editorship of the Athenaeum in 1919. Yet Mansfield, whose advice Murry constantly sought, harked back to Rhythm in her most extended comments on what, living in Menton, she found most tedious about the issue of the Athenaeum he had sent her in December 1920, when he had been editor for nearly two years: If the paper is shorter it wants to be more defined, braced up, tighter. In my reckless way I would suggest all reviews were signed & all were put into the first person. I think that would give the whole paper an amazing lift up. A paper that length must be definite, personal, or die. It can’t afford the ‘we’, ‘in our opinion’. To sign reviews, to put them in the 1st person stimulates curiosity, makes for correspondence, gives it (to be 19-eleventyish) GUTS.16

As she indicates, what she is recommending is a return to the dynamism of Rhythm, with its sharply defined objectives; what Murry

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GUTS – Katherine Mansfield as a Reviewer called ‘ “guts’’ and bloodiness’.17 Her affinity in this respect with D. H. Lawrence is made evident by Michael Whitworth’s essay on the Athenaeum and the Adelphi. Quoting Lawrence he writes: ‘ “Spunk is what one wants, not introspective sentiment.’’ He was, in contrast, relieved to find that The Criterion had some “guts’’ ’.18 Mansfield’s analysis of what is wrong with the Athenaeum indicates her adherence to a Fauvist aesthetic. She wants a pared-down magazine with sharp lines, posing questions rather than answering them, avoiding conventionality and cant, committing the writers to responsibility for their opinions. It is a reminder of the exasperation she expressed when Murry wanted to edit one of her stories for the Blue Review, the successor to Rhythm: you cant cut it without making an ugly mess somewhere. Im a powerful stickler for form in this style of work. I hate the sort of licence that English people give themselves – to spread over and flop and roll about. I feel as fastidious as though I wrote with acid.19

Fauvists might be said to paint with acid, omitting perspective and naturalistic detail in order to focus the viewer’s attention on a rhythmic repetition in a painting, or on mask-like features, or on the deep structure of a landscape. The appearance of the Athenaeum compares unfavourably with the sharp outlines of Fergusson’s cover for Rhythm. The Athenaeum’s sombre cover signals, with its two facing profiles of Athena, that its readers are likely to be intellectuals. The helmeted goddess of virginity and war, and of the most famous city of classical antiquity, is worlds away from the naked female figure holding an apple and poised for movement on the cover of Rhythm. The Athenaeum’s title did not, naturally, tempt anyone looking for something to read on the train. The dense text on the cover of the issue for 20 February 1920 advertises an essay competition on the subject of ‘English Literature since 1914’, to be judged by the editor, Murry, by Dr Robert Bridges the poet, by then in his mid-seventies, and by the recently retired George Saintsbury, professor of rhetoric and English literature at Edinburgh. As Michael Whitworth observes: ‘The nature of The Athenaeum’s readership may be inferred from a wide range of direct and indirect evidence. Its “Situations Vacant’’ advertisements were predominantly directed at teachers, lecturers, librarians, and museum curators’.20 Virginia Woolf addresses her essays, which she called an unprofessional book of criticism, to the common not to the academic reader. Similarly Mansfield, perhaps as Clare Hanson suggests,

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Katherine Mansfield Studies mocking the title of Murry’s The Evolution of an Intellectual, writes: ‘Not being an intellectual I always seem to have to learn things at the risk of my life – but I do learn’.21 She expresses part of what she learnt in her critique of Murry’s tone in the book: ‘it is not the complete you who is influenced [by the spirit of the times]: it is the intellectual you. The complete you rebels against the intellectual you at times and wrestles and overthrows it’.22 The aspiration towards ‘the complete you’ is expressed in terms reminiscent of Bergson’s concept of duration. In Time and Free Will he writes that we have two selves, one reached ‘by deep introspection, which leads us to grasp our inner states as living things, constantly becoming, as states not amenable to measure, which permeate one another’ whereas in the other ‘we live outside ourselves [. . . ] we live for the external world rather than for ourselves’.23 Mansfield’s advice to Murry throughout the time that he edited the Athenaeum reiterated her anxiety about his living for the public world rather than living at a deeper level: ‘Im a little bit sorry you are writing on Art and Morality just now, because “a clear logical statement’’ is nothing like enough! The breath of life is in the subject – and it must blow easy, easy, filling the sail’.24 She is almost as ruthless with him as she is with herself: ‘There are still traces of what I call your sham personality in this book & they mar it [. . . ] The worst of it is that whenever one is less than true to oneself in work, even what is true becomes tainted’.25 She mistrusts his martyred self-pity as a lonely champion of intellectual standards, rather as Mrs Ramsay regards her husband quizzically in To the Lighthouse when he rampages round the garden trying to move to a new plane of philosophic speculation and bumping blindly into guests as he recites ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. Murry evidently valued Mansfield as a reviewer for the Athenaeum: I reckon on you absolutely for the novels. Your novel page, I know, is one of the features most appreciated in the paper, and any interruption of it would do us great harm. To me, you seem to get better & better every time. You are so sure, besides being so delicate. It’s quite unlike – in a different class to – anything that’s being done in the way of reviewing anywhere today. What I feel, and what a great many other people feel, is that as long as your novel page is there, there can’t be a really bad number of the Athenaeum.26

Though this appears to be unqualified praise, there remains the question of whether Murry secretly felt that Mansfield was not sufficiently intellectual and well-educated to tackle the work of canonical writers. She writes observant letters to him about

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GUTS – Katherine Mansfield as a Reviewer Shakespeare, Chekhov, Dickens, and Keats, all of which cry out for fuller treatment. In a tentative suggestion, she asks, writing from Italy, whether Murry can send her a life of George Eliot and some of her novels so that she can write an article for the centenary of Eliot’s birth. The footnote informs us that the books were not sent to her. In an earlier part of the letter quoted above, Murry tells Mansfield, having disregarded her request, that Sydney Waterlow is writing the Athenaeum’s leading article for 21 November 1919 on George Eliot. Mansfield’s disappointment when she reads Waterlow’s article is palpable, and the reader has a tantalising glimpse of what she would have done, had Murry given her the task she longed for: I dont think S.W. brought it off with George Eliot. He never gets under way. The cartwheels want oiling. I think, too, he is ungenerous. She was a deal more than that. Her English, warm, ruddy quality is hardly mentioned. She was big, even though she was ‘heavy’ too. But think of some of her pictures of country life – the breadth – the sense of sun lying on warm barns – great warm kitchens at twilight when the men came home from the fields – the feeling of beasts horses and cows – the peculiar passion she has for horses (when Maggie Tullivers lover walks with her up & down the lane & asks her to marry, he leads his great red horse and the beast is foaming – it has been hard ridden and there are dark streaks of sweat on its flanks – the beast is the man one feels SHE feels in some queer inarticulate way).27

It is perplexing, given the evocation of Eliot’s fiction here, that Mansfield’s critical writing was mainly restricted by Murry to current fiction, mostly of a depressingly dreary kind; she could clearly have developed her insight into the scene between Maggie and Stephen. Mansfield’s frustration is evident in many of the reviews, such as the account of Crabtree House by Howel Evans, a ‘sweetly pretty’ novel: ‘What the outside reader does feel inclined to question is whether the simple people need be so incredibly simple and the innocent characters innocent to imbecility’ (54). In a review of G. B. Burgin’s Pilgrims of Circumstances she uses a savagely accurate metaphor about what she classifies as ‘pastime novels’: ‘By far the greater number of them aim at nothing more positive than a kind of mental knitting – the mind of the reader is grown so familiar with the pattern that the least possible effort is demanded of it’ (163). In spite of the tedium of much of the reading involved in her reviewing she remains remorselessly selfcritical: ‘Not good enough. Uneven, shallow, forced. Very thin, pocket muslin handkerchief vocabulary! [. . . ] Shows traces of hurry, & at the end, is pompous!’28 Both her notebooks and her letters show how

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Katherine Mansfield Studies preoccupied she is with reviewing: ‘Romer Wilson is such a fraud – oh oh oh! She is one of the ladies of fashion who are teaching us how to put on our clothes. But she’s tremendously absurd – Ive got her as she would say on a trident’.29 As Clare Hanson observes, Mansfield creates her own voice as a reviewer; she does so in spite of the material she has to cover. Hanson writes that her ‘literary criticism is the reverse of impressionistic’.30 I would suggest that it is the literary equivalent of post-impressionist, Fauvist reviewing in that it is written with acid. The voice is authoritative and experienced without hectoring the reader, as when it tells us that the spirit of the age ‘is an uneasy, disintegrating, experimental spirit’ (57). It is sharply analytical of narrative techniques, of an author who ‘cannot leave his characters to speak their mind; he must speak it for them, and even reinforce their statements with a kind of running commentary and explanatory notes’ (154). Its focus on design is insistent, undermining ploddingly realistic fiction in its recommendation that a novelist ‘should trust himself more and free himself from the idea that a novel is not furnished if it does not contain all the furniture mentioned in all the catalogues’ (195). The writing of formulaic fiction is dismissed as ‘reviving, redressing, touching up, bringing up-to-date these puppets of a bygone fashion’ (122), but the tone is not always acerbic. Some characters have a life in the reader’s imagination after the book is finished, they ‘are seen ever, and always in relation to life – not to a part of life, not to a set of society, but to the bounding horizon, life’ whereas others ‘are seen in relation to an intellectual idea of life’ (126). The adjective ‘bounding’ is a positive one in Mansfield’s vocabulary, indicating both containment and a dynamic leaping that is characteristic of Fergusson’s use of outline in his Parisian paintings. Its sense for her is conveyed in a letter to Brett. It involves the kind of dangerous risk that she sees as necessary for an artist rather than an intellectual: ‘I don’t see how art is going to make that divine spring into the bounding outlines of things if it hasn’t passed through the process of trying to become these things before recreating them’.31 Passing comments, for instance about weather in fiction, suggest how writers that she admires achieve the leap: ‘[A]s in the stories of Tchehov, we should become aware of the rain pattering on the roof all night long, of the languid, feverish wind, of the moonlit orchard and the first snow, passionately realized, not indeed as analogous to a state of mind, but as linking that mind to the larger whole’ (51). This astute comment could equally interpret the effect of the opening of ‘At the Bay’, or ‘The Voyage’ where the larger whole created atmospherically through the time of day and the weather

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GUTS – Katherine Mansfield as a Reviewer attunes the reader obliquely in advance to the minds we encounter in the story. Ida Baker describes Mansfield’s domestic life as ‘the expression of her inner self, for ever discarding extraneous matter and imposing form and order. Katherine hated “fuzzy edges’’ ’.32 The fiction she reviews for the Athenaeum is full of fuzzy edges, mostly because it is cluttered with detail. Of Dorothy Richardson’s use of total recall in her interior monologues, Mansfield writes aphoristically that ‘she leaves us feeling, as before, that everything being of equal importance to her, it is impossible that everything should not be of equal unimportance’ (140). Though the narrative technique is quite different, John Galsworthy’s lack of discrimination in relation to his character, Val Dartie, has a similar effect: ‘Before going out that evening he had asked his mother if he might have two plover’s eggs when he came in. And when he does return, shocked, wretched, disenchanted with life, we find our concern for him overshadowed by those two plover’s eggs laid out so temptingly with the cut bread and butter and ‘just enough whisky in the decanter’’ ’ (306). The ability not to record, but to heighten, to bring into the light, is also missing in Hugh Walpole’s novel as his ‘method is simply to amass observations – to crowd and crowd his book with figures, scenes, bizarre and fantastic environments, queer people, oddities. But we feel that no one observation is nearer the truth than another’ (271). A Bergsonian perspective often colours the interpretation of novelistic failure. George Moore’s Esther Waters ‘has no emotion. Here is a world of objects accurately recorded, here are states of mind set down, and here, above all, is that good Esther whose faith in her Lord is never shaken, whose love for her child is never overpowered – and who cares?’ (235–6). Mansfield’s antipathy to realist fiction was shared by Virginia Woolf who, in her essay ‘Modern Fiction’, complains of novels done to a turn, with every button in place and the expected thirty-two chapters, and she asserts that life is not like this. For her, fiction should respond to the experience of living, to the myriad impressions that an ordinary mind receives on an ordinary day. Within Bergson’s schema, an artist’s raison d’être is to stimulate a creative capacity in the recipient of the art, through an intuitive and emotional response which can only come about if the artist is exercising creative imagination rather than conforming to a formulaic pattern. As Mansfield writes of John Galsworthy’s In Chancery, ‘we have a brilliant display of analysis and dissection, but without any “mystery’’, any unplumbed depth to feed our imagination upon’ (305). The fiction that Mansfield covers in her reviews for the Athenaeum is thematically predictable, with a heavy emphasis on the Great War. Two

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Katherine Mansfield Studies quite different topics that she engages with relate significantly to her own fiction, and show how her critical analysis interacts with her own treatment of similar themes. The first is the portrayal of childhood. Daisy Ashford published The Young Visiters in 1919; it was written when she was nine. Mansfield ‘is helpless with laughter’ and dismisses the notion that the book is a hoax: ‘if one remembers the elaborate games one played at that age, the characters that were invented, the situations and scenes – games that continued for days and days, and were actually unwritten novels in their way – one finds no difficulty in believing in the amazing child’ (28). The Young Visiters’ author is not looking back on childhood but living it, with her own eccentric spelling and idiosyncratic cluster of events. In comparison Mansfield finds adult writers heavy-handed in their treatment of children. Hugh Walpole’s child hero’s life is spent ‘between bacon and strawberry jam, or treacle pudding, or fish pie, or the famous sausages, or saffron buns – a difficult diet to be gay upon’ and his existence is ‘insufferably dull, tepid, and stodgy’ (62–3). Francis Brett Young’s infant protagonist undergoes: ‘ “Emotional maelstrom’’ – this is very cold water indeed for an author to fling at his little hero, and it does not take us long to discover that however refreshed he may be he is again, in the reader’s eye, a trifle blurred’ (94). Most tellingly Mansfield writes in December 1920 of two novels which ‘attempt to re-enter the kingdom of childhood’ that ‘the childhood that we look back upon and attempt to recreate must be – if it is to satisfy our longing as well as our memory – a great deal more than a catalogue of infant pleasures and pangs. It must have, as it were, a haunting light upon it’ (288). The subtlety of her depiction of childhood from early in 1921 onwards depends on her ability to juxtapose infant sensations with adult ones, creating the ‘haunting light’ that plays over innocence and experience. In the seventh section of ‘At the Bay’ Kezia moves from a small child’s perception of the world through her toys to something different. She asks her grandmother to tell her the story of the death of Uncle William; it is the equivalent of a fairy story for her, and she sees it as she might visualise Hans Andersen’s brave tin soldier: ‘Kezia blinked and considered the picture again . . . . A little man fallen over like a tin soldier by the side of a big black hole’.33 Using dialogue rather than exposition, Mansfield shows Kezia moving from the kingdom of childhood to a confrontation between dream and reality. It comes about because her grandmother will not tell lies, and is knitting like the three fates. Kezia’s physical sensations, of sandy toes, engage powerfully with the present, but she cannot avoid contemplating the mortality not just of a duck, as in ‘Prelude’, but of

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GUTS – Katherine Mansfield as a Reviewer her beloved grandmother. The punctuation, a dash, and the repetition of ‘leave’ enact her transition from infancy. When her grandmother draws a long thread from the ball, the implication is that it represents Kezia’s life-span rather than her own. At first Kezia cannot believe that she herself will die: ‘But, grandma.’ Kezia waved her left leg and waggled the toes. They felt sandy. ‘What if I just won’t?’ The old woman sighed again and drew a long thread from the ball. ‘We’re not asked, Kezia,’ she said sadly. ‘It happens to all of us sooner or later.’ Kezia lay still thinking this over. She didn’t want to die. It meant she would have to leave here, leave everywhere, for ever, leave – leave her grandma. She rolled over quickly. ‘Grandma,’ she said in a startled voice. ‘What, my pet!’ ‘You’re not to die.’ Kezia was very decided. ‘Ah, Kezia’ – her grandma looked up and smiled and shook her head – ‘don’t let’s talk about it.’ ‘But you’re not to. You couldn’t leave me. You couldn’t not be there.’ This was awful. ‘Promise me you won’t ever do it, grandma,’ pleaded Kezia.34

Though the scene ends in tickling and laughter, Kezia has undergone a transforming experience which the reader has to recognise through intuition and memory. We are not told how old she is, and are invited to half perceive and half create her experience, without cumbersome phrases like ‘emotional maelstrom’. ‘The Voyage’ and ‘The Doll’s House’ also have a haunting light upon them as Fenella confronts what seems to her to be the loss of both parents, and Kezia recognises the snobbish cruelty of her aunt but also her own power. In both stories infant perceptions are set against moments of worldly understanding, and are focused by the fleeting insight into Fenella’s grandmother and Kezia’s aunt that the hidden narrator offers. The second topic Mansfield covers that interacts with her own life and work is tuberculosis. The infection and death rate from the disease were exacerbated by the post-war influenza pandemic, and the market responded by providing sanatoriums and charging exorbitant sums for care. Mansfield herself resisted entering one as she was sure it would prevent her from writing and would kill her. Her review of R. O. Prowse’s novel A Gift of the Dusk, which is set in a sanatorium in Switzerland, is challenging partly because it confronts the reader

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Katherine Mansfield Studies colloquially with Mansfield’s own situation and shows how intensely she has meditated on it: In the confusion and immediate pressure of modern existence we are borne along, we are carried and upheld until we are half persuaded that we could not escape if we would. Then, suddenly – as though it had all been a dream – the crowd vanishes, the noise dies away, and the little human creature finds himself alone, with time to think of his destination. Well, perhaps the moment need not be grim. Perhaps you will not so dreadfully mind that invisible hand touching you so lightly [. . . ] you really won’t know, as the last man swings on the box and the horses break into a decent trot, whether it is an adorable wet day – with the sky a waterspout, a soft roaring in the trees, and the first jonquils shaking with flower – or an adorable fine day. (279–80)

The review enacts bounding life at the moment of death, in Mansfield’s response to the novel. The book is narrated by Stephen who travels to a sanatorium in Switzerland when he discovers he is tubercular. There is a macabre comedy about the situation as the managers of the enterprise massage their success statistics by ousting the patients just before they die. Stephen’s assessment of his own position mirrors Mansfield’s own sense of being a pariah, an abject thrust out of an uncaring society: ‘Our lot is not quite the lot of the exile, and is not quite the lot of the condemned; it is the lot of the exile, and it is the lot of the condemned, but its distinctive colouring comes from the fact that it is also the lot of the outcast. We are persons who have been put away’.35 Though the expression is slightly ponderous the analysis is astute, and Stephen sees how resolutely the little human creature, even when suffering from a fatal disease, tries to flirt, drink and posture though the patients spend all night coughing and listening to each other cough rather than disporting themselves sexually. He becomes aware of a secret self: ‘It impressed me not only as very real and very near, but as very natural, very friendly, very homelike: I had a conception of it as of some other Self that was waiting to bear me company. I found I could commune with it almost as one communes with a friend’.36 It is not surprising that Mansfield commends the book as ‘a memorable novel’ but shrinks from its unsparing honesty: ‘Almost, at this point, we would beg for a little less than the truth – almost we would have the author lift his book from the deep shadow which – nevertheless – so wonderfully sustains it. But Mr Prowse knows better’ (283). Reading the book provokes the comment in a letter to

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GUTS – Katherine Mansfield as a Reviewer Murry: ‘ “One must tell everything – everything.’’ That is more and more real to me each day. It is, after all, the only treasure heirloom we have to leave – our own little grain of truth’.37 The particular truth she responded to is the concept of the secret sharer who must be acknowledged and not repressed. As she wrote to Murry a fortnight later, the ‘little boat enters the dark fearful gulf and our only cry is to escape – “put me on land again’’. But its useless. Nobody listens. The shadowy figure rows on. One ought to sit still and uncover ones eyes’.38 The concept of the secret sharer or self as a shadow with mortal knowledge is rather different from Mansfield’s idea of a secret self that might emerge positively as Laura’s does in ‘The Garden Party’ when she tries to differentiate herself from her family. Here the self’s eyes are uncovered by the sharer, revealing a terrible knowledge. Mansfield wrote ‘The Stranger’ in the month after she reviewed A Gift of the Dusk; the title becomes increasingly enigmatic as the story proceeds. Mansfield describes to Murry how she became part of the bounding imaginary life of the story, entering almost physically into the experience, not remaining intellectually distanced from it: ‘Ive been this man been this woman. Ive stood for hours on the Auckland Wharf. Ive been out in the stream waiting to be berthed. Ive been a seagull hovering at the stern and a hotel porter whistling through his teeth’.39 The stranger of the title seems initially to be the unknown man who dies in Mrs Hammond’s arms on the liner, but by the end of the story the interpretation might be different. In Bergson’s terms, Mr Hammond is initially governed by time rather than duration. He paces about the wharf waiting for the ship to berth, and out ‘came the thin, butter-yellow watch again, and for the twentieth – fiftieth – hundredth time he made the calculation’.40 The perspective is his, the brusque phrasing filled with impatience, desire and anxiety. When he is reunited with his slightly reserved wife and they are settled in their hotel room he longs for the privacy he has been missing. What she offers is a form of intimacy that forces him to confront the secret shadow. She tells him that a stranger died in her arms: ‘The blow was so sudden that Hammond thought he would faint. He couldn’t move; he couldn’t breathe. He felt all his strength flowing – flowing into the big dark chair, and the big dark chair held him fast, gripped him, forced him to bear it’.41 He moves reluctantly from time to duration, his transition from the world of telegrams and anger effected by the knowledge that his wife who hesitates when he embraces her voluntarily took a young dying man in her arms. The

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Katherine Mansfield Studies weather changes inside the room as the dark chair grips him like a coffin: But her words, so light, so soft, so chill, seemed to hover in the air, to rain into his breast like snow. The fire had gone red. Now it fell in with a sharp sound and the room was colder. Cold crept up his arms. The room was huge, immense, glittering. It filled his whole world. There was the great blind bed, with his coat flung across it like some headless man saying his prayers. There was the luggage, ready to be carried away again, anywhere, tossed into trains, carted on to boats.42

It is as if he has died and his luggage is being dispersed; ‘blind’ and ‘headless’ are effectively epithets for him as he becomes chilled and sinks into the glittering funeral of the room. His identity has been erased by foreknowledge of death as the secret sharer, both the death of the young man and the death of the imagined self which had seemed to have such patriarchal power to timetable and control in the outside world and to dominate his wife. The stranger now seems relevant in a variety of ways. His wife has become a stranger to Mr Hammond but more significantly he is a stranger to himself, facing the knowledge of helplessness and mortality with panic. ‘They would never be alone together again’,43 the final line of the story, might refer to his awareness of the dead young man, but also to his knowledge of his inescapable shadowy companion. Just before she gave up reviewing, Mansfield complained to Murry: ‘But isn’t it grim to be reviewing Benson when one might be writing ones own stories which one will never have time to write’.44 It’s impossible to disagree, but, as with all Mansfield’s writing, the reviews are full of imaginative insight and pleasure for the reader. Mansfield’s ironic wit transforms novels that would be a trial to read into a source of entertainment, as in this description of the behaviour of an exquisite nymph in blue gauze: But she cannot understand why he has not a telephone. He has one installed. And sometimes she rings him up very early in the morning, and ‘while he listened he thought of her standing with sandled [sic] feet among daffodils . . . with the sunbeams touching her bare arm and neck . . . ’ And her telephone? Or late at night when ‘he heard her give a little sigh that was like a breath of air in the foliage of the dark grove where she was lying down to rest.’ With her telephone? (79)

Blue gauze and sandaled feet whisking among the daffodils are at odds with Mansfield’s pared-down aesthetic. In the last two years of her life

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GUTS – Katherine Mansfield as a Reviewer she honed the shape of her stories to perfection and demonstrated guts as well as subtlety in her finely nuanced journals and letters. Notes 1. John Middleton Murry, ed., Novels and Novelists by Katherine Mansfield (London: Constable, 1930), p. 304. Page numbers to all further references to this volume are placed directly after each quotation. 2. Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott, eds, The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984–2008), Vol. 5 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2008). Hereafter referred to as Letters, followed by the volume number. 3. Clare Hanson. ed., The Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield (London: Macmillan, 1987). 4. Jeffrey Meyers, ‘The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Volume 5’, Times Higher Education, no. 1, 879, 15–21 January 2009, pp. 50–1. 5. Letters 5, p. 325. 6. Letters 5, p. 341. 7. Letters 5, p. 304. 8. Anne Olivier Bell and Andrew McNeillie, eds, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, 5 vols (London: The Hogarth Press, 1977–84), Vol. 2, p. 226. 9. Trev Broughton, ‘Yours rudely, Katherine Mansfield’, Times Literary Supplement, 15 October 2008, pp. 3–5. 10. Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker, eds, The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, Volume I, Britain and Ireland 1880–1955 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 387. 11. Rhythm, 1: 1 (Summer 1911), p. 9. 12. Rhythm, 1: 1, p. 3. 13. J. M. Synge, J. M. Synge’s Plays Poems and Prose (London: Dent, 1941), p. 219. 14. Rhythm, 1: 1, p. 36. 15. Quoted in Brooker and Thacker, p. 147. 16. Letters 4, p. 135. 17. F. A. Lea, The Life of John Middleton Murry (London: Methuen, 1959), p. 24. 18. Brooker and Thacker, p. 387. 19. Letters 1, p. 124. 20. Brooker and Thacker, p. 368. 21. Letters 3, p. 216. 22. Letters 3, p. 146. 23. Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1910), pp. 231–2. 24. Letters 4, p. 121. 25. Letters 4, p. 140–1. 26. C. A. Hankin, ed., The Letters of John Middleton Murry to Katherine Mansfield (London: Constable, 1983), p. 210. 27. Letters 3, p. 118 28. Margaret Scott, ed., The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks, 2 vols (Canterbury NZ: Lincoln University Press and Daphne Brasell Associates, 1997), Vol. 2, pp. 176–7. 29. Letters 3, p. 70. 30. Hanson, p. 6. 31. Letters 1, p. 330.

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Katherine Mansfield Studies 32. Ida Baker, Katherine Mansfield: The Memories of LM (New York: Taplinger, 1972), p. 85. 33. Angela Smith, ed., Katherine Mansfield Selected Stories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 298. 34. Smith, p. 299. 35. R. O. Prowse, A Gift of the Dusk (London: Collins, 1920), p. 113. 36. Prowse, p. 145. 37. Letters 4, p. 57. 38. Letters 4, p. 75. 39. Letters 4, p. 97. 40. Smith, p. 214. 41. Smith, p. 222. 42. Smith, p. 223. 43. Smith, p. 224. 44. Letters 4, p. 136.

DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000043

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‘Illness in Absence’: Mansfield and Murry’s Collaborative Text: 1918 1

Sydney Janet Kaplan

Abstract Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry’s correspondence between January and April of 1918 can be read as a collaborative text in which each participant engages in the construction of a writing self. The text’s narrative is teleological and the story it depicts is the heroic struggle of two lovers separated by fate in the forms of war and illness. The story’s climax is the bombardment of Paris, and its dénouement will be the wedding of its two lovers. Murry constructs his writing self as a poet, but his self-projection fails to coincide with his talents, although Mansfield encourages his aspirations. She wants to write ‘love prose’. Both writers link themselves with the Romantics, not only as poets but as people. This identification allows them to set themselves in opposition to Bloomsbury, especially to Lady Ottoline Morrell and Virginia Woolf. Murry’s writing becomes delusionary due to exhaustion from his work at the War Office. Mansfield’s entrapment in Paris during the bombardment is captured in vivid descriptions conveying a fusion of discordant elements, combining terror, practicality, and optimism. Key words: Mansfield, Murry, 1918, Correspondence, Romantics, Paris The correspondence between Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry between January and April of 1918 might well be read as a collaborative text in which each participant engages in the construction of a writing self. That text has a narrative structure – teleological from its inception – in which the story it depicts

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Katherine Mansfield Studies is the heroic struggle of two lovers separated by fate in the forms of war and illness. The story’s climax is the bombardment of Paris, and its dénouement will be the wedding of its two lovers. Murry’s theme in this collaborative epistolary text is clearly outlined in his journal entry of Tuesday, 15 January 1918: Yesterday, I had the first letter from Bandol and to-day a second. She asks me to write to her everyday: ‘parceque je suis tellement malade’. Oh, why did she ever go so far away? It seems as though, because we are more in love than any other man or woman in the world, we must go through a perpetual torment of absence and illness – and, most awful of all, illness in absence. I do not believe that any one has ever had, more than we, the sense of the vastness and inhumanity of the world and of our own frailness and smallness.2

His letter to Mansfield the next day retains this sense of victimisation, but tones down – if it does not avoid – its embarrassingly hubristic sense of exceptionality. It also draws attention to one of his favourite rhetorical strategies: irony, here used self-reflexively, to emphasise the disjunction between Mansfield’s suffering and the tedium of his work at the War Office, translating German newspapers: Oh, my darling: I can’t write what I feel, because I am afraid, and it would only terrify me more if I were to write. I feel so bitter that life should torture us this way [. . .] When you say the word malade, the sky falls on my head. Parceque je suis tellement malade: it has gone echoing through my brain all day long. That and the eternal click of my typewriter. My God, talk about irony. Was ever an irony ever conceived like this which sends my fingers racing over the typewriter, my brain careering through the German papers, and parceque je suis tellement malade thrusting up every now and then and tearing my soul?3

From the long view of retrospection, a contemporary reader is aware of a further irony in the letters of late January: Murry’s construction of his writing self as poet. Unfortunately, as with his similar desire to be a novelist, he would fail to make this self-projection coincide with his talents. Despite Murry’s immersion in the avant-garde of artists and writers during his editorship of Rhythm, despite his knowledge of modern French poetry and his interest in Baudelaire, despite his knowing about Eliot’s ‘Prufrock’ from Mansfield, who had read the poem aloud at Garsington on 3 June 1917, Murry’s imagination remained trapped in a late-Victorian kind of formalism. Mansfield, on the other hand, had much earlier already incorporated the influence of French symbolism into her prose fiction.4

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Mansfield and Murry’s Collaborative Text: 1918 It did not help matters that Mansfield kept propping up Murry’s poetic aspirations by giving him unrealistic praise, as for example, when his poem, ‘To My Dead Friends’, appeared in The Nation on 19 January: Great God! To think that this lovely voice still sings in England – that you’re alive, twenty-eight years old – and that youre to be – who could doubt it for one instant after this poem – the Great Poet of our time.5

Although before her illness she used to criticise Murry’s hyperbolic style, now she seemed to need to believe that both of them could become famous as creative writers, that their creativity was a function of their inseparability as lovers. She wanted to assure him – and herself – that they were engaged in the same endeavour. In her letter of 11 February, which was accompanied by the second part of ‘Je ne parle pas français’, she refers to the piece as ‘the rest of our story’, and mentions ‘this fusion of our minds. You talk of love poetry – all I write or ever ever will write will be the fruit of our love – love prose –’ (66). How much of this straining for likeness is genuine and how much is selfprotective? (After all, ‘Je ne parle pas français’ – with all its elements of anger, disappointment, and alienation – is difficult to read as ‘love prose’.) The increasing intensity of Mansfield’s and Murry’s interest in poetry (or poetic prose) during this period of separation is closely related to their mutual fascination with the Romantics, which was occurring at the same time. Given the general orientation of modernist poetry, this devotion to the Romantics feels retrogressive if considered through the critical lenses of T. S. Eliot and his followers, but it is important to underscore the fact that Murry and Mansfield were identifying themselves with the Romantics as people, not only with their poetics and aesthetic theories. Mansfield’s tuberculosis made her identification with Keats a new pivot for her self-reflection. That identification was reinforced when she had her first haemorrhage on 19 February. In her letter to Murry that day, she tries to protect him by moving tentatively towards revealing it: ‘I want to tell you some things which are a bit awful – so hold me hard’. She insists that ‘this is NOT serious does NOT keep me in bed is absolutely easily curable, but I have been spitting a bit of blood’. In telling him not to worry, she reminds him that ‘after all Lawrence often used to’. But as the letter proceeds she cuts deeper: ‘Now Im confiding . . . its not serious. But when I saw the bright arterial blood I nearly had a fit’ (79–80). Her use of the phrase ‘bright arterial blood’ would have immediately alerted

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Katherine Mansfield Studies Murry, who was familiar with Keats’s famous outcry: ‘I know the colour of that blood; it is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that colour. That drop of blood is my death warrant’.6 During the weeks following Mansfield’s haemorrhage, the references to the Romantics in their letters became both more frequent and more personal. Four days after the bleeding episode, Mansfield would complain that Yeats was a ‘pompous ass’ because he called Keats ‘ “The coarse-bred son of a livery-stable keeper’’ ’. Later in the same letter she objects to ‘a review of Coleridge in the Times – so bad so ill-informed’ and declares: ‘But then of course I feel I have rather a corner in Coleridge and his circle. In fact you and I are the only two people who can write and think and whose opinion is worth while’ (88). Murry was reading Coleridge’s Lectures on Shakespeare on 1 March and was also contemplating a purchase of Charles Lamb’s letters. He enthusiastically acclaimed to Mansfield: What wonderful days those were. We belong to these people. And just as Keats, Lamb, Coleridge, Shelley, Wordsworth fed themselves on the Elizabethans, we must feed on them both. [. . . ] And then to think that you & I are the direct inheritors of all this, fellow–heirs. My God! And then to think of those mingy, bingy Frenchmen!7

Murry’s allegiance to the Romantics (and the Elizabethans) instead of the French was prompted by his sympathy with Mansfield’s plight. It might also have been compounded by his feeling of satiation after an overdose of French literature in his work as reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement. Surely he must have resented having to read so many volumes not of his own choosing when he longed to spend his free time writing poetry. His slam against ‘those mingy bingy Frenchmen’ ignores his continuing interest in and appreciation for a number of French wartime poets and writers.8 Murry’s remark also suggests that he was already beginning to formulate the distinction between Romanticism and Classicism that he would later debate with T. S. Eliot, including his insistence that the ‘true’ genealogy of English literature reveals an unbroken connection between the Elizabethans and the Romantics. His awakening into this insight might have been influenced by Mansfield’s comment in her letter of 27 February about what she calls the ‘dishonesty’ of the French language, which she finds ‘hard to stomach at present’. While recognising that it has ‘charm’, she finds it also ‘tainted’: I get up hungry from the french language. I have too great an appetite for the real thing to be put off with pretty little kickshaws – [. . . ] Its the

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Mansfield and Murry’s Collaborative Text: 1918 result of Shakespeare – I think. The english language is damned difficult but its also damned rich and so clear and bright that you can search out the darkest places with it. Also its heavenly simple and true. (96)

To illustrate what she means she includes two examples, four lines from The Winter’s Tale: ‘I an old turtle Will wing me to some withered bough And there – my mate that’s never to be found again Lament till I am lost!’9 and then the following three lines from Murry’s ‘To My Dead Friends’: ‘Your eyes be musical your dewy feet Have freshly trod the lawns for timeless hours Oh young & lovely dead’.10 Mansfield’s usually astute sense of irony fails her here when she links Murry with Shakespeare, but she tells him: ‘There’s a man who can “use’’ it! and adds that she is so seized with the wonder of the english tongue – of english poetry – and I am overcome by the idea that you are a poet and that we are going to live for poetry – for writing – that my heart has begun dancing away as if it never will stop – & I can see our cottage and our garden [. . . ]. (96–7)

Her rising excitement as the passage spills out into a fantasy of their future together with its rural setting in the cottage they would name ‘The Heron’ (after her dead brother, Leslie Heron Beauchamp), is conveyed very much in the same breathless style of Bertha Young in ‘Bliss’, – unsurprising given that the very next day she tells Murry that she has just finished writing it.11 Murry’s intellectual evolution as the defender of Romanticism can be said to have its emotional origins here, developing like many belief systems out of a personal matrix. In this case, an important element is that Murry and Mansfield’s identification with the Romantics allows them to have a literary coterie of their own. Accordingly, Mansfield calls them ‘our “special’’ set’ and ‘the people with whom I want to live’ (107–8). They had once had a ‘set’ composed of the Lawrences, Koteliansky and Gordon Campbell, but that grouping had splintered. Murry and Mansfield were now poised at the edge of Bloomsbury, wary of Virginia Woolf and having only a deteriorating connection with Lady Ottoline’s group at Garsington. They were outsiders; and now with

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Katherine Mansfield Studies Mansfield’s illness and Murry’s uncertainty about what he would be able to do once the war was over, when he would no longer have his good salary from the War Office, their sense of alienation was growing deeper. The dream of ‘The Heron’ becomes their counterpoint to Bloomsbury and Garsington. Not only would they live ‘somewhere deep in the country’, Murry comments on 11 February, but he wants ‘to be able to live only for you and for poetry’ there. To make it all seem more realistic, he adds to the dream cottage his wish for a printing press, which might actually provide them with an income: I can see no other way, no other possible way, of making even the scantiest living except by a printing press and a garden. You see I have to face the fact that my novel made £8-10-0; and the typewriting cost me £9-0-0. Net loss 10/-. I can’t be popular – it’s no use my thinking for one moment I can make even £1 week if I publish in the ordinary way.12

As his letter continues, he tries to outline the finances for a subscription series of four books a year which ‘could make £330 a year profit’. And, he adds – tellingly – ‘Think of that tripe of the Woolves!’ (119), (undoubtedly excepting Mansfield’s still not printed Prelude from his slam against the Hogarth Press). Mansfield’s own reference to the Woolfs, shortly afterwards, adds to this mutually growing negativity: ‘I am sorry you have to go to the Woolves. I don’t like them either. They are smelly’ (77). Murry concludes his own letter in a mood of rising anger: If I haven’t enough money to buy a press, then I feel that the big stone will have been put on my head again. And I can’t ask people any more. I hate them. Really, the blackness of my hatred of people like O.M. staggers even myself. (119)

Mansfield echoes Murry’s sentiments when she writes on 22 February: ‘I wonder if you escaped H.L.? [Her Ladyship] She has become to me now a sort of witch – I cant write to her – When I put my pen on the paper it begins to tremble and make crosses & won’t go further’ (85). And yet on that very same day, Mansfield finds herself writing a letter to Ottoline, falsely jocular in tone, telling her ‘I wish you were here’ (86). This duplicitous behaviour is symptomatic of her continuing ambivalence, and it also suggests a certain amount of selfdisgust, because she knew that they needed Lady Ottoline (thus Murry’s

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Mansfield and Murry’s Collaborative Text: 1918 own outburst of ‘hate’) and kept taking from her. All this is quite evident in an earlier letter of 7 February: I must write to H.L. today or she will take great offence and I don’t want to have her my enemy. Its too nauseous. But, to tell you the truth, its difficult, very to keep it up: the ‘ atmosphere’ at Garsington [. . . ] does offend me unspeakably. [. . . ] She is bloody interesting – the fact that she doesn’t know she’s poisoned par exemple, but I have really got all I want from her (down to the shawlet!!) Still we mustn’t let her ‘turn’, I suppose. (60–1)13

Characteristically, in this letter Mansfield moves immediately from Ottoline to the dream-life: ‘Bogey, I have such a passion, such a passion for life in the country – for peace, for you lying on your back in the sun looking up through wavy boughs – for you planting things that climb sticks – for me cutting things that have a sweet smell’ (61). When Mansfield uses the word ‘poisoned’ for Ottoline Morrell and then the same word for the effects of the war, it is not entirely coincidental: ‘its never out of my mind & everything is poisoned by it. Its here in me the whole time, eating me away – and I am simply terrified by it – Its at the root of my homesickness & anxiety & panic – I think’ (54). She is also aware of the war’s poisonous legacy to language. When she catches herself using the phrase ‘to march into the open’, she exclaims: ‘Ugh! No – I cant even in fun use these bloody comparisons. I have a horror of the way this war creeps into writing . . . oozes in – trickles in’ (70).14 It may well be that the upsurge in hostility towards Ottoline and the Woolfs at this moment is largely scapegoating, deflecting Murry and Mansfield’s more immediate worries about the war. They so encourage each other’s beliefs in their unique experience of suffering that they seem to be unaware that the ones they ‘hate’ and envy are affected by the war as well: that only two months earlier Leonard Woolf’s brother Cecil had been killed and another brother, Philip, badly wounded by the same shell;15 or, that on 29 January, Virginia Woolf was writing to her sister: ‘Well, you almost lost me. Nine bombs on Kew; 7 people killed in one house, a hotel crushed’.16 Mansfield, however, soon had an even closer scapegoat at hand than either Virginia Woolf or Ottoline Morrell. Ida Baker (LM), though uninvited, had joined her in Bandol on 12 February, just at the moment she was beginning to write ‘Bliss’. She reacted to LM as a devious intruder into her privacy rather than as a devoted friend who had gone through considerable trouble to get leave from her factory job, fight for a passport and permit to travel during wartime, and who

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Katherine Mansfield Studies had taken a ‘nightmare’ journey to reach her.17 She now would have an outlet for the furious fits of anger which overcame her in the weeks to follow, anger triggered by LM’s seemingly inoffensive, if inappropriate behaviour: unrelated remarks, too much interest in food, ordinary clumsiness. She complained to Murry on 23 February: ‘It is impossible to describe to you my curious hatred and antagonism to her. Gross, trivial, dead to all that is alive for me, ignorant and false’ (89). This particular instance of anger was in response to telling LM about her feelings about the war and how it was always in her mind, ‘a sort of sea, rising and falling – never never still’: And then I said how sick this new offensive made me feel – and so on. Said she, (knitting a grubby vest) “Roger has got four teeth [. . . ]’’. I felt exactly as Lawrence must have felt with Frieda – exactly. You remember the feeling Lawrence had (before he was so mad) that Frieda wanted to destroy him; I have oh – just that!!! (89)

Two days later she repeated the charge: ‘As it is L. M. has pretty nearly finished me. I mean not quite seriously but I live in a state of the most acute exasperation and black rage. Yes its just like Lawrence & Frieda’ (92). And on 27 February she tells Murry: ‘I do manage to work in spite of her, but if I did not I think I’d really go insane with exasperation. She is Frieda II’ (96). This sudden identification with Lawrence, with whom neither Mansfield nor Murry had had contact for some time, reveals perhaps an unconscious understanding of Lawrence’s own illness, which had not then been definitely diagnosed as tuberculosis.18 It also might signal a recognition of her creative identification with Lawrence now, in opposition to her troubled relations with Bloomsbury, a declaration, perhaps, that he was, after all, still part of their own ‘set’, along with Keats and Coleridge. Murry added a new member to the special ‘set’ when he described on 10 March – in a singularly remarkable letter – the subject of his current review, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as ‘of the same kind as us.’: What I have written about him seems to be luminously simple; but it is all new. No-one has had the faintest idea of what I have discovered about him before. And I feel certain that we shall find, in just the same way, the secret of all the great men we love. No-one else can understand them except us – no one else at all. And when we go away from the world to the Heron we shall discover the secret of them all, have them dwelling with us like friends.19

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Mansfield and Murry’s Collaborative Text: 1918 Murry’s essay, ‘The Religion of Rousseau’ was published in the Times Literary Supplement on 21 March 1918 as a review of La formation religieuse de Jean-Jacques Rousseau by Pierre-Maurice Masson, who had been killed in the war ‘before the book to which he had devoted ten years of his life was published. He had prepared it for the press in the leisure hours of the trenches’.20 That ‘one of the most distinguished of the younger generation of French scholar-critics’ should meet ‘a soldier’s death’ was a perfect opportunity for Murry to put into critical prose the sentiments expressed in his journal entry two months earlier on 16 January: ‘Talk of irony! The Mind that imagined this conjuncture of soul & body had a conception of Irony that would freeze the mind alive if it could but grasp it’.21 The Rousseau essay’s reflective, measured tone is in striking contrast to the building manic excitement of Murry’s letter of 10 March, written the morning after he finished the review. Although the letter begins with a practical and detailed critique of Mansfield’s use of ‘inverted commas’ in ‘Bliss’, it gathers force when he takes up the notion of his ‘fusion’ with Mansfield, that they ‘are manifestations of the same being’.22 The letter swerves once the concept of their exceptionality enters the discourse: the references to ‘no-one else’ being able to understand what he has discovered, or to ‘the secret of all the great men we love’. He is still aware that if he ‘were to say this to anyone else but you they would think me raving’. As the letter continues there are even more disturbing implications about his mental state: Sometimes now I begin to think tremulously high thoughts, thoughts that make me dizzy. Suddenly, I seem to know the secret of the universe. And this at least I know, beyond all doubt, that I know the way to the secret and that my life will be spent in trying to make the pathway clear. I know this, too, that you are I are geniuses. I didn’t know it before the real meaning of the Heron began to dawn upon me as it has lately done. You saw that into your work and mine a new strong wind of power had come. I didn’t know why it had come: – Why we two, at the moment when we seemed more frail than all other creatures of the earth, should become suddenly strong winged in the spirit. Now, I begin to see. What I said about the Heron just now is part of the explanation. But behind that I feel there is a bigger explanation still. You and I are manifestations of the same being, yes, but that same being is also a manifestation. I feel I am on the way to discovering of what.23

The delusional exhilaration of this outburst continues while he tells her he ‘want[s] to keep a record’ of the ‘coincidences’ in their letters,

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Katherine Mansfield Studies such as Mansfield’s sending him ‘a collection of pictures of the place that really made Rousseau what he was’. But it shifts quickly to a more ‘normal’ tone as it winds down. Immediately following his discussion of ‘coincidences’, Murry suddenly writes from a more typically pragmatic viewpoint: ‘Another thing, if any of my letters are alive still, will you keep them? I have all yours – and I think they may be important to us one day?’24 This shift in tone is indicative of how easily Murry could demarcate the different sides of himself. He ends his letter with a few quotidian details: he is sending Mansfield a cheque for £5, he refers to the weather, and finally, reassures her that he has prepared his ‘casseroles’ for supper. Nonetheless, this extraordinary letter, with its nearly crazed rhapsodic tenor, its manic pursuit of oneness, and its over-riding egomania, shows how close to breakdown he must have been. He later would recall that he felt so distraught at times that he walked the streets during the air raids ‘in the superstitious hope that a merciful bomb would drop near me. That we were marked down by destiny was plain to my sick and apprehensive soul, and I was weary of waiting for the issue’.25 Murry realised that he could not completely confide ‘the strange adventures of my soul’ to Mansfield, although if she had been able to read his letters more perceptively, she might have recognised his growing derangement. Her response to this one shows no evidence of such a perception. She responds primarily to Murry’s critique of ‘Bliss’, which had preceded the manic part of his letter. Of course she would not have wanted to recognise fully Murry’s state of mind, because as a very sick, desperate person herself, she was similarly self-enclosed. When she did respond with anxiety over his condition, it was to his physical self she referred – was he eating properly, in particular, thus Murry’s comment about the casseroles. To admit to full consciousness that Murry’s emotional state was disordered would indict her own; she needed and contributed to the grandiosity of their mutual admiration society. She needed The Heron and the Romantics and an imaginary ‘uncorrupted’ country of the mind. And Murry sensed and later knew how much he conspired with her. During the worst period of all, the three weeks before 10 April when Mansfield was trapped in Paris during the bombardment, Murry let it slip in one of his letters that ‘In other words, being parted from you, I used literature as a drug, and now, at the crisis, I feel I’ve taken too many tabloids. A sense of emptiness hangs over me’.26 Mansfield’s emotions were far more volatile during that ‘crisis’ (or, in the teleological narrative of their mutual epistolary text, the ‘climax’

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Mansfield and Murry’s Collaborative Text: 1918 of the story). More than a ‘sense of emptiness’ afflicted her; she was filled with a nihilistic loathing: An old dead sad wretched self blows about – whirls about in my feverish brain – & I sit here in this café – drinking & looking at the mirrors & smoking and thinking how utterly corrupt life is – how hideous human beings are’ (129).

The crisis was initiated by Mansfield’s decision to leave Bandol earlier than her permit allowed, forcing her to seek official permission, and that involved an exhaustive trip to Marseilles, dealing with unsympathetic bureaucrats, and an unscrupulous doctor she hoped would give her a medical excuse: ‘I am sure he is here because he has killed some poor girl with a dirty buttonhook – He is a maniac on venereal diseases & passion’ (129). Her frantic efforts only served to get her to Paris in time for the bombardment, and she was trapped there, prevented from crossing the Channel. When Murry realised what had happened to her, he immediately grasped its tragic irony: ‘I am in that state of mind, not seldom with me now, when I can see symbols in everything. Your having gone to Paris on the day when the great German attack began now seems to me as inevitable as all our correspondences’.27 She arrived on 22 March, after a feverish train trip, unduly complicated by the loss of LM’s baggage. Murry, not yet aware of Mansfield’s dreadful situation, was blithely writing to her that same day: ‘I’ve just done one of those stupid things which only I seem to do. I’ve just bought a letter press’.28 Perhaps his impulse to do so was hastened by having spent the past Sunday evening at the Woolfs, which brought to mind the Hogarth Press. Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary afterwards: Poor Murry snarled & scowled with the misery of his lot. He works all day, & writes when he comes home. Worst of all, K.M. has been very ill with haemorrhage from the lungs, out in France, & has to be brought home, wh. is difficult, in order to see how bad she is. But I thought him very much more of a person & a brain than I had thought him before.29

Woolf adds that ‘He will never write another novel, he says. Poetry is a short cut & “life seems to me now very precarious’’ ’.30 This was one of the rare occasions when Woolf seemed to have sympathy for Murry, even telling Lytton Strachey: ‘Katherine Mansfield has been dangerously ill, and is still pretty bad, so that Murry was sunk in the depths, what with that and overwork, poor wretch’.31 Mansfield’s letters in the days following show clearly how the whole experience was destroying any possible recuperation of her health.

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Katherine Mansfield Studies Whatever improvement she might have gained during her weeks of rest in Bandol was lost. She suffered from the extreme unseasonable cold, from her exhausting daily trips to Cook’s in hopes of letters from Murry (which were not reaching her because of the closing of the Channel), and most of all, from the horror of the shelling itself. It is painful to imagine how hard it must have been for such a sick woman to have to go down into the ‘caves’ [cellars] at one o’clock in the morning, as she explained to Murry on 25 March. Her letter describes her sitting there in a heap of coal on an old upturned box – listening to the bloody Poles & Russians – it all seemed a sort of endless dream – Oh so tiring – so utterly fatiguing. Ive caught a cold, too – and that makes the life in the caves so beastly – They are like tombs – I have nothing to say – nothing – nothing. L. M. is simply awful again [. . . ] & doing her best to kill me. (139)

The Germans were shelling Paris with a ‘super Kanon’, a long-range gun, and many people were being killed; in one instance, when a nearby church was bombed, eighty died and ninety were wounded. Mansfield mentioned that to Murry, on 30 March, and also told him: The firing takes place every 18 minutes as far as I can make out. I wont try & tell you where the bombs fall – It is a very loud ominous sound – this super Kanon – I am not frightened by it even though I have been extremely near the place where the explosions have taken place but I do feel there is a pretty big risk that one may be killed by it. [. . . ] If it were not for you I should not care whether I were killed or not. But as you are there I care passionately and will take all the precautions you would have me take & I you in the same straits. (146)

Her nearly casual remark that she did not really care if she were killed or not suggests how deeply her nihilism had taken hold. A few days later she described coming up from the cellars and finding the ‘whole top of a house as it were bitten out’ and in the broken trees which ‘had just come into their new green’: strange bits of clothes and paper hung. A nightdress – a chemise – a tie – they looked extraordinarily pitiful dangling in the sunny light. One thing which confirms me again in my dreadful feeling that I live wherever I am in another Sodom & Gomorrah – This. Two workmen arrived to clear away the debris. One found, under the dust, a woman’s silk petticoat. He put it on & danced a step or two for the laughing crowd – That filled me with such horror that I’ll never never get out of my mind the fling of his feet & his grin and the broken trees and the broken house. (150)

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Mansfield and Murry’s Collaborative Text: 1918 Mansfield’s reference here to ‘Sodom & Gomorrah’ intensifies her growing preoccupation with ‘corruption’, but enlarges it from its earlier connotation of sexual exploitation in ‘Je ne parle pas français’ to a more universal sense of human depravity. It is ‘hideous Humanity’ she finds packed into the cellars: ‘So hideous indeed that one felt a bomb on them wouldn’t perhaps be as cruel after all’. Murry’s critical energies during the weeks of Mansfield’s enforced stay in Paris were engaged in a new project, an introduction to the catalogue for an exhibition of J. D. Fergusson’s paintings. At first, when Fergusson had asked him to write it, telling him he ‘was the only man who was trying for the same things as’ himself, Murry was flattered, and commented to Mansfield on 17 March: With my mind I saw how great the honour was he did me. It was like clinching our comradeship in art. But it doesn’t mean anything to me in my heart. When I know that you are on the way it will, but until then – it is just like words of sympathy in the ears of someone lost in his grief.32

Murry must have discovered a meaning as the weeks progressed, however, because the eventual essay, ‘The Daughter of Necessity’ is one of his most convincing written during the war.33 His biographer, F. A. Lea, goes so far as to suggest that the essay ‘is the key to nearly all Murry’s work’.34 This essay finally gave Murry the chance to formulate theories about the purposes of art – especially the relations between art and suffering – which had grown out of his and Mansfield’s painful experiences of the past few months. By defining art in its relation to Necessity, Murry combines two precepts common to Romantic aesthetic theory: the disregard for conventions which inhibit the visionary power of the artist, and the role of the artist as a sacrificial victim whose ‘destiny’ is ‘to know [. . . ] the truth towards whose beauty he is inevitably driven’.35 Murry’s indebtedness to Keats is obvious when he refers to ‘Art’ as ‘the pinnacle of the soul’s exercise’, which seeks no purpose, demands no glorious destiny, shrinks from no evil, is not chilled by the death of the universe; no despair can cast it down, neither can joy lift it out of the sight of the things that are; it does not cry that pain shall be called good or seek a path to salvation by suffering. Experience holds nothing that it will deny. The beauty of true art is identical with truth. It is more than this; it is the only statement of the truth.36

More significantly, Murry’s discussion is also informed by the dichotomy Mansfield had made between ‘joy’ and ‘a cry against

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Katherine Mansfield Studies corruption’ in her letter to him on 3 February 1918 (52). When Murry had responded on 8 February that ‘Je ne parle pas français’ was ‘dangerous’, that ‘[i]ts dangerous to stop the world for a timeless moment’,37 his insight would later emerge in a new formulation in ‘The Daughter of Necessity’, where he now recognised the relationship between Mansfield’s refusal to ‘deny’ the extremity of experience her writing expressed and ‘the beauty of true art’: Art is [. . . ] at once the most human and the most inhuman thing we know. It is the most inhuman because its beauty is indifferent. It annihilates all standards and all aspirations but its own (and it may be that in the last encounter it annihilates even them).38

Murry’s high rhetoric in this essay contrasts greatly with the level of diction appropriate to the daily traumas of these last days of separation. Mansfield’s ability to achieve what Murry in his essay calls ‘that sudden plenary vision to which alone the inevitable unity of discrepant and hostile particulars is plain’,39 is beautifully apparent in her rendering of the workman in the woman’s petticoat dancing before the crowd and her recurring memory of ‘the fling of his feet & his grin and the broken trees and the broken house’ (150). The epistolary text contains more than enough evidence of ‘Art’. Mansfield’s last letter to Murry from France on 9 April 1918, written while she frantically readied herself for the journey home, manages to convey a fusion of discordant elements; Terror: ‘I keep on writing – you know why – & now of course its in case the boat is submarined’; Practicality: ‘I have bought 2 quarts of butter – and am going to try to bring them’; and Optimism: ‘I too am terribly timidly just beginning to think of a bud of hope. Ever so tiny a one’. And she ‘artfully’, despite her haste, pulls it all together with a resonant symbol: ‘My courage is just about mouse high’. She signs her letter: ‘Mouse-’ (159). Notes 1. This article forms part of a larger book project on John Middleton Murry, currently in progress. 2. John Middleton Murry, Autobiography of John Middleton Murry: Between Two Worlds (New York: Messner, 1936), pp. 454–5. 3. C. A. Hankin, ed., The Letters of John Middleton Murry to Katherine Mansfield (London: Constable, 1983), p. 104. 4. For a comprehensive discussion of Mansfield’s French influences, see Gerri Kimber, Katherine Mansfield: The View From France (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2008). 5. Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott, eds, The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984–2008), Vol. 2, p. 39. Hereafter

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Mansfield and Murry’s Collaborative Text: 1918

6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

referred to as Letters 2. NB: Mansfield’s spelling and grammatical errors are retained, as in the original text, throughout this article. Murry refers to Keats’s statement in reference to Mansfield’s comment in his Autobiography, p. 468. Hankin, pp. 131–2. In ‘The Discovery of Pain’, Times Literary Supplement, 808, 7 June 1917, p. 270, Murry had written of the strength of recent French writing: ‘The strange and splendid honesty of soul which seemed once to be the prerogative of Russia alone is descending upon France also. Within a few short months Barbusse, Benjamin, Romains, and Duhamel, young men of letters whom before the war we knew were not unlike their similars in England, have now with a common impulse of the spirit passed beyond them into another world. In them the war has cauterised the lie in the soul’. William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, V, iii, 132–5. John Middleton Murry, ‘To my Dead Friends’, Nation, 19 January 1918, pp. 504–5. Murry later explained his own indulgence in the dream of ‘The Heron’ in his Autobiography, pp. 169–70. Hankin, p. 119. The reference to the ‘shawlet’ is to the fine Spanish shawl Ottoline had given Mansfield before she left for Bandol. Murry’s references to the war in these letters contain more comments about the actual political situation than Mansfield’s. For instance, on 21 February he mentions that ‘Wilson’s our only hope’, Hankin, p. 125. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann, eds, The Letters of Virginia Woolf : Vol. 2: 1912–1922 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), editor’s note, p. 209. Nicolson and Trautmann, p. 214. See LM’s painful account of Mansfield’s cold reception, when she asked her ‘What have you come for?’ LM [Ida Baker], Katherine Mansfield: The Memories of LM (New York: Taplinger, 1972), p. 107. Claire Tomalin suggests that Mansfield might have caught the disease from Lawrence during their time of ‘close Proximity’: ‘This may have been the real Blutbruderschaft more sinister than Lawrence had ever intended’. Claire Tomalin, Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), p. 163. Hankin, p. 136. John Middleton Murry, Aspects of Literature (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920), p. 15. Murry, Autobiography, p. 455. Hankin, p. 136. Hankin, pp. 136–7. Mansfield responded to this request on 14 March: ‘I have, of course, kept all of your letters ever since my arrival here, knowing that they will be of use to us one day’ (122). Murry, Autobiography, 469. Hankin, p. 144. Quoted in F.A. Lea, The Life of John Middleton Murry (London: Methuen, 1959), p. 62. Quoted in Letters 2, p. 159). Anne Olivier Bell, ed., The Diary of Virginia Woolf : Vol. 1, 1915–1919 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1977), p. 129.

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Katherine Mansfield Studies 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

Bell, p. 129. Nicolson, p. 224. Hankin, p. 139. ‘The Daughter of Necessity’, written for the May 1918 exhibition of Fergusson’s paintings was first published in Voices 1 (4 April 1919), pp. 217–21. It is reprinted in John Middleton Murry, The Evolution of an Intellectual (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920). Lea, p. 61. Murry, Evolution, pp. 54–5. Murry, Evolution, p. 52. Hankin, p. 115. Murry, Evolution, p. 54, Murry, Evolution, p. 51.

DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000055

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‘And he handed her an egg’: The Art of Memory in ‘Feuille d’Album’, Katherine Mansfield and Proust Anne Mounic

Abstract Through a detailed analysis of Katherine Mansfield’s ‘Feuille d’Album’, this essay will identify affinities between the French philosopher Henri Bergson, the writer Marcel Proust and Mansfield herself, in terms of memory and imagination, and what Proust called the ‘sense of reality’, acquired through the connection of both these faculties in the present moment. Mansfield wrote to her husband in 1922: ‘I want to be REAL’. That sense of reality is the artist’s achievement in the present moment and the sense of the fullness of time thus obtained seems to belong to the realm of the impossible. A work of art nevertheless opens up the world of the possible, as suggested by the paradoxical end to ‘Feuille d’Album’, a story that can be considered as a parable of the art of writing and might therefore be placed side by side with the last act of Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, where art – and especially words, music, and rhythm – creates a figure of living memory, an instance of resurrection. Key words: Proust, Bergson, Kierkegaard, Mansfield, Shakespeare, memory, imagination, wonder John Middleton Murry’s interest in Henri Bergson’s philosophy is wellknown, as is Bergson’s influence on Marcel Proust. In Matière et mémoire (1896 – Matter and Memory), Bergson distinguishes between memory acquired through practice and habit, and involuntary memory, close to the imagination and aroused by our perception of things in the present moment; in other words, recognising some immediate perception with the images that used to be associated with it.1 From that conjunction

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Katherine Mansfield Studies of the past, regained through involuntary memory, together with the present moment when the reminiscence is triggered off by perception, Proust deduces a sense of reality which he considers to be essential. He describes the process in Le temps retrouvé (Time Regained) which he started writing as early as 1909, but which was only published after his death, in 1927.2 It provides the key to an understanding of the whole of his Recherche du temps perdu cycle of novels (In Search of Lost Time). The most famous example of this type of access to the ‘essential’ is provided by the episode of the ‘madeleine’ cake in Du côté de chez Swann (1913 – Swann’s Way), in which Proust shows how our past is concealed in some material object of which we are unaware. Only by sheer chance might we come across it and, if we are lucky enough to do so, the essence of our life is suddenly revealed to us, inside ourselves: I put down my cup and examine my own mind. It is for it to discover the truth. But how? What an abyss of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker, is at once the dark region through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment will await it nothing. Seek? More than that; create. It is face to face with something which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.3

This process may be regarded from a Kierkegaardian perspective, firstly as an instance of repetition, and secondly one of ethical choice. I shall also consider Katherine Mansfield’s story ‘Feuille d’Album’ from a similar perspective, and relate it to the final scene from Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale.

Katherine Mansfield and Proust Mansfield’s enthusiasm for Proust has been well documented. In a letter to Murry (1 December 1920), she claims Proust to be ‘the greatest living writer’4 in Switzerland. She and Murry ‘lived Proust, breathed him, talked and thought of little else for two weeks’.5 She calls him ‘fascinating’ in a letter to Ottoline Morrell in December 1921.6 Writing to Sidney Schiff in January 1922, she refers to a precise passage in Proust’s Sodome et Gomorrhe (1922), speaking of ‘the exquisite rapture one feels in for instance that passage which ends a chapter where Proust describes the flowering apple trees in the spring rain’.7 One recognises a dynamic image that is central in Mansfield’s work (the aloe in ‘Prelude’, the pear tree in ‘Bliss’, blossoming and opening the future to the individual subject).8 Chapter One of Sodome et Gomorrhe II

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‘Feuille d’Album’, Katherine Mansfield and Proust ends thus: ‘But they [the apple trees] continued flaunting their pink flowering beauty in an icy wind beneath a shower of rain. It was a spring day’.9 The blossoming trees struggle against and withstand destruction by the elements. As Bergson had already shown, ‘remembering’ means movement since, ‘Images shall never be anything but things, and thought is movement’.10 In Mansfield’s work, images are never static but always permeated with movement – movement which means time and becoming, as in ‘The Wind Blows’, the most perfect example of a story embodying the experience of time. In Mansfield’s work, the individual voice wrestles with destructive time in the present moment to assert its creative power and restore the plenitude of being, in spite of lost time. In ‘The Wind Blows’, rhythm captures the past in the present moment within the iambic beat of the leitmotiv: ‘The wind – the wind.’ In addition, ‘Feuille d’Album’ is an allegory of writing – a movement to achieve the plenitude of time regained in the present moment, the instant. Withstanding destruction and death now, is an existential move. For certain writers, their endeavours to assert the reality of individual life is a characteristic of the period, reinforced by the war, because the individual had been so crushed by it. Mansfield, for instance, could not have been influenced by Proust’s vivid description of the apple trees standing in the rain, since her story ‘Bliss’ had already been published two years before his novel. Yet Proust and Mansfield share a common outlook, as I shall reveal in this article, and in addition, a comparison of both authors’ work reveals interesting coincidences. In the first chapter of Sodome et Gomorrhe II, the Duke of Châtellerault wants to be taken for an Englishman and keeps saying – in English and with a small f : ‘I do not speak french’,11 echoing the ‘je ne parle pas français’ (90) of Mouse in Mansfield’s story ‘Je Ne Parle Pas Français’. Further examples denoting a common outlook will be highlighted in this article.

Anonymous duration, tragedy and the miracle In ‘Feuille d’Album’, written in London in 1917,12 the first word that strikes the reader, after the title and after ‘He’, yet unidentified, is the adjective ‘impossible’. ‘He really was an impossible person’.13 A reader can take that word with its two meanings, ‘intolerable’ in the first part, considering the universal account which is given of the character, together with ‘Hopeless’ repeated three times as a conclusion to three paragraphs. In addition, there is ‘not possible’ in the second part,

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Katherine Mansfield Studies which is more particular and focuses on the present moment, ‘now’, in ‘As he watched her he knew more surely than ever he must get to know her, now’ (166), after being more precisely situated in time: ‘One evening’ (163). Moreover, that word is linked with the impossible – and witty – ending: ‘He said, almost angrily: “Excuse me, Mademoiselle, you dropped this.’’ And he handed her an egg’ (166). Presented in such a way, the end is a miracle, opening two directions in time. The egg, dropped and not broken, gives an example of what Søren Kierkegaard calls ‘repetition’ – the past being retrieved in the present moment (‘now’) and then opening the future, or the possibility of love here and now. The present moment therefore is the key moment for making up one’s mind – the past suddenly leaping into the future under the individual subject’s impulse. Memory (the imagination of the past) and the imagination (the memory of the future),14 both play a definite role in the narrative. In the first part, ‘He’ is the subject of a series of indefinite characters’ imagination – ‘you’, ‘everybody’, ‘someone’, which then becomes ‘she’ and ‘a third’. This is the anonymous world of featureless duration, in which everything therefore remains ‘hopeless’. The only hope at that moment is that the main character’s name is revealed in a snatch of friendly conversation: “Who is he, my dear? Do you know?’’ “Yes. His name is Ian French. Painter’’. (161)

All the other characters in the story remain indefinite. He is also given a profession – painter – and is described as ‘awfully clever’ by another anonymous voice. The most obvious commonplaces concerning male/female relations are enumerated: ‘a mother’s tender care’, ‘he ought to fall in love’ and ‘What the poor boy really wants is thoroughly rousing’ (162). Those trite views belong to the universal, raising the notion of a chorus, as in a Greek tragedy, and of the coryphaeus for the voice, giving the character a name and a profession. The tragic world is the world of the universal, as opposed to the individual according to Kierkegaard; moreover it is a world submitted to ‘Necessity’, a world which therefore leaves no room for freedom.

Imagination and memory The painter subsequently becomes the subject of the writer’s imagination, following this sentence: ‘After heaven knows how many more attempts – for the spirit of kindness dies very hard in women – they gave him up’ (162). The description of the place where he lives comes after the expression of opposition: ‘But –’, as

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‘Feuille d’Album’, Katherine Mansfield and Proust pronounced by one of those ‘kind’ women. Therefore the narrator (or the author), sets herself in contrast to the anonymous tragic chorus and describes the character only once ‘they’ have given him up. The fact that Mansfield should then tackle the description of his apartment is significant, and distinctive of her art, which is an art of memory, akin to that described by Frances Yates: ‘This art seeks to memorise through a technique of impressing ‘places’ and ‘images’ on memory.’15 Images or figures are set in definite places in the same way as Ian French, who has been given a name, is now seen in his flat, reminiscent of Francis Carco’s apartment in Paris at 13, quai aux Fleurs: ‘The side window looked across to another house, shabbier still and smaller, and down below there was a flower market’ (163). It is, in fact, the famous flower market situated between the Hôtel-Dieu (a hospital) and the Commercial Court, on the Ile de la Cité. From there, the Ile SaintLouis can be seen: ‘The two big windows faced the water; he could see the boats and the barges swinging up and down, and the fringe of an island planted with trees, like a round bouquet’ (162–3). The description of the place is accurate and rouses memories for anyone who has lived in Paris: ‘where the concierge lives in a glass cage on the ground floor, wrapped up in a filthy shawl, stirring something in a saucepan and ladling out titbits to the swollen old dog lolling on a bead cushion’ (162). Here again, within the accuracy of the detail, the present moment is dramatised. The description of the flower market is delineated almost as quick sketch, the rough shapes drawn in pencil: You could see the tops of huge umbrellas, with frills of bright flowers escaping from them, booths covered with striped awning where they sold plants in boxes and clumps of wet gleaming palms in terracotta jars. Among the flowers the old women scuttled from side to side like crabs. (163)

The rhythms of the sentences call up the gesture of the hand, quickly sketching the view and inscribing humour in the caricature, for example in the description of the concierge. In both cases, the description is bathed in pleasure and humour. Yet, it is impossible to see the flower market from 13, quai aux Fleurs unless, at that time, it went beyond the Hôtel-Dieu, which is unlikely. This therefore means that Mansfield rearranged the place in her memory to suit her imagination. Life is ambivalent; time may mean destruction and creation at the same time: ‘Really there was no need for him to go out. If he sat at the window until his white beard fell over the sill he still would have found something to draw’ (163). An exotic element is conjured in the following description: ‘An Indian curtain that had

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Katherine Mansfield Studies a fringe of red leopards marching round it covered his bed by day, and on the wall beside the bed on a level with your eyes when you were lying down there was a small neatly printed notice: GET UP AT ONCE’ (163). This painter, then, who could grow a long white beard, is, it is confirmed, a wise man, likely to practise some sort of asceticism – not staying long hours in bed in the morning in spite of the strong temptation to do so. And he is even able to sign solemn promises to himself. Ian French is an ethical individual. Mansfield often uses such ‘objective correlatives’ as here in the curtain, as clues to her characters’ predicaments. There is an ‘Indian curtain’ in ‘Floryan nachdenklich’, a poem written in 1913: ‘And the Indian curtain suddenly seems / To stir and shake with a thousand dreams’.16 The imagination and its representations commune with each other to such an extent that the image starts to move under the influence of thought (as in Bergson’s remark on memory as movement quoted above). The same phenomenon occurs in ‘Prelude’: In the quiet and under her tracing finger, the poppy seemed to come alive. She could feel the sticky, silky petals, the stem, hairy like a gooseberry skin, the rough leaf and the tight glazed bud. Things had a habit of coming alive like that. (27)

‘Like that’ recalls the way the statue of Hermione comes alive as Hermione herself at the end of The Winter’s Tale – such power of art being a wonder. In ‘Bliss’, the ‘most amusing orange coat with a procession of black monkeys round the hem and up the fronts’ sounds satirical at first glance. In ‘Feuille d’Album’, the leopards recall the primitive rhythm of life – some sort of élan vital (Bergson’s phrase).17 And indeed those big cats marching round the bed by day present a stunning visual effect, simply because they are out of place. Were they not described as ‘marching’, which gives them reality through movement, they would remain decorative, and harmless. ‘Marching’, they are active (and not so harmful after all, but ready to catch the present moment as Ian French desperately does at the end). Recalling Proust and Time Regained, they can be described as ‘truths written with the aid of shapes’.18 Yet they should be regarded as allusions rather than symbols, since as such they suggest the primeval force of desire and, being out of place, prepare the reader for the witty impossible end, as does the wise man with the long white beard. The reference to the present moment, of waking up, which could be inferred from the description of the notice, is immediately denied at the beginning of the next paragraph: ‘Every day was much the same’

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‘Feuille d’Album’, Katherine Mansfield and Proust (163). In spite of his name, his wisdom and his place, Ian Painter is still confronted with what Proust called ‘our inherent powerlessness to realise ourselves in material enjoyment or in effective action’.19 Only the choice in the instant, a conjunction of the past and the future in the present (‘now’) can lift this dull anonymity. Proust even speaks of a ‘resurrection’: ‘Always, when these resurrections took place, the distant scene engendered around the common sensation had for a moment grappled, like a wrestler; with the present scene. Always the present scene had come off victorious’.20 He also speaks of ‘renewal’ and ‘paradise lost’: ‘that purer air which the poets have vainly tried to situate in paradise and which could induce so profound a sensation of renewal only if it had been breathed before, since the true paradises are the paradises we have lost’.21

Resurrection: to be REAL Proust experiences renewed moments of intensity when memory startles him in the present moment by means of a special object. From that resurrection of the past in the present, he deduces a feeling of reality that could be compared to a new birth: A moment of the past, did I say? Was it not perhaps very much more: something that, common both to the past and to the present, is much more essential than either of them? So often, in the course of my life, reality had disappointed me because at the instant when my senses perceived it my imagination, which was the only organ that I possessed for the enjoyment of beauty, could not apply itself to it, in virtue of that ineluctable law which ordains that we can only imagine what is absent. And now, suddenly, the effect of this harsh law had been neutralised, temporarily annulled, by a marvellous expedient of nature which had caused a sensation – the noise made both by the spoon and by the hammer, for instance – to be mirrored at one and the same time in the past, so that my imagination was permitted to savour it, and in the present, where the actual shock to my senses of the noise, the touch of the linen napkin, or whatever it might be, had added to the dreams of the imagination the concept of ‘existence’ which they usually lack, and through this subterfuge had made it possible for my being to secure, to isolate, to immobilise – for a moment brief as a flash of lightning – what normally it never apprehends: a fragment of time in the pure state.22

Only at the junction of memory and imagination can reality be truly experienced, because what is real then is not the outer world itself but the joy it arouses in the individual soul. It could even then be said that joy is the substance of the soul. The reality of the past

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Katherine Mansfield Studies moment thus re-experienced through memory gives the imagination its substance. It is an instance of existential interaction: past and present are dialectically involved in the individual’s feeling of being. Two different moments make one rebirth. The joy partly comes from the power of transcending time, and partly from the power of experiencing things in their fullness. There is no duality but dialogue, just as Ian French, through his ethical choice – advising himself to ‘GET UP AT ONCE’ or ‘not to exceed this amount for next month’ and signing the pledge – gives reality to the character faced with the tragic chorus embodying the universal. Here again there is no duality but an instance of existential dialectics. The ethical subject chooses his own rhythm. Time, in its existential reality, is being experienced as the substance of being: [. . . ] and immediately the permanent and habitually concealed essence of things is liberated and our true self, which seemed – had perhaps for long years seemed – to be dead but was not altogether dead, is awakened and reanimated as it receives the celestial nourishment that is brought to it. A minute freed from the order of time has re-created in us, to feel it, the man freed from the order of time. And one can understand that this man should have confidence in his joy, even if the simple taste of a madeleine does not seem logically to contain within it the reasons for this joy, one can understand that the word ‘death’ should have no meaning for him; situated outside time, why should he fear the future?23

The choice of ‘now’ At a unique moment in time, ‘one evening’ (163), Ian French’s imagination starts working. It is springtime – a moment of renewal – and ‘it had been raining’ (163). This new world (renewed by the gift of rain) is transfigured: ‘a bright spangle hung on everything, and the air smelled of buds and moist earth’ (164). This description leads us far from the city, into the natural elements of our origins, a world of correspondences: ‘and suddenly, as if in answer to his gaze, two wings of windows opened and a girl came out on to the tiny balcony carrying a pot of daffodils’ (164 – my italics). The window has ‘wings’ and the imagination can soar. The girl is being imagined by the painter – the third step in the story: first, the character is the chorus’s object, then the author/narrator’s; finally, he becomes active and takes on his own story himself, though still in the third person. Daffodils, in Mansfield’s work, are connected with Wordsworth and memory. In ‘Bliss’, they suggest intensity of feeling: ‘How strong

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‘Feuille d’Album’, Katherine Mansfield and Proust the jonquils smelled in the warm room’ (96), (note the word of French origin – a fragrant type of narcissus). And then, closing her eyes, Bertha feels she sees ‘the lovely pear tree with its wide open blossom as a symbol of her own life’ (96). In a letter written in 1918, Mansfield quotes Perdita in The Winter’s Tale: ‘Daffodils, / That come before the swallow dares, and take / The winds of March with beauty. (IV, iv, 118–120). ‘Take’ here means ‘affect, enchant’. Autolycus had already named the daffodils at the beginning of the previous scene, announcing ‘the sweet o’ the year’ (IV, iii, 3). Writing to Murry from Bandol, Mansfield referred to this phrase: ‘Once the war is over all our woes are over for ever I think. Then comes in the sweet of the year for you and me’.24 In Perdita’s mind, the flowers she enumerates and presents to Florizel, signify love and renewal of life (IV, iv, 130–32). The creative power of words is the same as the creative power of love – which reminds us of the Song of Solomon.25 The present moment of writing, like the revelation that memory brings, is resurrection. Therefore, in ‘Feuille d’Album’, the daffodils, through love, open the painter’s imagination as if it were a new flower: ‘His heart fell out of the side window of his studio, and down to the balcony of the house opposite – buried itself in the pot of daffodils under the half-opened buds and spears of green’ (164). The painter enters the girl’s life through the medium of the spring flowers: ‘That room with the balcony was the sitting-room, and the one next door to it was the kitchen’ (164). Again this is an art of memory since the imagination sets the character in a definite place. The metonymy (‘His heart’) gives it an enchanted touch, reinforced by the leap (Coleridge’s word when speaking of the imagination): ‘fell out of the side window’. Mansfield, like Proust, who refers to The Arabian Nights in Time Regained, betrays a great sense of wonder in this story, an intuition of the possible, the joy of reality being ever renewed through the power of the mind and language.

The unexpected and the unknown In both descriptions of places – the writer’s and the painter’s – the imagination is at work, initiated by small clues. The writer, or narrator, imagines a tidy studio: ‘How surprised those tender women would have been if they had managed to force the door. For he kept his studio as neat as a pin’ (163). Mansfield’s ironical approach in ‘those tender women’ sets her character against the universal. Imagining Ian French as someone different from the standard picture of the disorderly artist, she sets him, as well as herself, in a world freed from conventions. Ian French does the same when imagining the young girl, whom he sees

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Katherine Mansfield Studies first as ‘a strangely thin girl’ (164), before noticing that she does not do what ordinary girls would do: ‘She never sang or unbraided her hair, or held out her arms to the moon as young girls are supposed to do’ (164). There is an obvious artistic nuance in this description, redolent of paintings by Edgar Degas (Femme se peignant) or Suzanne Valadon’s portrait of a young woman braiding or unbraiding her hair.26 The painter, playing the part of a writer, invents the girl’s background, answering his own questions. He has already been introduced as someone reliant on writing, with his solemn promises to himself; now like Pygmalion, he recreates his beloved. His life depends, therefore, almost exclusively on his imagination and the process of writing, which, set in the present moment, is also dialectic – a combination of inspiration coming from the unknown and of judgement, because the artist addresses someone else and must make himself understood. He situates himself at the junction of the universal and the individual. The artistic act is a grip of the present moment on eternity: ‘Now when he sat down at his table he had to make an entirely new set of sworn statements. . . Not to go to the side window before a certain hour: signed Ian French. Not to think about her until he had put away his paintings for the day: signed, Ian French.’ (165)

Through those ethical decisions, he chooses himself in time, resisting his own passions (portrayed by Mansfield with a gentle irony). He also creates the girl as an alter ego: ‘She was his age, she was – well, just like him’ (165). And he imagines living with her, in his own home, but his talent for reality is limited: ‘But how could he get to know her? This might go on for years. . . ’ (165). This remark parallels Mansfield’s earlier comment on the long-bearded painter. The image is not enough however, and Ian French wishes to do what the male character in ‘Psychology’ is unable to do: ‘They saw themselves as two little grinning puppets jigging away in nothingness’ (116). The present moment is spoiled, and it hurts. Duration is empty. The concept outlined above deduces that Love, like a work of art, must be seized at precisely the right moment. When the girl appears at the window, she looks as if she were a figure in a painting. When she goes out, the colours outside are unified into one single tint: ‘There was a lovely pink light over everything’ (165). But in the painter himself, again, we find duality: “‘Here she comes,’’ said a voice in his head’ (166). He comes to a realisation that she belongs to another world, like him: ‘Her composure, her seriousness and her loneliness, the very way she walked as though she was eager to be done with this

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‘Feuille d’Album’, Katherine Mansfield and Proust world of grown-ups, all was natural to him and so inevitable’ (166). Using the pronoun ‘we’, somehow binds them together in a pursuit of love, as in the Song of Solomon. He has recognised her through his intuition (the voice) and, when she puts the key into the lock, he hands her the egg, uttering the nonsensical remark: ‘You dropped this.’ The instant is highly dramatic: it is a moment of passage from the outside to the inside, with the suggestion that something has been made up for, or mended (the loss of the egg), and even put together again. The impossible has been made real, and tangible, although fragile. This is the quality of the moment of personal decision; though vanishing and gone, it brings plenitude. The egg, moreover, is the innocent, familiar symbol of new birth. In the story, it belongs to everyday life, which makes the suggestion even more forceful. The egg is unity and plenitude made of two connected elements. Leda’s egg gives birth to the Dioscuri, who are twins. We can also think of the Chinese yin–yang, an oval shape representing the dialectics of the Way – male and female, nothingness and existence, duration and the act of being – which should be involuntary and not come from the intellect, in the same way as Proust’s moment of memory and resurrection – unity and duality, unity and multiplicity. The Tao (which means ‘to say’ and also ‘Way, to go’) is a dialectic of becoming, with no beginning and no end.

The fullness of time The egg, as a symbol, is commonly linked to the genesis of the world. In Mansfield’s story, the final instant is a key to a new world – different from the ‘hopeless’ anonymous world peopled with vague creatures (‘someone’, ‘they’). This new world resembles a children’s universe, far from the grown-ups’ routine; a world of meaningful time, achieved via the means of paradox. For Proust, a work of art acutely reveals the plenitude contained in the ‘instant’; it is how the artist moves from involuntary reminiscence to an art of memory – a figure set in a definite place, which means reality appropriated by the mind; exteriority transfigured into interiority, and therefore ecstatic:27 And this method, which seemed to me the sole method, what was it but the creation of a work of art? Already the consequences came flooding into my mind: first, whether I considered reminiscences of the kind evoked by the noise of the spoon or the taste of the madeleine, or those truths written with the aid of shapes for whose meaning I searched

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Katherine Mansfield Studies in my brain, where church steeples or wild grass growing in a wall they composed a magical scrawl, complex and elaborate, their essential character was that I was not free to choose them, that such as they were they were given to me. And I realised that this must be the mark of their authenticity. I had not gone in search of the two uneven paving-stones of the courtyard upon which I had stumbled. But it was precisely the fortuitous and inevitable fashion in which this and the other sensations had been encountered that proved the trueness of the past which they brought back to life, of the images which they released, since we feel, with these sensations, the effort that they make to climb back towards the light, feel in ourselves the joy of rediscovering what is real.28

Between memory and the imagination, what is at stake is the feeling that life is real. Mansfield wrote to her husband, on 26 December 1922, that she wanted ‘to be REAL’,29 and it is through growing conscious of herself with the help of those ‘truths written with the aid of shapes’ that she gains personal substance and reality. As with the main character in her story ‘Psychology’, the painter is in love with an image: ‘Often when I am away from here I revisit it in spirit – wander about among your red chairs, stare at the bowl of fruit on the black table – and just touch, very lightly, that marvel of a sleeping boy’s head’ (114). And it is that image of the ‘sleeping boy’s head’ that comes floating on the sea of their silence. Man and woman are both ‘hopeless’ when faced with reality, as Proust revealed, speaking of ‘our inherent powerlessness to realise ourselves in material enjoyment or in effective action’. The image blocks the decision.

‘Feuille d’Album’ It was a belief in the Middle Ages that love was a product of the imagination, since one could only fall in love with an image. This leads to a discussion of the title of Mansfield’s story, ‘Feuille d’Album’, which conjures up an image of a book of photographs, the present moment thus kept through instantaneous shots. This is the paradox of the egg. Perhaps the album could refer to a sketchbook, appropriate for a painter. Sketching is an act performed ‘in the moment’, a swift decision to keep the instant alive, to perform the impossible. If, as Proust contends, the moment of revelation (memory and the imagination), is not brought about by any will, then to write about it and to keep it safe in words is in itself an act of the will. In Contre Sainte-Beuve, Proust asserts that only the intelligence can decide that the instinct should come first.30 Writing is a dialectical process, a mixture of involuntary ‘inspiration’ and voluntary decision.

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‘Feuille d’Album’, Katherine Mansfield and Proust The word ‘Feuille’ also has different meanings, suggesting lightness, frailty, and transience, whether it means a sheet of paper ( feuille de papier) or a leaf on a tree ( feuille d’arbre). In each case, it is something that can be cut off, or torn off – detached (a short story). It is distinct and separate, as is the instant when set off against duration. ‘If he sat at the window until his white beard fell over the sill he still would have found something to draw . . . ’; ‘But how could he get to her? This might go on for years . . . ’. In each case, the suspension points prolong the effect of extensive duration. In each case, what should be achieved is the present moment of decision: ‘now’ – the egg that should be broken but is kept intact, and full of promises. Achieving the reality of ‘now’, the artist, the poet, the lover, achieves his own personal reality, through embracing both the past and the future within the present moment of creation. For Proust, it means wrestling between past and present. The notion of personal reality is the enchantment which comes both from nowhere as well as from a personal decision. The fact that the personal decision should be anchored in the unknown is what makes it worthwhile. As noted earlier, Proust referred to the Arabian Nights in Time Regained: I wiped my mouth with the napkin which he had given me; and instantly, as though I had been the character in the Arabian Nights who unwittingly accomplishes the very rite which can cause to appear, visible to him alone, a docile genie ready to convey him to a great distance, a new vision of azure passed before my eyes, but an azure that this time was pure and saline and swelled into blue and bosomy undulations, and so strong was this impression that the moment to which I was transported seemed to me to be the present moment.31

The genie appears through an involuntary movement, but is ‘docile’. The present moment becomes ‘docile’ to the artist who can seize it. Another coincidence between Proust and Mansfield is to be found in Contre Sainte-Beuve: The introduction to such a young lady, and helping her make the transition from unknown to known, or rather making ourselves known to her, from scorned to admired, from possessed to possessor, it is the little hand with which we grasp the intangible future, the only one we force on it.32 (My italics.)

This is also the work of art, the miracle of telling tales and finding oneself truly alive. The egg is not the only symbol of such wonder in Mansfield’s work. There is, for example, the symbol of the pear tree in ‘Bliss’, appearing

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Katherine Mansfield Studies in the window (a figure in a frame: an art of memory), and also the aloe in ‘Prelude’: ‘And I am sure I shall remember it long after I’ve forgotten all the other things’ (53). Through the present moment, the past catches up with the future. At the end of ‘Prelude’, the top of the jar of cream that should break, does not: ‘And the top of the cream jar flew through the air and rolled like a penny in a round on the linoleum – and did not break’ (60). However, the head of a duck cannot be put back, as Kezia screamed Pat should do: ‘“Put head back! Put head back!’’ she screamed’ (46). A story itself, for example, ‘The Wind Blows’, when told like a tale from the Arabian Nights is just such a paradox: ‘The wind carries their voices – away fly the sentences like little narrow ribbons’ (110). But the impression of the wind remains in the rhythm of the words once uttered, and then written: ‘The wind – the wind.’

‘The pleasure of that madness.’ The art of memory which consists in placing figures in special settings in order to be able to remember them, is an art of the imagination, and it is dramatic too, since it combines the living creature, the I of the present moment, with its alter ego, the Thou of the past. This is an instance of reflexive consciousness within the background of the unknown, which tallies with Kierkegaard’s definition of the individual subject: This then is the formula which describes the state of the self when despair is completely eradicated: in relation to itself and in wanting to be itself, the self is grounded transparently in the power that established it.33

Moreover, it is no wonder that Kezia should be the name Mansfield chose to impersonate herself in her New Zealand stories since it is the name of Job’s daughter. Job is the model from which Kierkegaard deduces his notion of repetition: Now they come to him and eat bread with him and are sorry for him and console him; his brothers and sisters, each one of them, give him a farthing and a gold ring – Job is blessed and has received everything double. – This is called a repetition.34

The notion is explained in temporal terms in Fear and Trembling (1843): For it is great to give up one’s desire, but it is greater to hold fast to it after having given it up; it is great to lay hold of the eternal, but it is greater to hold fast to the temporal after having given it up. Then came the fullness of time.35

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‘Feuille d’Album’, Katherine Mansfield and Proust Kierkegaard defines what he calls the ethical choice in Either . . . or . . . (1843): choosing oneself implies two dialectical movements; what is being chosen does not exist and only exists through the choice that is being made; what is being chosen exists, since there would be no choice otherwise. If what I choose did not exist, it would mean that I am creating myself but I am not. Being created is not enough; to be free I must choose myself. Kierkegaard strongly reacted to the German idealism as represented by Hegel, whose main concern was to consider the universal. Before his ethical choice, ‘now’, the painter, in the universal world of the tragic chorus, remains ‘hopeless’. When he hands her an egg, the character in Mansfield’s story has seized both reality and himself in the present moment of the individual, as discussed by Proust in Contre Sainte-Beuve. In the I and Thou relationship, the character of the painter comes back to the essential and opens the future, as the girl is ready to open the door with her key. This individual apprehension of time is opposed to the transcendent time of history, imposed upon individuals, and especially soldiers, during the Great War. In the novel Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf contrasted monumental time and individual duration in keeping with Bergson’s view. Proust wrote, in Contre Sainte-Beuve: ‘For me reality is individual’.36 Mansfield likens the artist’s world to the child’s. The grown-ups live in a world of linear duration, of routine and anonymity. The artist and the child, having faith in the impossible, like Abraham, as described by Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling, are able to seize the present moment in all its intensity: ‘And he handed her an egg.’ Several notions are therefore closely linked: the individual’s life becomes ‘REAL’ in the present moment of the ethical choice and this reality is conveyed through such impressionistic details as the observation of the concierge, the flower market, the leopards, or the daffodils. The whole pattern is highly consistent. The multiplicity of details and the instants they belong to is intended to suggest the essential. Proust writes: ‘To his contemplation of the essence of things I had decided therefore that in future I must attach myself, so as somehow to immobilise it. But how, by what means, was I to do this?’37 . . . ‘And he handed her an egg.’ This is childish but this is art. Life is seen in its nakedness; one cares only for the essential. In Proust, we find one of the most famous instances of resurrected reminiscences in the episode of the madeleine, leading him back to the delights of his own childhood – the delights of plenitude. ‘Then came the fullness of time.’ The lamp, in ‘The Doll’s House’, is such an instance of an individual presence so aptly belonging to its place that it becomes a figure of

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Katherine Mansfield Studies plenitude: ‘But the lamp was perfect. It seemed to smile at Kezia, to say, “I live here.’’ The lamp was real’ (384). Mansfield’s stories have this capacity to achieve plenitude in the present moment (the fullness of time) creating a world of correspondences, as described in ‘A Married Man’s Story’: ‘I saw it all, but not as I had seen before . . . Everything lived, everything. But that was not all. I was equally alive and – it’s the only way I can express it – the barriers were down between us – I had come into my own world!’ (437). Such renewal is deduced from a questioning of the past: ‘Who am I, in fact, as I sit here at this table, but my own past? If I deny that, I am nothing’ (434). It means reconciliation in time and space – a reconciliation which is brought about by an inner impulse: ‘I looked at the dead bird again. . . And that is the first time that I remember singing – rather. . . listening to a silent voice inside a little cage that was me’ (433). The voice is the emanation of the original silence, to be listened to and translated into words: ‘But how, by what means, was I to do this?’ Proust wonders. There is no universal answer – only the work of the individual artist, ‘now’, for the world and the self to be renewed in the present moment of creation – an ethical choice. This is why the work of art, not in the physical sense, but rather as subjective object, can come to life again, like the poppy under Linda’s finger; the whole world then becomes subjective – reality, so exported into the mind, is ecstatic and the subjective being experiences plenitude: But the strangest part of this coming alive of things was what they did. They listened, they seemed to swell out with some mysterious important content, and when they were full she felt that they smiled. But it was not for her, only, their sly secret smile; they were members of a secret society and they smiled among themselves. (27)

The metamorphosis of things is endowed with all the ambivalence of childish visions; the wonder is tainted with fear, and, to a certain extent, in a world devoted to the universal, the individual attempt is clumsy: ‘In a moment he was out again, and following her past his house across the flower market, dodging among the huge umbrellas and treading on the fallen flowers and the round marks where the pots had stood . . . ’ (166). In the universal, the individual is a funambulist. Hermione’s metamorphosis in The Winter’s Tale (V, iii, 99–111) is seen with ambivalence: ‘If this be magic, let it be an art / Lawful as eating’, says Leontes. The statue is being resurrected by the music: ‘Music; awake her – strike!’ (V, iii, 98) Paulina’s voice and the rhythm of Shakespeare’s verse call her back to life:

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‘Feuille d’Album’, Katherine Mansfield and Proust ‘Tis time; descend; be stone no more; approach; Strike all that look upon with marvel – come, I’ll fill your grave up.’ This resurrection of the past, although madly impossible, is real delight: ‘No settled senses of the world can match The pleasure of that madness.’ (V, iii, 72–3) Life can only be saved in the present moment. The unbroken egg at the end of ‘Feuille d’Album’ is the fullness of time thus regained through the work of art, which is open to endless reading and therefore endless renewal, in a world of correspondences, of ‘truths written with the aid of shapes’ – the egg, the pear tree, the aloe, Pygmalion’s Galatea coming to life through the work of his imagination, Hermione and the past coming back to life, through the art of memory and the present moment becoming absolutely REAL. . . ‘You dropped this.’ Notes 1. Henri Bergson, Matière et mémoire (Paris: P.U.F. Quadrige, 1982), p. 97. 2. A book published in 1927 might be considered irrelevant to the study of the work of a writer who died in 1923, but Le temps retrouvé only elucidates what is at work in the whole Recherche du temps perdu – which Katherine Mansfield had read a part of, although speaking of influence is a delicate matter. I prefer to point out a few affinities. 3. Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way (1913), translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff (New York: Dover, 2002), p. 38. 4. Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott, eds., The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 198–2008), Vol. 4, p. 130. Hereafter referred to as Letters, followed by the volume number. 5. Letters 4, p. 329. 6. Letters 4, p. 344. 7. Letters 5, p. 12. 8. See Anne Mounic, ‘ “Ah, what is it? – that I heard’’. The sense of wonder in Katherine Mansfield’s stories and poems.’ Conference paper presented at ‘The Katherine Mansfield Centenary Conference’, London, 4–6 September 2008. 9. ‘Mais ceux–ci [les pommiers] continuaient à dresser leur beauté, fleurie et rose, dans le vent devenu glacial sous l’averse qui tombait : c’était une journée de printemps’, Marcel Proust, Sodome et Gomorrhe (Paris: Gallimard Folio, 1972), p. 208. Translation by Anthony Rudolf for the author. 10. Bergson, p. 139. My translation. 11. Proust, Sodome et Gomorrhe, p. 45. 12. See Gerri Kimber, Katherine Mansfield: The View from France (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008), p. 236. 13. Katherine Mansfield, ‘Feuille d’Album’, in The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield (London: Penguin, 2001), p. 160. All page numbers to Mansfield’s stories are taken from this edition and will follow any quotation within the main text.

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Katherine Mansfield Studies 14. In Chapter Nineteen of The White Goddess, Robert Graves insists that that type of ubiquity in time is truly the poet’s gift. ‘A sense of the equivocal nature of time is constantly with poets, rules out hope or anxiety about the future, concentrates interest detachedly in the present’. Robert Graves, The White Goddess (London: Faber, 1957), p. 344. 15. Frances Yates, The Art of Memory (1966) (London: Pimlico, 2000), p. 11. What Frances Yates describes in her book is voluntary memory, the writer’s art when the latter means to express this new sense of existence induced by involuntary memory (see further, Time Regained, pp. 263–64). 16. Katherine Mansfield, Poems, ed. Vincent O’Sullivan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 38. 17. See Henri Bergson, L’évolution créatrice (1907). Paris: P.U.F. Quadrige, 1981, pp. 88–98. 18. Marcel Proust, Time Regained (1927), translated by Andreas Mayor and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright (New York: The Modern Library, 2003), p. 274. 19. Proust, Time Regained, p. 272. 20. Proust, Time Regained, p. 267. 21. Proust, Time Regained, p. 261. 22. Proust, Time Regained, pp. 263–4. 23. Proust, Time Regained, pp. 264–5. 24. Letters 2, p. 83. 25. See Anne Mounic, ‘Le Cantique des Cantiques, parabole de l’amour et du poème’. Tsafon, Revue d’études juives du Nord (Lille), 57, Spring/Summer, 2009, pp. 75–100. 26. http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/ruwiki/313910 [accessed 10 July 2009]. 27. I develop this notion of ecstatic reality in a new book, yet unpublished, called La Dame à la licorne, suivi de Du coin de l’œil où perlent les larmes. What I mean is that it is not the soul which experiences ecstasy during the process of creation but reality itself which is appropriated as the inner scene of being, thus creating inner plenitude for the subject who has made the choice of himself. 28. Proust, Time Regained, pp. 273–4. 29. Letters 5, p. 341. 30. Marcel Proust, Contre Sainte–Beuve (Paris: Folio Gallimard, 2004), p. 50. (First published in 1954 but written in 1908.) 31. Proust, Time Regained, p. 258. 32. Proust, Contre Sainte–Beuve, pp. 108–9. Translation by Anthony Rudolf. 33. Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death (1849), translated with an introduction by Alastair Hannay (London: Penguin Classics, 2004), p. 44. 34. Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling – Repetition (1843), edited and translated with introduction and notes by Howard V. Hong and Edna V. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 212. 35. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, p. 18. 36. Proust, Contre Sainte–Beuve, p. 94. 37. Proust, Time Regained, p. 269.

DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000067

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Katherine Mansfieldová: The Reception of Katherine Mansfield in the Countries of Former Czechoslovakia Janka Kašˇcáková

Abstract Katherine Mansfield’s short stories have enjoyed a presence in both parts of the former Czechoslovakia since the 1930s, in the form of translations for periodicals. The first collection of her stories in book form is also from this period, although, probably for cultural and linguistic reasons, appears only in Czech, as do three subsequent collections published between the 1950s and 1970s. In terms of critical assessment, Mansfield’s work has not been systematically studied. Criticism consists mainly of book reviews, prefaces to collections of her stories, dust cover blurbs and brief paragraphs introducing the translations of stories in magazines. This paper presents and analyses material gathered during research in the Czech and Slovak National Libraries. Key words: Reception, Katherine Mansfield, short stories, translation, Czech Republic, Slovakia The last four years of Katherine Mansfield’s life coincide with the beginnings of a new country: one which arose from the breakdown of the vast and multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I. Czechoslovakia was a rare experiment of its kind, both in its conception and in its demise. It was a mutual agreement between two different nations to face their history together; it was an equally mutual decision, without violence, to once more divide when circumstances changed. The amalgamated state connected two Slavic nations in the heart of Europe, nations with very similar languages, cultural and historical backgrounds. Both were, for centuries, more

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Katherine Mansfield Studies or less under the rule of another nation, sharing the existence of a minority in a large country with a non-Slavic majority. Both nations’ intellectuals strove for some kind of autonomy and these efforts were especially strengthened in the tumult of the nineteenthcentury revivalist movements. The political chess game played during and shortly following World War I, finally gave them an opportunity for co-joined autonomy, and after many negotiations, they succeeded in creating a new state, whose first day of existence was 28 October 1918. At the beginning, some politicians, following the lead of the first president, T. G. Masaryk, tried to present the two nations as one. Motivated by fear that the new country and its existence would be challenged, they claimed there was a Czechoslovak nation and language. This approach, as well as the disregard of the Pittsburgh treaty which guaranteed autonomy to Slovakia in the common state, caused much damage and led to the radical autonomist movement in Slovakia, resulting in the creation of the independent Slovak Republic,1 founded in 1939 at the cost of collaboration with Hitler, and existing until 1945.2 Yet it is to be hoped that history will show that this union brought positive rather than negative results. The positive side has always been, and still is, in the area of cultural and educational activities. In the context of this article, it is necessary to explain the nature of the understanding between the two languages, and, as a result of this, the manner in which foreign books were translated. The Czech and Slovak languages are very close, yet the experience of recent years shows that this similarity is not such as to allow the member of one nation to understand sufficiently the language of the other, without previously being exposed to it. In the common state, its inhabitants were living their everyday lives in a bilingual society – to such an extent that some books, especially those that were more expensive to publish, or for a limited audience, were hardly ever translated into both languages.3 In the case of fiction, especially the classical works of world literature, the situation was different. The Czech and Slovak schools of translation differed slightly, and translators on each side competed to provide the best versions of chosen works of fiction. In the case of Mansfield and Czechoslovakia, it is hardly legitimate to talk about ‘reception’. This word evokes a certain number of critical works about an author, works that build on one another, establishing a development of critical approaches. In reality, writing this paper frequently meant assembling often unrelated notes and

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The Reception of Mansfield in Czechoslovakia articles covering seventy years’ worth of journals, magazines and books published in the former Czechoslovakia, or one of its succession states. After many years it becomes almost impossible to trace anonymous authors or reviewers, or to understand the editors’ reasons for choosing a particular story to be translated for their journal. Yet such as the material is, all that was traceable, with the exception of simple advertisements, is included in this paper. Mansfield’s death, to the best knowledge of the present author, was not announced in any Czech or Slovak papers.4 The attention of the Czech press in January 1923 was occupied by two major issues. The first was anxiety over the health of the respected minister Alois Rašín, who was shot by an assassin on 5 January and was, in spite of the hopes and desires of many, struggling through his last days.5 The other was the international political situation, especially the movements of the French army in Germany. The war was still very fresh in people’s minds and newspapers expressed the omnipresent unease about the possible consequences of such a development. The first time that Mansfield appears in the Czech press is in the Sunday issue of the major periodical Národní listy (National Pages) on 24 July 1932.6 The article entitled ‘Kateˇrina Mansfieldová7 aneb spisovatel a smrt’ (‘Katherine Mansfield or a Writer and Death’) occupies the bottom third of the cover page and its presence, although at first surprising, can be explained on closer examination. The article is signed by Miloslava Sísová, a journalist and writer working for several Czech newspapers and magazines, and an active member of the Czech feminist movement. She also lived temporarily in Paris, where she might easily have come across Mansfield’s or Murry’s work.8 It is thus hardly surprising that after the international fame of the Journal (1928) and Letters (1929), both in England and France, she was enthusiastic about Mansfield and wanted to share her opinions with the Czech public.9 How she managed to do it can be gleaned from an article directly above it entitled ‘Parlament na prázdninách’ (‘Parliament on Holiday’) which suggests that the author made use of the slack season that Slovaks and Czechs in unison call the ‘cucumber season’, and managed to place Mansfield on the cover. The article is heavily influenced by Murry’s presentation of Mansfield; it is filled with suggestive adjectives and is emotional to the point of hyperbole. It begins by claiming that every day in heaven there is a meeting of several lovely creatures, namely Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Božena Nˇemcová,10 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Marie Bashkirtseff and Katherine Mansfield. This constellation is already bizarre enough, but that is not all. According to the author,

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Katherine Mansfield Studies other women sometimes join in, such as ‘Aissé or Lespinasse’.11 The other ‘immortals’ reportedly call them ‘The Circle of Pure and True Hearts’. These women are together and apart from other artists, according to the author, because they are thoroughly different. In her opinion, their attraction lies rather in the non-literary qualities of their work: in the aura of their personalities. The article elaborates further, specifically on the circumstances of Mansfield’s death as presented in the Journal and Letters, quoting abundantly from both. Sísová portrays Mansfield as a ‘poor dear Englishwoman with a childlike face and untidy mane of tough hair’ and a ‘petite consumptive’ who ‘was never healthy, since she suffered from the typical disease of English people: rheumatism’. She compares her dying struggle with that of Jesus Christ, although she later admits that Mansfield did not accept the rituals or rules of any church. In conclusion, Sísová ruminates on the reasons for the strong desire of authors in general to finish their work before they die. She draws parallels between Mansfield’s craving to write and her desire to have time enough to complete her oeuvre, and the unfinished works of Sísová’s famous contemporaries in the political life of Czechoslovakia, who died prematurely. They were Alois Rašín, succumbing to his injuries just a couple of weeks after Mansfield’s death; Milan Rastislav Štefánik, another co-founder of Czechoslovakia whose plane crashed under suspicious circumstances on his way home to Slovakia in May 1919; and Tomáš Bat’a senior, the prominent entrepreneur and innovator who had died the week before the article was published. Other references to Mansfield in Czech periodicals are rather scarce and, interestingly, appear mostly in Catholic-oriented magazines to which Murry’s hagiography of Mansfield naturally appealed. Such is the case of the literary magazine Archa (Ark) from 1934, which, in its second issue, includes the translation of Mansfield’s unpublished story ‘Evening’ (‘Veˇcer’)12 and in its third, a review of the Journal.13 Further, Našinec (One of Us) presents a translation of ‘The Doll’s House’ (‘Loutkový d˚ um’, 1939).14 Both magazines were based in Moravia, the Eastern part of the Czech Republic, which is traditionally Catholic, in contrast with the western Czech part, historically rather leaning towards Protestantism (and currently for the most part atheist).15 After a very long gap, the list of entries from the Czech periodical press resumes in 1987 with a reference to Mansfield which differs from its predecessors. It appears in the published catalogue of films prepared for distribution in Czechoslovak cinemas and refers to

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The Reception of Mansfield in Czechoslovakia John Reid’s 1985 film Leave All Fair.16 The article is a pure synopsis of the film, worthless from a literary critical point of view, yet the information preceding the text itself is of interest. It shows that the film was distributed under the title ‘Dlouhé louˇcení’ (‘Long Parting’), and was designated for the purposes of so-called film clubs which, even in the times of Communism, screened alternative films for a small number of film fans and specialists.17 The short list of Mansfield’s appearances in Czech periodicals is concluded by ‘Mr Reginald Peacock’s Day (‘Jeden den pana Peacocka’, 1992) in Naše rodina (Our Family),18 which again is a Catholic weekly. It is a translation unaccompanied by explanatory text.19 The only book translations of Mansfield’s stories are Czech translations by Aloys Skoumal (several in cooperation with his wife Hana). There are four collections: Duje vítr (The Wind Blows, 1938) includes the whole of Bliss and Other Stories and eleven stories from Something Childish; Zahradní slavnost (The Garden Party, 1952) which is the most extensive, containing the whole of Bliss and Other Stories, eleven stories from Something Childish, all but two stories from The Garden Party and four stories from The Dove’s Nest; Blaho (Bliss, 1958) including the whole of Bliss and Other Stories and three stories from Something Childish; and finally Aloe (The Aloe, 1975), containing a selection of stories from all periods of Mansfield’s writing, and from all the translations made by Skoumal and Skoumalová. Skoumal was a reputable translator and literary critic, and a student and librarian of Vilém Mathesius, the co-founder of the Prague Linguistic Circle, whose theories influenced his work. Skoumal is remembered especially for his much acclaimed translations of Joyce’s Ulysses and Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. His other translations include, for example, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Wharton’s Age of Innocence, and others. As Vladimír Papoušek points out: ‘[Skoumal] was a translator who chose texts others usually avoid because the mere translation is not enough, one has to understand the style, to reinvent [the text]’.20 Dagmar Blümlová claims that ‘the melody of word and sentence were the main criteria of [Skoumal’s] translations and for his own texts as well’.21 Since the sound and musicality of texts are qualities in his writing he shares with Mansfield, it is no surprise that his translations of her stories were particularly successful. Skoumal himself was a musician – a cellist, like Mansfield. Unfortunately, Skoumal’s papers have not yet been collected and edited; thus any documents pertaining to his work on Mansfield’s stories remain in cardboard boxes at the Czech National Archive. Yet the published volumes of

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Katherine Mansfield Studies stories suggest that these archives may contain items of interest to Mansfield scholars. The very first book translated: Duje vítr (1938), features this dedication: To Mrs. Eva Vrchlická,22 member of the National Theatre Company in Prague, for her rare understanding of the charm of these prose works and her encouraging interest in their Czech translation, the translator dedicates this with sincere respect and devotion.23

It seems that Eva Vrchlická, because of her admiration of Mansfield, either suggested the translation or supported the translator throughout his work. The dedication, in a simpler form, appears again in the 1952 Zahradní slavnost; this time it reads: ‘The translators of this selection of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories dedicate their work to Eva Vrchlická and Václav Mašek’.24 There are several aspects of Skoumal’s translational approach to Mansfield’s stories that are worth mentioning. In line with the Czech tradition of translation, Skoumal translates the names that have equivalents in Czech, or have meaning in themselves. Thus Pearl Button becomes Perletinka, Reginald Peacock is Zvonimír Páv, Henry is translated as Jindˇrich, and Johnny as Honzík. Naturally, all the female surnames get the gender ending –ová. The different nature of Slavic languages compared to English is particularly noticeable in ‘The Young Girl’ (‘Dívenka’), where the narrator’s identity and gender are not revealed. This is made possible because of the nature of the English language which marks gender mostly through the use of the personal pronoun, and then only in the third person singular. Thus if the story is in the first person, and the author wants to keep the narrator’s gender a secret, the language is able to maintain this gender anonymity. For synthetic languages like Czech (and Slovak), this is grammatically impossible. Even if the narrator is the first person, the past tense inflectional suffixes are different for feminine and masculine, so the translator has to decide what gender is to be employed. Skoumal opts for a female narrator, thus losing one possible dimension of the story. In his introductory essays preceding the stories and blurbs on the dust covers of his translations, Skoumal usually provides readers with a brief biography and analysis of Mansfield’s work. Although in terms of information there are factual errors, unavoidable at that time, Skoumal is much less emotional than his contemporaries, and his picture of Mansfield is sober, objective, and directed more towards her fiction than the circumstances of her life. Brief and elementary as they are,

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The Reception of Mansfield in Czechoslovakia these introductions are almost the only serious critical works dealing with Mansfield’s work published in Czechoslovakia. The only other critical work, which remains unpublished, is the sole dissertation ever written on Mansfield in the Czech Republic that could be traced. It is to be found in the central depository of the Czech National Library on the outskirts of Prague. Its author is Otilie Tuková and the work was submitted to the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University in Prague in 1951. In this dissertation, Mansfield is presented as a frail and delicate intellectual. In terms of information or analysis, this work is lightweight. Yet it remains fascinating, as yet another example of how Murry’s hagiography of his dead wife was transposed to other countries, as well as revealing how the communist ideology and its emphasis on the ‘common man’ started to seep into literary criticism. The author relies on Murry for all her information: her reverence for his work is unquestioning. In a section concerning the time Mansfield and Murry spent together in Bandol, Tuková claims that ‘it is better not to attempt to reconstruct this happy period in the life of both, not to spoil what only he could express best’.25 The work is written in Czech, as was standard at that time; but from the text it is visible that Tuková, apart from being proficient in English, also had at least a working knowledge of French and German. Her Mansfield is ‘more a sensitive poet than a prose writer’ (6), ‘a poet of love, beauty and reconciliation’ (49) and ‘in spite of her femininity, has features she shares with men – generous humanity, moral and intellectual honesty and the pure heart of a great artist’ (30). In her interpretation of Mansfield’s life, Ida Baker is no more than a housemaid, which, according to Tuková, proves that Mansfield sought after ‘the friendship of common people’ (33). Thoroughly in line with Murry’s version of Mansfield, Tuková sees her as a pure and almost perfect character which, in the face of incontrovertible hard facts from the Journal or Letters, leads to some truly strange statements, such as: ‘Her love of life reminds us of decadent Epicureanism. If the decadence had any influence on her then in her case it finds the most pure, soulful and morally healthy expression’. (37). Tuková presents Mansfield as a realist, adopting the communist attitude to Modernism as something unnatural and corrupt.26 In Slovakia, there is yet to be a translation of Mansfield’s stories in book form, most probably because Skoumal’s Czech editions are available and Mansfield is not perceived as a major writer. However, she appears relatively often in magazines and journals of different kinds and orientations, across the political, religious and social spectrum.

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Katherine Mansfield Studies The first mention of Mansfield in Slovak periodicals is from 11 January 1931: the translation of ‘The Woman at the Store’ in a regional newspaper called Slovenský východ (The Slovak East).27 This is in many respects an extraordinary appearance. Not only is there no introduction or commentary for a short story squeezed amongst news, political and economic commentaries, announcements of sales and an article on a dynamite attack on a pub, but the anonymous translator approaches the text in a most peculiar way. First of all the title is not translated but completely changed. This in itself is not unusual, since both Czech and Slovak translators occasionally do it, especially when they come across an untranslatable title. Yet this is not the case in this instance. ‘The Woman at the Store’ can hardly pose any linguistic problems; yet the translator chooses the title ‘Vyzradený zloˇcin’ (‘Crime Revealed’). The Slovak is archaic and so it is difficult to assess the general quality of the translation, but there is one instance when it becomes obvious that the choice of title is deliberately calculated to attract readers, by implying it is a detective story. And the translator goes even further and takes the liberty of adding a new paragraph. Evidently frustrated by Mansfield’s hints and implications throughout the story, s/he chooses to take no chances that the reader might not get the point (or that evil would not be punished), and affixes these two sentences to the end of the story: Teraz sme vedeli, aký zloˇcin t’ažil svedomie hriešnej ženy a kto bude jej d’alšou obet’ou. Možno, že ju jej zlomysel’ná dcéra znova prezradí a že len potom stihne matku zaslúžený trest. (Then we knew what crime weighed on the conscience of the sinful woman and who would be her next victim. Maybe her malicious daughter will betray her again and the mother will be punished, as she deserves.)

Other appearances in periodicals are not as ‘creative’ as the above, but rather more seriously approached. The magazine of the Women Society, called ‘Živena’28 , publishes three translations of Mansfield’s stories within the space of six years: ‘Pomsta’ (‘Ole Underwood’, 1937), ‘Miss Brillová’ (‘Miss Brill’ 1942) and ‘Plavba po mori’ (‘The Voyage’ 1943).29 The 1942 issue also gives a brief account of Mansfield’s life and work, which represents the quality of information to which the general Slovak public had access at the time: for example, it features a baffling statement that Mansfield did not write in the last six months of her life because she was waiting for her eyesight to return. Other pre-war Slovak magazines only include reviews of Skoumal’s book editions of Mansfield’s stories. One is from the joint Czech and Slovak journal Jednota (Unity), from 1938, where the Czech literary and

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The Reception of Mansfield in Czechoslovakia theatre critic, Ludvík Páleníˇcek, briefly reviews the Czech surrealist Vítˇezslav Nezval’s collection of poems Matka Nadˇeje (Mother Hope) and Skoumal’s collection of Mansfield’s stories Duje vítr (The Wind Blows). The review is positive in tone, emphasising the enrichment that such translations brings to Czechoslovak contemporary literature. The author notes that many stories can be considered as outlines for novels since ‘so much of life is concentrated in them’ and concludes by claiming that Mansfield’s presentiment of death seems to have ‘subconsciously determined the form of these stories, some of which are real artistic jewels’.30 The same book is reviewed in the Slovak communist paper Slovenské zvesti (Slovak Tidings) of 9 October 1938, coincidentally on the same day as the Communist party was prohibited by the Slovak Ministry of Internal Affairs. The review is short (64 words) and its anonymous author finds little that is positive to say about Mansfield. Although her stories are directed at ‘small people and small destinies’, they ‘lack the concision and sparkling wit’ that can be found for example in the work of the Czech writer and poet Jan Neruda. Mansfield’s stories are ‘over refined’, the atmosphere is ‘sickly’ and because of great formal effort they are ‘rather dead’.31 This almost telegraphic dismissal of Mansfield’s work would be quite entertaining if it did not ominously anticipate the attitudes and approaches of Communists to art once they took over in 1948. After the war, another review, this time of Skoumal’s 1958 Blaho (Bliss), appears in the influential literary journal Slovenské pohl’ady (which can be translated as Slovak Views or Glimpses). The reviewer observes that ‘[f]or people accustomed to hear that two times two is always four and what is black can never be white, Mansfield’s work will always remain an inaccessible land’. This statement is further developed when the reviewer holds that ‘the stories are operated by a strange logic which has nothing to do with logic in the traditional sense’. The reviewer uses as an example Linda Burnell’s thinking in ‘Prelude’, where the fact that: [. . . ] a relatively happy woman and mother can so ardently desire to leave her way of life, house, husband and children and leave ‘without looking back’, without any real reason, is inexplicable and incomprehensible by sober reason especially for those who know only conventional values of life.

Until this moment the attitude of the reviewer has been unclear, yet the remaining part of the review proves that the previous statements are not an expression of criticism, but rather of admiration. She highlights

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Katherine Mansfield Studies Mansfield’s fight against hypocrisy in human relationships, her ability to reveal the hidden impulses of the soul that many hide even from themselves, her shrewdness, together with her understanding of the comical sides of human character, as well as the union of the poetic approach and light irony. At the end the reviewer expresses hope that this fragment of Mansfield’s work will be shortly followed by other translations.32 There is a gap of nineteen years between the 1959 review and the 1978 translation of ‘A Dill Pickle’ (‘Kvasená uhorka’) for the Express leisure time magazine.33 Shortly after that, in 1979, Mansfield’s poem ‘Muž s drevenou nohou’ (‘The Man with a Wooden Leg’) appears in the special issue of Revue svetovej literatúry (Review of World Literature), dedicated to New Zealand poetry.34 Then follow translations of ‘The Fly’ (‘Mucha’) in 1981 and ‘Little Girl’ and ‘Carnation’ in 1987, both in the leading communist leisure time weekly Život (Life).35 They form part of a regular section called ‘the short story of the week’. They are translated by Tamara Chovanová and Jana Navratilová, respectively, feature an illustration by the Slovak ‘national artist’ Jozef Baláž, and give a brief outline of Mansfield’s work. Both mention her reverence for Chekhov which, during this time of communist censorship and distrust in anything ‘Western’, would probably have opened the door for such a translation to be published. Chovanová characterises Mansfield as an English writer, a master in the psychological portrayal of characters; conversely, Navratilová acknowledges her as a New Zealander, pointing out the autobiographical character of her stories. Believing in the direct link between Mansfield’s life and stories, she draws the conclusion that Mansfield’s childhood was an unhappy one. The first and, to date, the only translation of a Mansfield story since the 1989 Velvet Revolution, is a translation of ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’ (‘Dcéry nebohého plukovníka’) from the 2002 issue of the feminist magazine Aspekt (Aspect), published by an eponymous organisation.36 Apart from many ‘subversive and pioneering’ activities (as their official English webpage claims) which include the magazine and webzine, this organisation, active since 1993, publishes important texts of Slovak and foreign women writers, as well as major texts of feminist theory. In an email communication with one of the managers of the publishing house, the present author was told that early in the organisation’s history they started work on the first Slovak book translation of Mansfield’s stories and had already made a selection, yet could find support neither in Slovakia nor abroad, and thus abandoned the project.

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The Reception of Mansfield in Czechoslovakia The first thesis on Katherine Mansfield in Slovakia was defended by the author of this article at Comenius University in Bratislava in 2007.37 Apart from discussing the modernist elements in Mansfield’s stories, the aim of this thesis was to begin the process of systematic study of her work in Slovakia. In contrast to the dissertation of Otilie Tuková, this work had the advantage of drawing from primary resources unabridged and unmodified by Murry (complete letters and notebooks), and from the recent biographies and works of Mansfield criticism. Although in Slovakia, where Mansfield’s life story is practically unknown, it was impossible not to deal with her biography, the main objective was to focus on her work rather than her person, and analyse the most distinct instances of her modernism. The fall of Communism and subsequent political changes had a profound impact on both the Czech and Slovak nations. Within a very short space of time they experienced an immense leap: from an existence enclosed behind the Iron Curtain, controlled and abused by the state machinery, to the joys as well as drawbacks of openness and freedom. Books by Western authors became freely available and were often translated, yet the demand was such that some translations were and still are sometimes hastily done and of doubtful quality. Although Czechoslovakia has split, the cultural bonds remain very strong, and the common market in literature and its nature remain more or less unchanged. Books for a limited audience are still more likely to be published in the Czech Republic, and translations of most recent novels appear there first, and only later in Slovakia, if at all. The selection of books for translation is not always systematic; in the case of minor authors it very often depends on the work of an enthusiast, wishing to present the work of a favoured author to those who cannot read it in the original. It is obvious that in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Mansfield is still a minor author awaiting public, critical and scholarly interest. Yet the repeated appearance of her stories in different publications proves that they do have an audience. This gives grounds for hope that a concerted discussion of her work will occur, once the process of proper ‘reception’ has started. Notes 1. The Pittsburgh treaty was written by Masaryk himself and signed by representatives of Slovak and Czech organisations in the USA on 30 May 1918. 2. Sometimes referred to as the Slovak State, the first Slovak republic still arouses very controversial reactions and is one of the most sensitive issues for both Slovak politics, as well as historical scholarship. Following the Munich agreement, in

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3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

October 1938, the Slovak government first declared the autonomy of Slovakia, still within the mutilated Czechoslovakia. Several months later, in March 1939, an independent state was founded. The president, Jozef Tiso, was a Catholic priest, and the role and attitudes of the Catholic Church during the war are viewed differently and usually discussed very emotionally by opposing camps. While some openly reject this state as fascist, pointing out deportations of Jews from the country and the president’s open anti-Semitism, others celebrate it as the first successful attempt at independence and an island of relative peace and economic stability surrounded by the terror of the war. It has to be said that in this case the translations were usually into Czech. The Czech part of the common state had a better start; it was an industrial and better developed society, with a good tradition of education, while Slovakia was rural and under-developed in many respects. In addition, the Czech speaking population constituted two thirds, while Slovak only one third of the total number of inhabitants, so the market for Czech translations was larger. The archives of periodicals of the Czech National Library concerning the period in question are already mostly digitalised, but not those of the Slovak National Library. Rašín, who was one of the founders of Czechoslovakia, was a lawyer and minister of finance in the so-called First Czechoslovak Republic. He was shot in the back by a communist fanatic. Miloslava Sísová, ‘Kateˇrina Mansfieldová aneb spisovatel a smrt’, Národní listy, 72–203, 24 July 1932, p.1. All translations of foreign texts throughout the article are by the author. Both in Czech as well as in Slovak, most female surnames differ from male names by the ending -ová or -á, which developed from the possessive case and literally meant somebody’s wife or daughter. This ending appears not only in names of natives of both countries but is frequently added to the names of foreigners when referred to in the Czech or Slovak language to distinguish the gender of the person. So Mansfield would be referred to as Mansfieldová. This feature of both languages was disputed from the beginnings of the feminist movement and up until recently, while its usage was ordered by law. As to Mansfield’s first name, the approach to it varies and so it appears in these versions: Kateˇrina, Katarina, Katherine, Katherina, Catherine. Neither the Journal nor Letters were ever translated into Czech or Slovak, so all those who refer to them must have read them in the original English, or possibly in the French translations. For a thorough overview of Mansfield’s critical reception in France, see Gerri Kimber, Katherine Mansfield: The View from France (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008). Born Barbora Panklová (1820–62), she was a representative of the nineteenthcentury Czech National Revival movement, interested in folk tales and rural life. The story of her life is usually romanticised in the Czech literary tradition. Jeanne Julie Éléonore de Lespinasse (1732–76), French author; Charlotte Elizabeth Aissé (1693–1733), French letter writer. Katherine Mansfield, ‘Veˇcer’, transl. by Jan Dokulil, Revue Archa, 2–22, 1934, pp. 146–7. Anon., Katherine Mansfield, Journal (review), Revue Archa, 3–22, 1934, p. 239. Katherine Mansfieldová, ‘Loutkový d˚ um‘, transl. by B. Durych Našinec, 75, 9.7.1939, p. 9.

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The Reception of Mansfield in Czechoslovakia 15. Czechs, on the one hand, experienced a period of Husite Protestantism in the fifteenth century, an era which belongs to one of the glorious chapters of their history (heavily romanticied in nineteenth-century literature and historical studies); on the other, in the Thirty Years’ War, they suffered an infamous defeat by the Hapsburgs in 1620 which made them view Catholicism as the religion of the usurper. 16. Fa., ‘Dlouhé louˇcení’, Filmová kartotéka, 10, 1987, p. 7. 17. The text is a neutral synopsis, free of any comments or aspects which would betray the author’s opinion on Mansfield or anybody else presented in the film. It is a catalogue of information, not a work of film criticism. 18. Katherine Mansfieldová, ‘Jeden den pana Peacocka’, trans. by K.K., Naše rodina, 3, 1992, pp. 6–7. 19. At this point one could possibly elaborate on differing translational approaches to Mansfield’s stories in different decades of the twentieth century. However, the book translations are by one author and remain practically unchanged (they are discussed further in the text); the number of translations in periodicals is too small to allow for any general conclusions to be drawn; further, hardly any story is translated by two different translators, thus preventing comparison. 20. Vladimír Papoušek, ‘Úvodem‘, In Dagmar Blümlová ed. Aloys Skoumal (1904–1988) ˇ v pr˚ useˇcníku cest ˇceské kultury 20. Století, Jihoˇceská univerzita v Ceských Budˇejovicích, Historický ústav, ve spolupráci s NTP Pelhˇrimov, 2004, p. 6. 21. Dagmar Blümlová, ‘Život a názory blahorodého pana Aloyse Skoumala‘, In Aloys Skoumal (1904–1988) v pr˚ useˇcníku cest ˇceské kultury 20. Století, ed. Dagmar Blümlová, ˇ Jihoˇceská univerzita v Ceských Budˇejovicích, Historický ústav, ve spolupráci s NTP Pelhˇrimov, 2004, p. 11. 22. Eva Vrchlická, born in the same year as Mansfield (died in 1969), was the daughter of the famous Czech writer Jaroslav Vrchlický (1853–1912) and grandniece of Karolína Svˇetlá (1830–1899) – a Czech writer, considered the founder of the Czech novel. She herself, apart from being one of the most famous actresses of the Czech national theatre, was also a writer and a great admirer of William Shakespeare, whose stories she rewrote in her book Z oˇríšku královny Mab (From the Nut of Queen Mab). Vrchlická’s third husband was E. A. Saudek, translator of Shakespeare into Czech. Because of his Jewish origin, during World War II he was not allowed to publish his translations, so, to help his friend, Skoumal published them under his name. Dagmar Blümlová, ‘Život a názory blahorodého pana Aloyse Skoumala‘, p. 32. 23. Katherine Mansfieldová, Duje vítr, transl. by Aloys Skoumal (Praha: Melantrich, 1938). 24. Katherine Mansfieldová, Zahradní slavnost, transl. by Aloys Skoumal and Hana Skoumalová (Praha: Vyšehrad, 1952). Václav Mašek was a painter who illustrated this edition. 25. Otilie Tuková, Katherine Mansfield: Kritická studie, dissertation thesis, 1951, p. 40. 26. While before 1948 many different literary schools or movements coexisted in Czechoslovakia, after the Communist coup d’état, the only official and accepted artistic method was that of socialist realism. It included two main thematic scopes. One was oriented towards the historical roots of the socialist present and was searching for revolutionary traditions and the history of the labour movement. The other depicted contemporary problems, focusing mainly on great works of socialism such as, for example, the building of factories or dam lakes. The whole

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27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

of literature was marked by the cult of the common man: the literary works were supposed to be for and about common people. Intellectuals were portrayed as trouble makers, bringing discord to society. The worst period of this schematic, superficial and dogmatic writing was in the 1950s. Leading communists were for the most part uneducated or badly educated and naturally distrusted art, which was able to operate in symbols and hints, and for that reason attempted to control artistic production in the country. Official guardians of art shunned and quashed everything that was subtle, refined, that required active participation of the observer or reader, and was not a direct mirror representation of reality as they saw it. It is a surprising and sad part of history to observe how many promising artists gave their talents to the services of ideology even to the point of celebrating political murders in fabricated trials. The basic development of literature in this period is lucidly depicted in Slovak literary critic Alexander Matuška’s brilliant essay ‘Od vˇcerajška k dnešku’ (‘From Yesterday to Today’) first published in 1959. Katarina Mansfieldová, ‘Vyzradený zloˇcin’, Slovenský východ, 13–8, 11.1.1931, pp. 1–4. This word is untranslatable; it evokes life (život), woman (žena), as well as nourishing or providing (živit’) and is at the same time the name of a Slavic goddess of life. Both the organisation and the magazine it published were a remarkable venture. Živena was a society established for the purpose of educating women in the second half of the nineteenth century. This education and help to women was planned on several levels: the establishment of schools, publications of books and a journal, mediation of sales of their members’ handmade products all over the country and abroad. Their efforts were made easier in 1918 because the constitution of Czechoslovakia declared gender equality, and women received both the active and passive right to vote (the first parliament already included several women). The reality was less ideal than it seems, yet the constitution made many efforts of women easier. Živena experienced hard times during the fascist Slovak Republic because its activities were not looked on by a friendly eye and women were again pushed into the background. Živena came to an end in the communist period when it merged with the Association of Slovak Women. After 1994 its activity started again, but now it operates only on a regional basis. In the best years of Živena, many Slovak women and men poets, writers, and important figures of the social and political life actively participated in its activities. Monika Vrzgula, ‘Živena alebo Kl’ukaté cesty k vzdelaniu’, http://www.inzine.sk/article.asp?art = 10133, [accessed 15/5/2009] Katherine Mansfieldová, ‘Pomsta’, transl. by Eugenia and St. Felber, Živena, 27–11, 1937, pp. 274–7; Catherine Mansfieldová, ‘Miss Brillová’, transl. by M. and M. Ch., Živena, 32–5, May 1942, pp. 178–81; Catherine Mansfieldová, ‘Plavba po mori’, transl. by M. and M. Ch., Živena, 33–4, April 1943, pp. 123–7. Ludvík Páleníˇcek, ‘Poznámky o knihách’, Jednota, 2–19, 7.5.1938, p. 226. Anon., ‘Novely z Nového Zélandu’, Slovenské zvesti, 3–8, 9.10.1938, p. 4. Irena Lifková, ‘K. Mansfieldová: Blaho a jiné povídky’, Slovenské pohl’ady, 75–6, 1959, pp. 672–3. Katherine Mansfieldová, ‘Kvasená uhorka’, transl. by Jozef Baláž and Igor Navrátil, Express, 28–32, 1978, pp. 42–3. Katherine Mansfieldová, ‘Muž s drevenou nohou’, transl. by Blažej Belák and Ladislav Lajˇciak, Revue svetovej literatúry, 15–1, 1979, p. 21.

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The Reception of Mansfield in Czechoslovakia 35. Katherine Mansfieldová, ‘Mucha’, transl. by Tamara Chovanová, Život, 31–3, 1981, pp. 42–3; Katherina Mansfieldová, ‘Dievˇcatko’, ‘Klinˇcek’, trans. by Jana Navrátilová, Život, 37–42, 1987, pp. 42–3. 36. Katherine Mansfield, ‘Dcéry nebohého plukovníka’, trans. by Jarmila Samcová, Aspekt, 1, 2002, pp. 119–26. 37. Janka Kašˇcáková, Elements of Modernism in the Works of Katherine Mansfield, dissertation thesis, 2007.

DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000079

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Katherine Mansfield and French Philosophy: A Bergsonian Reading of Maata Eiko Nakano

Abstract For several years from 1910, the French philosopher Henri Bergson was influential and popular in the UK as well as in France. Katherine Mansfield was one of the many writers working in Britain at that time who was inspired by Bergson. This paper aims to explore how she attempted to express her interpretations of Bergson’s theory. In doing so, it offers a new reading of Mansfield’s uncompleted ‘novel’ Maata, which has not attracted much critical attention to date. In Maata, Mansfield represents two phases of duration which Bergson discusses, that is, continuity and heterogeneity, by describing characters who are waiting to change. Although Mansfield failed in her attempt to complete a longer work of fiction, it could be said that in Maata, she did not fail to present her Bergsonian idea of duration, which was to remain as one of the key concepts in her later stories. Key words: Henri Bergson, Katherine Mansfield, Maata, philosophy, duration, Modernism Early in Katherine Mansfield’s writing career, the French philosopher Henri Bergson was as influential and popular in Britain as he was in France, particularly during 1910–11, following the English translation of his first book, Time and Free Will.1 Though intellectuals could read Bergson in the original French, the translations enabled a wider public to become familiar with his theories. Although he continued to publish until the 1930s and remained a celebrity until his death in 1941, his philosophical arguments seem to be encapsulated in his early works. His earliest and most famous books, Time and Free Will, Matter and

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Katherine Mansfield and French Philosophy Memory, and Creative Evolution, were published in French in 1889, 1896, and 1907 respectively; the English version of Time and Free Will translated by F. L. Pogson was published in 1910, of Matter and Memory by Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer in 1911, and of Creative Evolution by Arthur Mitchell in 1911. Although Bergson’s works were still influential, even at the late stage of Modernism, his impact was most significant in the early modernist period, when new ideas originating in different academic and artistic fields were rapidly developing and being widely circulated. Mansfield was one of many artists working in Britain at that time who was inspired by Bergson. This article aims to explore how she attempted to express her interpretations of Bergson’s theory; in doing so, I will offer a new reading of her incomplete and little known ‘novel’, Maata.

Continuing heterogeneity: Bergson’s notion of duration Time and Free Will introduces two ways of capturing reality: intellectual and intuitive. The former could be described as the way we conceive ‘time’ chronologically, and the latter, the psychological perception of ‘time’, or ‘duration’. The intellectual conception tries to ‘spatialise’ time, that is, separate time according to such artificial units as hours and minutes, while the intuitive perception of time connects what could otherwise be recognised as different moments. The same thing can be said about the human understanding of place; a place could be divided into different ‘spaces’ through our intellect, whereas through our intuition, it could be experienced as an inseparable ‘extensity’. It can be said that the difference between spatialised time and duration, or between space and extensity, is that the former can be associated with quantity, homogeneity, separation, and elements which are external to ourselves, while the latter can be characterised by quality, heterogeneity, continuity, and our internal senses. To demonstrate that ‘duration’ is a multiplicity which is continuous and heterogeneous at the same time, Bergson used his famous metaphor of melody. When Bergson states that, although different notes compose a tune, they ‘[melt] [. . .] into one another’,2 duration is closely linked to quality; for in order to perceive the quality of a melody, we need to wait, no matter for how short a time, since we have to hear the melody moving. Similarly, Bergson exemplifies the significance of psychological factors such as patience in the situation in which one has to wait for sugar to melt when mixing it with water.3 Therefore, the image of people waiting for a certain development is one of the most significant Bergsonian examples of the way we find the first phase

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Fig. 1. (Bergson, Time and Free Will, p. 176).

of duration: continuity, or indivisibility. While continuity is associated with a waiting self, the second phase of duration, heterogeneity, or unpredictability, can be seen in a changing self, another representative image. Bergson links his explanations of these two aspects of duration, continuity and heterogeneity, to his discussion of freedom, and criticises both determinists and indeterminists, since they deal with time which has already passed, instead of time which is passing. By using the figure above, Bergson discusses a situation in which one hesitates, when reaching the point O, between two possible future actions X and Y. Bergson points out that the similarity between defenders and opponents of free will is that, for both of them, ‘the action is preceded by a kind of mechanical oscillation between the two points X and Y’.4 If one chooses X, defenders of free will – indeterminists – will then judge that Y was also possible, since the person hesitated and deliberated. Opponents of free will – determinists – on the other hand, will decide that X was chosen, since it was determined so, and Y was not a possibility at all. Bergson, however, denies both of these ideas: Now, if I dig deeper underneath these two opposite solutions, I discover a common postulate: both take up their position after the action X has been performed, and represent the process of my voluntary activity by

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Katherine Mansfield and French Philosophy a path MO which branches off at the point O, the lines OX and OY symbolizing the two directions which abstraction distinguishes within the continuous activity of which X is the goal [. . .] [T]his figure does not show me the deed in the doing but the deed already done.5

As Bergson emphasises, ‘the free act takes place in time which is flowing and not in time which has already flown’;6 the idea that an action is determined or chosen from possibilities is what one is likely to formulate in looking back at a past action. For Bergson, an action in duration is neither of these. It is taken freely, without having any lines drawn to choose from. Even when only ‘one action’ is taken, it includes various unexpected changes, such as waiting, hesitating, or doing nothing. It is the heterogeneity of duration that enables us to be free, to keep changing unpredictably.

Before Rhythm: Mansfield’s interest in consciousness Interestingly, in Bergson and the Stream-of-Consciousness Novel, Shiv K. Kumar mentions Mansfield’s story ‘The Tiredness of Rosabel’ (1908), written in Wellington before she left for England, as the earliest example of the stream of consciousness form in literature in English. This is because the story illustrates ‘a constant interpenetration of different states of consciousness into one another’ and shows that ‘Katherine Mansfield [. . .] feels [. . .] the necessity of breaking through the hard crust of outer experience in an attempt to represent the inner flow of thought’.7 However, no further discussion is offered in relation to Mansfield in Kumar’s study which primarily focuses on novels, not short stories. It is significant that Mansfield’s writing already displayed what Kumar sees as expressions of inner flux, prior to the first publication of the English translation of Bergson’s work, Time and Free Will, in 1910. This is not necessarily to say Mansfield knew Bergson’s work when she wrote the story, but it is worth noting that she was already interested in a similar concept of consciousness. It might be said that Mansfield’s interest in consciousness and time developed when she began to contribute to the New Age; T. E. Hulme’s articles on Bergson started to appear in the New Age in July 1909, and on 24 February 1910 Mansfield’s first story ‘Bavarian Babies. The Child-Who-Was-Tired’ (later in In a German Pension, entitled ‘The Child-Who-Was-Tired’) was published. As I shall discuss later, Mansfield’s Bergsonian traits are more evident once she

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Katherine Mansfield Studies becomes involved with a ‘Bergsonian’ magazine – Rhythm – in 1911.8 It is possible, however, that Mansfield gained some knowledge of Bergson’s concepts by or at the time she began to write for the New Age, to judge from the stories she published there. Many of the stories Mansfield wrote during this period (published in her first collection of short stories In a German Pension in 1911), including the stories which did not appear in the New Age,9 are concerned with clocks or watches. There are numerous passing references such as when the child Karl in ‘The Advanced Lady’ is said to have picked out the works of his watch, or the more significant description of Sabina in ‘At Lehmann’s’: ‘Certainly Sabina did not find life slow’.10 Sabina, concerned with Frau Lehmann’s giving birth, suddenly becomes totally oblivious of the event at hand and, instead, becomes conscious of the loud ticking of the clock. Her attention to the ticking seems to reveal her feelings in relation to the following Bergsonian notion: ‘the ticking of a watch seems louder at night because it easily monopolizes a consciousness almost empty of sensations and ideas’.11 Although it might usually be considered that a clock suggests a regular and mechanical way in which time passes, Mansfield and Bergson imply that an act, or actual experience, of hearing the ticking of a clock, involves irregular ‘rhythms’ for the individual who hears it. It can be felt to be loud or quiet, fast or slow, depending on one’s present state, just as Mansfield shows in her descriptions of Sabina in ‘At Lehmann’s’. The story ‘A Birthday’ could also be read in connection with Bergson’s idea of consciousness and its changing rhythm; a husband considers the way his wife has changed over the years of their marriage and believes that she has become set in a ‘groove’ from which he has to remove her. This reads as if he were concerned with the impact of the lack of mobility of consciousness on life that Bergson discusses, but ironically his own consciousness also keeps changing during the time he waits for his wife to give birth to their child, and he starts to have new feelings and ideas, in which he is no longer so concerned about his wife’s past and future. ‘The Luft Bad’ and ‘The Swing of the Pendulum’ are other examples of stories in which Mansfield describes the characters’ changing consciousness. Although the stories from this period are less developed than the later stories published in Rhythm, it could be said that Mansfield was preoccupied with the idea of changing consciousness while writing for the New Age, and, when she met the Rhythm group just a little later, Bergson’s basic concepts were almost certainly already known to her.

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Katherine Mansfield and French Philosophy

Waiting to change: Maata An excellent example of the attempts Mansfield made at writing, following her collaboration with the Rhythm group, is the unfinished novel, Maata. Although not written for Rhythm or its successor, the Blue Review, it is significant that she was working on Maata in 1913, soon after the short-lived Blue Review had ended. It is one of the few works which Mansfield planned to develop into a novel but subsequently discarded; the manuscript was broken up and sold after her death by her husband John Middleton Murry, and eventually found its way to two different libraries – the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington and the Newberry Library in Chicago – until Margaret Scott, editor of The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks, united them in print. According to the plan which Mansfield finished writing in August 1913, the novel would have comprised thirty-five chapters. However, following this plan, Mansfield only wrote the first two chapters in the same notebook, now in the Newberry Library in Chicago, and subsequently three short parts of the novel were found in unbound papers in the Turnbull Library in Wellington. It is clear that the first two chapters are at least roughly finished, since Mansfield put the date of completion for each of them in her notebook. The first chapter was completed on 13 August, and the second, on 16 November 1913.12 Maata has been largely ignored by critics, and is usually only mentioned as a way of demonstrating Mansfield’s early ambition to write novels, or else it is mined as a source of biographical information.13 Claire Tomalin and Sydney Janet Kaplan provide somewhat more detailed arguments, Kaplan being the more critical of the two, discussing Mansfield’s inability to write a modernist experimental novel. She notes: Although Mansfield’s short fiction already gave evidence of her preoccupation with new techniques for portraying states of consciousness, her projected new novel shows peculiarly little evidence of experimentation. ‘Maata’ is as conventional as ‘Juliet’ in its plot structure.14

Tomalin is more sympathetic, and notices some hints of D. H. Lawrence’s influence on Maata, making Maata different from any other work by Mansfield, but Tomalin does not consider it a significant project either. It is reasonable to state, as Tomalin does, that Maata is ‘no lost masterpiece’,15 taking into account its conventional structure and plot, and the fact that most of the novel was never written. Nevertheless,

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Katherine Mansfield Studies I argue that there is some evidence of modernity in Mansfield’s treatment of time in Maata, since the extant extracts are ‘timeconscious’, and suggest that it would have been a novel about waiting, changing, remembering, checking the time, and being too early or too late. The plot of the two completed chapters concerns the protagonist, Maata, who returns to London and meets again, after two years’ interval, Philip Close, his sister Maisie, and Rhoda, who loves Maata in her devoted way. In the unbound manuscript papers, Maata repeatedly visits the Closes, and the whole family welcomes her warmly as her relationship with Philip begins. Significantly, the novel opens with a scene in which a young character called Rhoda Bendall takes time in getting up in the morning. The following quotation gives the first paragraph in full: The sound of rain woke Rhoda Bendall. It fell, quick and sharp, through the open window on to the polished floor. ‘Dear me’, she thought, ‘it’s raining’, and she lay still, mild and sleepy, listening to the quick patter. Every morning the effort to get up seemed greater and more dreadful. She dropped asleep like a tired beast dropping into a dark soft pit and her heart turned faint before the struggle to raise up this long, heavy body once again. ‘I must wake up. I must. It’s raining. The curtains will be quite wet, and so will the floor.’ She opened her eyes and stared into the dusky room. Her clothes lay in the middle of the floor, fan-shaped, white and grey. ‘They are like the plumage of some great bird’ she thought, staring at the untidy bundle. ‘I am going to get up now and shut the window.’ But she did not move. Nothing helped her. There was no sound from the house. Her room, at the very top, and overlooking garden strips and the backs of other houses, was remote as an empty nest in a bare tree. ‘I wonder what the time is. I ought to have a clock in this room: that would be a great help. It’s dark but I’m sure it’s late.’ A little puff of damp air blew in with the rain, making her shiver. She turned, sighed and sat up, shaking back < the loose mane of fair hair. > (255)16

Right from the beginning, two different values are contrasted: quantity versus quality, or what Bergson calls ‘spatialised time’ versus ‘duration’. The difference between the two ways of thinking is revealed by the way in which they are expressed. For example, the notion of spatialised time can be found in the three negative sentences in this paragraph: ‘But she did not move’, ‘Nothing helped her’, and ‘There was no sound from the house’. All of the three sentences deny movement and the existence of life. Indeed, it can be said that ‘nothing’ happens in the opening paragraph, as far as space (spatialised time) is concerned. For instance, it is true that Rhoda does not make any significant

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Katherine Mansfield and French Philosophy physical movements which are measurable in the sense that how much space she occupies depends on how much she moves. In a totally different sense, however, there are many things, changes, movements and struggles, or life in short, to be described here, as the rest of the paragraph demonstrates. In order to compare Mansfield’s representations of the two notions, it is important to analyse each of them more carefully. As for the three negative sentences, if one is to adopt Bergson’s notion of time, it can be said that statements such as ‘But she did not move’ and ‘Nothing helped her’ are based on time which has already flown. These words are uttered either from a determinist premise that it is pre-ordained that Rhoda cannot get up at this point, or from a premise by the advocates of freedom that there must be two possibilities: that Rhoda moves or that Rhoda does not move, and she ends up choosing the latter path at this point. As Bergson argues, however, both of these attitudes fail in capturing duration since they see the action from the viewpoint of the time when the action (or no action) has already ended. In other words, they focus on the result, not the process. This fact certainly gives these negative sentences another common characteristic: brevity. Unlike the longer sentences in this paragraph, which represent duration in a more faithful way, these short sentences only work as ‘symbolical representations’.17 The whole paragraph, however, is dominated by longer sentences. While short sentences merely offer quick summaries, longer sentences give the reader opportunities to experience what Rhoda experiences and to observe how she changes, showing her living self. The reader sees everything that Rhoda sees, and just as she takes time, the reader takes time in reading the long sentences without jumping to the simple conclusion that Rhoda does not move. These longer sentences describe the way in which Rhoda struggles. She wishes to get up, and knows she must, but, as if proving that Bergson’s attack on determinists is reasonable, she reminds us that an act involves time to struggle and hesitate. Rhoda thinks she really must get up to close the window, because it is raining and she is afraid the curtains and the floor will be wet. However, she cannot get out of bed. Unlike the claim of advocates of freedom, which is also denied by Bergson, it is not a ‘necessity’ which can wake her up. In reading this first paragraph, we can go through the continuous and heterogeneous process by which Rhoda gets up. As we are invited to watch her struggle throughout this whole process, rather than just told that she does not move, we get to know her in an ‘intuitive’ way. She does not even have a clock in the room, although this does not mean that she does not

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Katherine Mansfield Studies care about the time; as she says, it ‘would be a great help’ if she had a clock in the room, because it could help her recognise spatialised time. It is noticeable that the long sentence structure is appropriately designed to describe ‘duration’ as opposed to ‘spatialised time’, with the use of present participles: ‘she lay still, mild and sleepy, listening to the quick patter’; ‘she thought, staring at the untidy bundle’; ‘Her room, at the very top, and overlooking garden strips and the backs of other houses, was remote as an empty nest in a bare tree’; ‘A little puff of damp air blew in with the rain, making her shiver’; ‘She turned, sighed and sat up, shaking back’ [my italics]. There are two substantial effects in the use of these present participles here. Firstly, it imbues the scene with a sense of presence and continuity, making the reader conscious of the time which is passing right now, while Rhoda is listening to the rain and staring at her clothes. A similar effect is also achieved by the comparative form in the sentence, ‘Every morning the effort to get up seemed greater and more dreadful’. Although no present participle is used here, this use of the comparative form of the adjectives effectively emphasises that Rhoda’s daily struggle has been continuing for a while. Secondly, the present participles, with the adjectives used in the same sentences, are used to create a sense of heterogeneity. Just as in the sentence, ‘she lay still, mild and sleepy, listening to the quick patter’, the nouns in the longer sentences in this paragraph tend to be followed by more than one modifier, placed side by side emphatically at the end – to give another example: ‘Her clothes lay in the middle of the floor, fan-shaped, white and grey.’ During the time when Rhoda is staring at her clothes, the reader can follow her line of sight and notice what she notices about the clothes. In this way, the narrator keeps adding adjectives or present participles, as if making up for the limitation of language, since one modifier is not enough to describe a changing self. The similes (‘like a tired beast dropping into [. . .]’ and ‘like the plumage of some great bird’) are present for the same purpose. As those modifiers are expected to make up for one another, it appears that these accumulated words reveal the narrator’s concern that only a few words such as ‘she did not move’ are not enough, or they are not capable of describing every detail of heterogeneous duration. Indeed, in this context, no matter how many words are utilised, all language can do is summarise an experience or situation for the sake of convenience, by selecting only some of the elements of duration, and ignoring its heterogeneity. In cautiously making the sentences longer, the narrator paradoxically shows his or her awareness of the limitation of language. In this respect, the long sentences form a contrast with the

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Katherine Mansfield and French Philosophy short sentences in the paragraph, such as ‘she did not move’, which sound more decisive and confident, totally satisfied with ‘the greater convenience of language’.18 To note one more small linguistic aspect in the opening paragraph, prepositions such as ‘on to’ and ‘into’, suggesting the directions of moving, are used in this seemingly quiet scene (which could otherwise be associated with nothingness just as in the negative sentences I mentioned): ‘[The rain] fell, quick and sharp, through the open window on to the polished floor’; ‘She dropped asleep like a tired beast dropping into a dark soft pit and her heart turned faint before the struggle to raise up this long, heavy body once again’ [my italics]. What is implied is that there is continuous change in this scene, leading to the next scene, however dark and quiet the images are now. As I have suggested, the first paragraph shows both of the two phases of duration I mentioned earlier – continuity and heterogeneity. Of the two, heterogeneity becomes even more evident in the second paragraph when Rhoda finally gets up: At the moment of raising herself Rhoda Bendall remembered. She flung out of bed, her eyes dilated, her nostrils quivered. Stretching out her arms, smiling in ecstasy, she staggered forward. ‘Maata, my beloved, Maata, my adored one. It is your day – today we meet again.’ She leaned out of the window, feeling the rain whip up her sleepy blood. (255)

At the moment when she remembers that Maata is coming, she finally starts to move, both mentally and physically, in a more obvious way. Everything turns into a positive direction, with the dark image of the rain and of the heavy beast, who is tired and sleepy, vanishing immediately. Some of the verbs, such as ‘fling’, ‘dilate’, and ‘stretch’, suggest extending movements, and so does the frequent repetition of the adverb, ‘out’. She might be staggering, but is moving ‘forward’, and is ‘smiling’. Even the rain, which made her gloomy a few moments ago, is now viewed in a favourable light: ‘Maata! Maata! Can you hear me? My treasure, my beloved one, the day is beautiful with you. Your breath is in this < sweet > wind and the same rain falls on us both. On us both’ (255). All these changes could be described as unpredictable, since the first paragraph appears so low-key. However, it should be emphasised once more that the opening paragraph also hints at the heterogeneity of duration, which will continuously change things. In this sense, there is no difference between the first two paragraphs, as the same writing style (for example, present participles, put side by side) might suggest.

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Katherine Mansfield Studies However, even though it is not unpredictable that things change, how they change is unpredictable. Another interesting example of unpredictable change is to be found in the descriptions of Mrs Close, which appear in a later part of the novel (written in the unbound papers). Mrs Close is darning in the dining room where Maisie and Maata are roasting chestnuts: ‘Now and again she leant forward and opened her mouth for Maisie to pop in a “beautiful soft one’’, but she was, for the most part, pale and tired’ (241). However, as she goes on chatting with the girls, and starts talking about when her sons were small boys, ‘Mrs Close put her darning on the table, settled herself, and rested her hands on Maata’s hair. The tired dragged look left her face – it sweetened and grew happy’ (242). A little later, when Philip invites Maata to go for a walk, Mrs Close wishes Maata could stay with her: ‘Do you want to go for a walk, dearest?’ ‘No’ said Mrs Close, answering for her, ‘she’s not to be disturbed, she’s just got comfy. You go & talk to your brother, my son.’ She was eager with recollection – she had her little audience about her, sympathising – she did not want them to get up and leave her with the old man and that sock to be darned by gaslight. She was tired with a dragging tiredness of middle age, and the feeling of Maata pressed up so closely seemed to relieve some pain – no definite pain – just a sensation. (243)

Although the change Mrs Close experiences here has positive effects on her tiredness, just like Rhoda’s change in the second paragraph, life moves on; Maata leaves with Philip: ‘ “Mother, I suppose it’s my duty to go out with this bad boy’’ [Maata] said, in her baby voice. And Mrs Close knew the spell was over, her battle lost, drew away her knees & took up the torn sock’ (243). Mrs Close’s words, ‘ “she’s not to be disturbed’’ ’, eloquently show the unexpectedness of changes. Whether or not she feels she has finished talking, the time to change comes suddenly. In addition, Mansfield presents us with a noticeable minor detail about Mrs Close. When she is sitting at the table, darning, feeling tired, and waiting for chestnuts, her ‘skirt was turned back over her lap, her little slippered feet curled round the chair legs’ (241). This image brings to mind the feet of the female figure in J. D. Fergusson’s painting Rhythm. If that is the image Mansfield has at the back of her mind in creating Mrs Close, it would be very suggestive; as Angela Smith points out, the ‘figure’s feet [. . .] certainly look as if she is on tip-toe, poised to move, not sedentary’,19 and also this posture of Mrs Close may imply that a dynamic change might come at any moment,

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Katherine Mansfield and French Philosophy however tired and static she may be now. Whether or not the posture is influenced by Fergusson’s painting, here, Mansfield surely presents a vivid image of heterogeneity. This part of the novel contains not only hints as to heterogeneity but also obvious links to continuity. For example, when Mrs Close recalls her two sons’ childhoods and explains that they cried very loudly when they had their photo taken, she tends to digress from the subject: ‘– and my boys being very famous. Well, thought I, as I tied the string of Hal’s white muslin hat – the one you had afterwards Maisie, with the lace frill – they’ve begun early enough, and a little too early for me.’ ‘Do you mean old Wrigglesworth the photographer’ asked Mr Close, not pausing in his work, speaking slowly and half to the rhythm of his work. ‘He went bust he did – the same year and set fire to his own shop to get the insurance money, so they say. Had a fine bass voice in his time and sang ‘Vittoria’ in the Town Hall at a charity concert.’ ‘That’s the man. His wife was a flashy woman – she ruined him. I never saw another woman wear the clothes she put on her back on Sundays.’ (243)

Although I described this as ‘digression from the subject’, that might be misleading. All the details mentioned by Mr and Mrs Close, Hal’s hat and its later owner, the photographer’s bankruptcy, his arson, his fine voice as a singer, and his wife, are related to one another and indivisible, since they are all ‘the subject’, if indeed there is any such thing. By hearing them speak about all this with Maata, instead of having the narrator’s summary, the reader can experience the time which is passing. If the narrator were responsible for telling this story, some parts of it might be omitted or told in a different order, and then time flowing would be lost, because such narration is based on time which has already flown, as explained earlier in relation to the first paragraph. Although I have repeatedly distinguished the two phases of duration – continuity and heterogeneity – it is by now clear that they are, in fact, inseparable, just as the metaphor of melody suggests. As mentioned earlier in this paper, the image of an act of waiting plays a pivotal role in both Bergson’s and Mansfield’s works. Mansfield successfully describes waiting people in Maata, as in many of her short stories. What seems significant is that by depicting the unpredictability of waiting time, Mansfield combines continuity and heterogeneity so that they are intertwined with each other, just as they are in duration. As if they were listening to an unknown melody, the characters are surprised by a change, or feel they have waited too long for a change, or they are not allowed to wait as long as they wish.

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Katherine Mansfield Studies To Rhoda, for example, it seems as if she must wait for an extremely long time when she is waiting for Maata to arrive in London in the first chapter. She says to herself, ‘Oh God, bring her quickly’ (255). The same thing can be said about Maisie, when she is waiting for Maata at Charing Cross Station. She cannot enjoy watching the smoke pointed out by her brother: White smoke floated up from somewhere & hung below the station roof like misty fires, dissolved, came again in swaying wreaths. Wonderfully beautiful, thought Philip, & so full of life. He pointed it out to Maisie. ‘Look, girlie, look at that smoke. < That is how the high note on a fiddle played pianissimo ought to sound. > ’ But Maisie was tortured with impatience. ‘What’s the time, Philip, what’s the time. Why doesn’t that stupid old train come in. I’ll never come & wait for anybody again – as long as I live – never.’ (258)

Since duration is not uniform, the same length of time can be felt differently by different individuals. While Philip can simply enjoy the time in which the smoke dissolves and reappears, Maisie is irritated and wants to know the time. Although Mansfield deleted Philip’s words, ‘ “That is how the high note on a fiddle played pianissimo ought to sound’’ ’, the idea that connects the smoke and the note played pianissimo with a fiddle could have effectively represented Bergson’s notion of duration as a tune. In contrast to Philip’s fascination, Maisie’s reaction to her experience of waiting is negative, but she is also experiencing, not measuring, time. The reason she wants to know the time is that she feels she has been waiting longer than she expects, obviously because she is so eager to meet Maata. Duration, which is within each individual’s consciousness, consists of qualitative sensations or experiences, not numerical aspects. In the continuous flow of duration, one minute could be felt as if it were much longer, because that particular minute has some sort of significance when it is experienced as ‘duration’. Maisie’s irritation is an example of the way human experiences of time differ from the time shown by clocks. The difference between Philip and Maisie here, therefore, is not that Philip is ‘experiencing’ duration, while Maisie is not, but that he is ‘appreciating’ duration, whereas she is not, and this very difference in how they feel about their waiting time shows the nature of duration, which is perceived intuitively, rather than measured uniformly. Bergson sees qualitative reality in an act of waiting, since duration is not perceived immediately but gradually. Put simply, although we do not need to wait at all just to know that one o’clock comes one hour after twelve o’clock, we cannot find out if the

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Katherine Mansfield and French Philosophy hour passes quickly in a psychological sense before experiencing its flow. As if exemplifying Bergson’s theory, Mansfield’s novel describes the characters’ acts of waiting in a suggestive manner; later in the novel, when she visits the Closes, Maata is jokingly condemned, by Maisie, and then by Mrs Close, for her late arrival. Naturally, the unpredictability of duration does not always cause one to feel that the waiting time is too long; it can also be too short. An example of the latter can be found in Maata’s reaction when visiting the Closes. While the Close ladies impatiently wait for Maata to arrive, she herself wishes she had more time, as she hesitates to enter the house: She paused on the step, her hand touching the doorbell. Even then it was not [too] late to run away – yes it was too late [. . .] How long had she been standing there. What was the use of this absurd litany? Had anybody seen her – had she spoken aloud? She rang the bell sharply. O believe me he does not care for you. You are nothing to him – now or ever. (237–8)

It is interesting that Maata’s hesitation in visiting Philip, who she thinks might not love her, is described in connection with time, which seems to her to flow more quickly than she wishes. This sense of lack of waiting time as expressed in ‘ – yes it was too late’ is a favourite of Mansfield’s, and this can often be found in her later writing, such as ‘The Garden Party’, when Laura visits the family of the man who has died. To summarise, in Maata, Mansfield shows two phases of duration, continuity (indivisibility) and heterogeneity (unpredictability), by describing characters who are waiting to change. In duration, continuity and heterogeneity are inseparable from each other, as the metaphor of a melody would exemplify. Mansfield’s attention to our sense of being too late or too early, in relation to the unpredictability of duration, is appropriate in dealing with this combination of continuity and heterogeneity. Although Mansfield failed in her attempt to complete a longer work of fiction, it could be said that in Maata, she did successfully present her Bergsonian notion of duration, which was to remain a key concept in her later stories. Notes 1. Henri Bergson, Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1889); Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, trans by F. L. Pogson (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co, 1910). 2. Bergson, Time and Free Will, p. 100. 3. Henri Bergson, Matière et mémoire (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1896); Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans by Arthur Mitchell (London: Macmillan, 1911), p. 10.

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Katherine Mansfield Studies 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

Bergson, Time and Free Will, p. 179. Bergson, Time and Free Will, pp. 179–80. Bergson, Time and Free Will, p. 221. Shiv K. Kumar, Bergson and the Stream of Consciousness Novel (London: Blackie, 1962), p. 41. It was J. D. Fergusson’s oil painting Rhythm which inspired his younger friends and co-founders of the magazine, John Middleton Murry and Michael Sadler, and which became the title and the cover of their new magazine. Sharing an interest in Bergson’s philosophy and the notion of ‘rhythm’ in particular, Murry, Sadler, and Fergusson started Rhythm in the summer of 1911. Some stories Mansfield wrote in this period did not appear in the New Age, because according to Antony Alpers, the editor A. R. Orage rejected them. Antony Alpers, ed., The Stories of Katherine Mansfield (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 549. Mansfield, Stories, p. 37. Bergson, Time and Free Will, p. 40. Margaret Scott, ed., The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks, 2 vols (Canterbury, NZ: Lincoln University Press and Daphne Brasell Associates, 1997), Vol. 1 (hereafter referred to as Notebooks 1), pp. 237–61. All further references to Maata are taken from this edition and are placed in parentheses directly following the quotations. See also P. A. Lawlor, The Mystery of Maata: A Katherine Mansfield Novel (Wellington: Beltane Book Bureau, 1946). In addition, although Maata is the name of Mansfield’s childhood Maori friend, Maata in the novel is clearly based on Mansfield herself. Sydney Janet Kaplan, Katherine Mansfield and the Origins of Modernist Fiction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 98. Claire Tomalin, Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life (London: Penguin, 1988), p. 120. ‘Crossed-out words or passages that remain legible and may be of some interest are given within angle brackets’. Notebooks 1, p. xvi. Bergson, Time and Free Will, p. 176. Bergson, Time and Free Will, p. 176. Angela Smith, Katherine Mansfield: A Literary Life (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000), p. 80.

DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000080

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‘We are not solitary palm trees’: Katherine Mansfield and Cosmopolitanism Erika Baldt

Abstract The notion of cosmopolitanism derives from an idea held by the ancient Greeks, that an individual should consider himself not solely in terms of a national or a racial identity, for example, but as a citizen of the world. Having lived and travelled throughout Europe in search of both health and artistic inspiration, Katherine Mansfield was herself a citizen of the world, and her texts, I argue, demonstrate the benefits of a cosmopolitan worldview. Her characters deliberately insert themselves into new environments, manipulating traditional markers of identity, in order to partake in experiences that cross cultural boundaries, from sharing a drink to falling in love. In this paper I examine three of Mansfield’s stories set in Europe: ‘Epilogue III: Bains Turcs’ (1913), ‘An Indiscreet Journey’ (1915), and ‘Feuille d’Album’ (1917), in an attempt to show how Mansfield interrogates ideas of identity and belonging. Key words: Cosmopolitanism, Katherine Mansfield, identity, food, solidarity, obligation According to Martha C. Nussbaum, ‘Becoming a citizen of the world is often a lonely business. It is [. . . ] a kind of exile’.1 Katherine Mansfield was nothing if not a ‘citizen of the world’, a cosmopolitan artist who divided her life between two continents and more than twice as many countries, and at times she did feel as if she were in exile. Referring to the loneliness she experienced on one of her many sojourns in France, she wrote to her husband John Middleton Murry in 1918: ‘You cant [sic] imagine how I feel that I walk alone

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Katherine Mansfield Studies in a sort of black glittering case like a beetle’.2 Yet it is exactly this self-protective armour that Mansfield’s writing attempts to shatter, as she depicts protagonists who form connections with other like-minded individuals, based on similarities that cross the boundaries of gender, class, or nationality. This kind of privileging of what Paul Gilroy calls a ‘human similarity’3 over rigid, socially-constructed differences, is a key aspect of a cosmopolitan outlook, which Gilroy argues ‘glories in the ordinary virtues and ironies – listening, looking, discretion, friendship – that can be cultivated when mundane encounters with difference become rewarding’.4 In Mansfield’s work, such interactions mainly occur in Europe, and I will examine three of her stories which centre around just such cosmopolitan ‘encounters’ between young, ostensibly English protagonists and the strangers they meet while travelling abroad: ‘Epilogue III: Bains Turcs’ (1913), ‘An Indiscreet Journey’ (1915), and ‘Feuille d’Album’ (1917). I will show how these stories, in their celebration of the ‘ordinary virtues’ that arise from a seemingly random intersection of lives normally separated by culture and geography, and their rejection of identities based solely on such differences, exemplify Mansfield’s interpretation of cosmopolitanism and how and why it is linked to the Continent.

Cosmopolitanism In his book Between Camps, Paul Gilroy describes the ways in which the notion of ‘identity’ has come to function in society. He argues: We are constantly informed that to share an identity is to be bonded on the most fundamental levels: national, ‘racial’, ethnic, regional, and local. Identity is always bounded and particular. It marks out the divisions and subsets in our social lives and helps to define the boundaries between our uneven, local attempts to make sense of the world.5

In Gilroy’s interpretation, smaller and smaller facets of life take on greater and greater significance as means by which individuals can be classified and ‘bonded’. The terms he employs – ‘divisions’, ‘boundaries’, ‘subsets’ – evoke a neatly compartmentalised, if not claustrophobic, point of view in which a specific attribute like nationality or ethnicity comes to define a person and his or her relationship to the world. In contrast to this reductive perception, the notion of cosmopolitanism takes the ‘subsets’ of identity and expands them outward. According to Kwame Anthony Appiah:

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Katherine Mansfield and Cosmopolitanism Cosmopolitanism dates at least to the Cynics of the fourth century BC, who first coined the expression cosmopolitan, ‘citizen of the cosmos’. The formulation was meant to be paradoxical, and reflected the general Cynic scepticism toward custom and tradition. A citizen – a polit¯es – belonged to a particular polis, a city to which he or she owed loyalty. The cosmos referred to the world, not in the sense of the earth, but in the sense of the universe. Talk of cosmopolitanism originally signaled, then, a rejection of the conventional view that every civilised person belonged to a community among communities.6

A cosmopolitan is one who looks beyond his or her own local or personal ties to accept membership of a greater society than that which is based on place of birth, race, or class. Instead of relying on narrow affiliations to ‘make sense of the world’, as Gilroy describes it, a cosmopolitan sees the world itself as the first and most important affiliation. Yet as Appiah notes, there is a ‘paradoxical’ element to this positive embrace of humanity as a whole. Cosmopolitanism also signifies a ‘scepticism’ towards the culture into which one is born. As Gilroy notes in After Empire, cosmopolitanism also requires ‘a degree of estrangement from one’s own culture and history’,7 and Amanda Anderson argues that ‘while cosmopolitanism places a value on reciprocal and transformative encounters between strangers variously construed, it simultaneously has strongly individualist elements, in its advocacy of detachment from shared identities, its emphasis on affiliation as voluntary, and its appeal to self-cultivation’.8 Negotiating a balance between following one’s own course and being open to those one meets along the way is necessary to a cosmopolitan outlook, and the balance is one with which Mansfield herself struggled. Mansfield felt an estrangement – both by virtue of physical distance as well as by personal inclination – from her native New Zealand. Her desire to write, and later, her ill health, led her to roam throughout Europe seeking more varied experiences and a wider worldview than the provincial Wellington of her birth could offer her. However, as Katherine Anne Porter observed in an early assessment of Mansfield’s work, ‘she by no means accepted everything, either abstractly or in detail [. . . ] whatever her vague love of something called life may have been, there was as much to hate as to love in her individual living’.9 Mansfield could be equally critical of the European societies in which she moved, being, according to Sydney Janet Kaplan, ‘always an outsider’,10 but her constant assessments and re-assessments of her environment were part of the worldview that Appiah describes in which ‘[a] cosmopolitan openness to the world is perfectly consistent with

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Katherine Mansfield Studies picking and choosing among the options you find in your search’.11 Challenging, rather than passively accepting elements of the cultures in which one moves, is the goal. As Roger Robinson writes of Mansfield, ‘By her mobility and multiplicity of vision, she disturbs preconceptions and complacencies’.12 Being a citizen of the world herself, Mansfield, Robinson suggests, is able to subvert traditional ideas about identity and belonging.

Mansfield’s European Stories None of the protagonists of ‘An Indiscreet Journey’, ‘Feuille d’Album’, or ‘Epilogue III: Bains Turcs’ is a native of the city where the stories take place. The narrator of ‘An Indiscreet Journey’ has travelled to the place she calls ‘ma France adorée’,13 for a clandestine liaison with her soldier lover. Ian French, the protagonist of ‘Feuille d’Album’, has, despite his surname, ‘come to Paris’ (130), presumably from England, to live as an artist, while the narrator of ‘Epilogue III: Bains Turcs’ appears to be on a sojourn in an unidentified European city that is very different from her memories of ‘home [. . . ] the tent in the paddock and the children swarming over the fence’.14 All three protagonists have deliberately traded the familiarity of their own societies for a new environment to which they have no cultural ties. Though their positions could be viewed in terms of the cosmopolitan ‘exile’ that Nussbaum describes, Paul Gilroy suggests that ‘being a stranger can be invaluable as an opportunity to know the world better and to experience it in more complex and satisfying forms’,15 and each of these texts favours this more positive view of separation from one’s origins. Ian French revels in his self-imposed isolation: ‘Really there was no need for him to go out. If he sat at the window until his white beard fell over the sill he still would have found something to draw’ (131), gaining in his insertion into an unfamiliar environment a wider artistic freedom. For the narrator of ‘An Indiscreet Journey’, her status as stranger allows her to undertake an expedition that others had failed to accomplish,16 while the narrator of ‘Bains Turcs’ uses her time in the foreign bath to delve into her own fantasies: ‘Yes, it might have been very fascinating to have married an explorer . . . and lived in a jungle’ (182). She refuses to commit to a singular worldview determined by place of birth, and she herself becomes an ‘explorer’ of the different cultures brought together in her new environment, as do the protagonists of the other two stories. It is as if all three characters come to the Continent as much for the experience of ‘being a stranger’ as for their other personal or artistic goals.

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Katherine Mansfield and Cosmopolitanism Yet being a stranger allows one not only to observe new and different cultures and to cultivate the necessary cosmopolitan estrangement from one’s own, but also to affect a disconnection from all markers of identity. Richard Sennett points out that changing one’s location allows one, in effect, to shed one’s skin: the stranger is a bearer of a new kind of freedom. When you plunge into a crowd of people who cannot be categorised, you are dislodged from your own subjective categories of difference. You are released from your own mental set of reading social relations. The cosmopolitan adds the quality of a bringer of freedom through a kind of dislocation wrought by virtue of experiencing the stranger.17

The effect of placing oneself in a new environment is twofold: the characteristics that determined one’s identity and the perceptions of others are no longer supported by the cultural framework that gave them significance and therefore become meaningless; and, one has no such culturally-constructed references distorting one’s own perception of this new environment. The cosmopolitan, Sennett suggests, is the bearer of ‘freedom’ in that s/he experiences this ‘release’ from the constraints of identity where ever s/he goes, and the same is true for the protagonists of Mansfield’s stories – those ‘fundamental levels: national, “racial,’’ ethnic, regional, and local’ to which Gilroy suggests experience becomes reduced no longer hold the same power. Each is characterised as being uncharacterisable, and the texts give very few concrete clues as to their identities. The narrator of ‘An Indiscreet Journey’, for example, seems to be English, but she herself manipulates the markers of national identity on which she suggests others’ perceptions of her are based. The beginning of the story sees her ‘jump[ing] out of [her] pyjamas and into a basin of cold water like any English lady in any French novel’ (60). She behaves ‘like’ a character in a novel, one indistinguishable from ‘any’ English lady. Moreover, the wardrobe she dons for her foray to the French front is designed to make her appear to be something she is not. Her borrowed Burberry coat is ‘the perfect and adequate disguise’ – as she claims, ‘An old Burberry seems to me the sign and the token of the undisputed venerable traveller’ (60). Although the Burberry has connotations of Englishness by virtue of its provenance, the narrator is using it as a ‘disguise’, as a garment that conceals the specificities of nationality and even gender, allowing the wearer to blend in with his or her surroundings. Indeed, the identity the narrator seeks to project is that of an indistinguishable ‘traveller’, one who crosses boundaries with ease – the very opposite of the image of the ‘English lady’ she

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Katherine Mansfield Studies suggested she appeared to be. The narrator thus purposely subverts others’ perceptions. Ian French, meanwhile, is given definite physical characteristics, but they are little help in determining his nationality or class. As the unnamed narrator describes him: You would drift into the café one evening and there you would see, sitting in a corner, with a glass of coffee in front of him, a thin, dark boy, wearing a blue jersey with a little grey flannel jacket buttoned over it. And somehow that blue jersey and the grey jacket with the sleeves that were too short gave him the air of a boy that has made up his mind to run away to sea. Who has run away, in fact, and will get up in a moment and sling a knotted handkerchief containing his nightshirt and his mother’s picture on the end of a stick, and walk out into the night and be drowned. (129)

The objective facts of the boy’s appearance, his weight and complexion – ‘thin, dark’ – are secondary to his ‘air’ of one who has run away to sea. His presence in a Paris café, his too-small clothing, is interpreted as a function of his rootlessness. Like the narrator of ‘An Indiscreet Journey’, Ian French is a wanderer who allows his clothing to contribute to perceptions of his indeterminate identity that the text does little to correct. The narrator of ‘Epilogue III: Bains Turcs’, however, is in the opposite position: as a visitor to a Turkish bath, clothing cannot become a ‘disguise’ as it does for the other two. The narrator ‘undressed quickly and carelessly, feeling like one of a troupe of little schoolgirls let loose in a swimming bath’ (181). The particularities of national origin are removed with her clothing until the narrator becomes an indistinguishable part of a larger whole. Though C. A. Hankin identifies her as ‘a self-conscious English narrator’,18 I would argue that her provenance is deliberately ambiguous. The narrator speaks French and German, but she allies herself with neither group, a denial of national ties that allows her to function as impartial observer of the different cultures coming together within the bathing space. The texts revel in the characters’ unknowability, in the clothing, physical features, and languages, and their attendant perceptions, that can be manipulated to encourage a greater range of experience. Gilroy notes in Between Camps that when such markers are taken as a sign of membership of a discrete group, it inhibits an individual’s ability to make wider connections: Identity ceases to be an ongoing process of self-making and social interaction. It becomes instead a thing to be possessed and displayed. It

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Katherine Mansfield and Cosmopolitanism is a silent sign that closes down the possibility of communication across the gulf between one heavily defended island of particularity and its equally well fortified neighbours, between one national encampment and others.19

Gilroy suggests that strict adherence to the ‘silent sign[s]’ of identity results in stagnation, rather than personal growth. Yet where the protagonists of Mansfield’s texts do ‘display’ the indicators of a concrete nationality, class, or gender, the character they take on is never ‘possessed’, only borrowed for a specific purpose, like the narrator of ‘An Indiscreet Journey’s’ Burberry. What signs of belonging to a discrete group the characters do display are chosen for their ability to open doors rather than close them, and allow for wider ‘social interaction’. Being unable to rely on such indicators as clothing or language, human interaction takes the place of signs and symbols. Appiah argues that cosmopolitan encounters begin over simple shared experiences. He suggests: Conversations across boundaries of identity – whether national, religious, or something else – begin with the sort of imaginative engagement you get when you read a novel or watch a movie or attend to a work of art that speaks from some place other than your own. So I’m using the word ‘conversation’ not only for literal talk but also as a metaphor for engagement with the experience and the ideas of others. And I stress the role of the imagination here because the encounters, properly conducted, are valuable in themselves. Conversation doesn’t have to lead to consensus about anything, especially not values; it’s enough that it helps people get used to one another.20

Appiah argues that learning about ideas that come ‘from some place other than your own’ is one of the foundations of a cosmopolitan outlook. Whether it is an engagement with a cultural artefact, or simply conversation for conversation’s sake, it is the exchange itself that is meaningful in that it brings two disparate factions together. In Mansfield’s texts, such cosmopolitan ‘conversations’ often occur over the sharing of a meal. Hankin notes the importance of food in Mansfield’s ‘Prelude’, arguing that ‘when given by a mother as nourishment to her children, food symbolises love in its life-sustaining capacity’.21 Food also, I would argue, symbolises not only maternal love, but a more general human connection in these stories. The sign of a kindred spirit is one who offers and/or accepts food or drink, while those who refuse to share in a symbolic meal are those who cannot cross what Appiah calls the ‘boundaries of identity’. In fact, Patricia

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Katherine Mansfield Studies Moran refers to Mansfield’s ‘typical vocabulary of food’ and suggests that Mansfield employs images of food and eating with ‘overtones of the Fall and trespass’.22 Moran’s use of the word ‘trespass’ evokes the broaching of boundaries, and in Mansfield’s stories, that which begins as a violation becomes a positive affirmation of a shared human experience. In ‘An Indiscreet Journey’ almost all of the narrator’s encounters with those she meets on her travels are described in terms of nourishment, or, in many cases, a lack thereof. For example, the woman opposite the narrator on the train ‘sips’ at her own letter but does not share more than a few words with the younger woman (61). Later, the narrator thinks she might buy fish from an old man to share with the aunt and uncle she is ostensibly going to visit, but this cosmopolitan encounter does not come to fruition both because the aunt and uncle are figments of her imagination, created to serve her purpose of meeting her lover, and because the old man is himself as unreal to her as one who ‘had escaped from some holy picture’ (63). Even the examination of her passport is rendered in terms of eating as one of the two indistinguishable colonels guarding the entrance to the front seems, according to the narrator, to reject it and her as one would an unsavoury meal ‘with a “Non, je ne peux pas manger ça’’ air’ (65). In Mansfield’s text, saying ‘No, I cannot eat that’ is akin to refusing to recognise any shared human ties with another. At the same time, however, sharing a meal and a conversation in ‘An Indiscreet Journey’ does not mean glossing over differences of, for example, nationality or gender. At first the soldiers that the narrator meets at a small café at the front deal in stereotypes of the English and their habits: ‘ “In England,’’ said the blue-eyed soldier, “you drink whiskey with your meals. N’est-ce pas, mademoiselle? A little glass of whiskey neat before eating. Whiskey and soda with your bifteks, and after, more whiskey with hot water and lemon’’ ’ (70). Though the French soldier attempts to draw the narrator into conversation by engaging her on a subject that he assumes must be familiar to her, his insight into a perceived British national characteristic falls flat. Indeed, when the narrator denies his generalisation, the soldier reasserts his claim: ‘ “Si, si,’’ cried the blue-eyed soldier. “I ought to know. I’m in business. English travellers come to my place, and it’s always the same thing’’ ’ (70). The soldier’s refusal to debate the subject seems to cement the cultural differences between himself and the narrator, as well as those of gender, in that the ‘mademoiselle’ would not have the experience of being ‘in business’, and therefore is not in the position to challenge his assertions. The soldier carves out a separate space for

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Katherine Mansfield and Cosmopolitanism the narrator – as an ‘English’ citizen and a woman, she is outside of the boundaries of identity that he shares with the other French soldiers. Their ‘conversation’, in Appiah’s sense, thus seems one-sided. And yet, it is the blue-eyed soldier’s very ‘local attempts to make sense of the world’, in Gilroy’s words, that transform the experience into a cosmopolitan encounter. The soldier insists that there is a regional drink, Mirabelle, which is very like whisky: ‘You ought to try it, and to-night. I would like you to tell me if you don’t think it’s like whiskey’ (71). Though his suggestion is borne out of his insistence on the differences between French and English, men and women, the gesture is one of inclusion, of sharing on a personal, as well as a larger cultural level. Not only is he enjoying a drink with a new companion, he is offering a typically French delicacy as an expression of the commonality of their two nations. Moreover, the experience is offered at great risk personal risk – ‘no soldier is allowed in a café after eight o’clock at night’ (71), and the woman who serves them claims, ‘You are mad and you will end in prison, – all four of you’ (73). The danger involved provides another common thread, until the narrator is no longer removed from the soldiers by virtue of gender or nationality, but she becomes an indistinguishable part of the collective ‘you’, a new group of four where there had once been three. David A. Hollinger argues that ‘cosmopolitans are more inclined to encourage the voluntary formation of new communities of wider scope’,23 and the narrator herself suggests that such ‘new communities’ are as valuable, if not more so, as traditional representations of belonging. She is struck by the unity of the disparate patrons of the café where the Mirabelle is served: ‘The faces lifted, listening. “How beautiful they are!’’ I thought. “They are like a family party having supper in the New Testament. . . .’’ ’ (73). Whether or not they are actually related, the individuals are imbued with an otherworldly perfection by virtue of their shared moment, and though the narrator and her friends have no pretensions to such an elevated state – the best that they can hope for is a quick drink in the café’s dirty kitchen – they achieve their own ‘beautiful’ moment of solidarity. As the blue-eyed soldier declares, despite all of the trouble their pursuit of one last drink causes: ‘ “It’s worth it. You just wait’’ ’ (72). Meanwhile, in ‘Feuille d’Album’, the idea of sharing food is instilled with similar meaning, though at first it appears as if the protagonist Ian French will never experience the same kind of cosmopolitan adventure as the narrator of ‘An Indiscreet Journey’. The story begins from the perspective of an unnamed female narrator – it is she who describes him as ‘a boy that has made up his mind to run away to sea’ (129) – and,

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Katherine Mansfield Studies according to this woman, Ian French is not just a vagabond, he is ‘an impossible person’ who resists every attempt at friendship, if not outright seduction, that she and the other female artists in Paris’s bohemian expatriate community make. The prime example of the boy’s seemingly self-imposed isolation is his refusal to fully participate in the woman and her friends’ frequent carousals: Off they went to cafes and cabarets, little dances, places where you drank something that tasted like tinned apricot juice, but cost twenty-seven shillings a bottle and was called champagne, other places, too thrilling for words, where you sat in the most awful gloom, and where some one had always been shot the night before. But he did not turn a hair. Only once he got very drunk, but instead of blossoming forth, there he sat, stony, with two spots of red on his cheeks [. . . ]. But when she took him back to his studio he had quite recovered, and said ‘good night’ to her in the street below, as though they had walked home from church together . . . . Hopeless. (130)

Unlike the narrator of ‘An Indiscreet Journey’, Ian French does not enjoy what Appiah calls ‘conversations across boundaries of identity’24 over shared libations, and for this reason he is, according to the unnamed woman and her friends, ‘hopeless’. But once the story shifts to the young man’s perspective, it becomes clear that Ian French is looking for more than a companionship based on the mere fact that he and the various women the narrator mentions speak the same language and ostensibly share the same artistic background. Though Patrick Morrow calls ‘Feuille d’Album’ ‘an ironic and satirical story’, noting that Ian French ‘is just the opposite of what others perceive him to be’,25 when Mansfield’s story shifts to French’s perspective, it also shifts into a more serious meditation on those very perceptions and how they facilitate or hinder human interaction. Once the narrative adopts French’s point of view, the reason for his ‘hopeless’ behaviour towards his compatriots becomes clear: French has fallen in love with a girl in the flat opposite his own. Although he knows nothing about her, he has decided that, unlike his artist friends, he and the girl share views that surpass their differences of nationality and class: ‘It was quite simple. She was the only person he really wanted to know, because she was, he decided, the only other person alive who was just his age. He couldn’t stand giggling girls, and he had no use for grown-up women . . . . She was his age, she was – well, just like him’ (132). French bases his assessment of the girl’s character merely on her physical presence, but he goes on to invent situations and traits for her that reflect the qualities he himself

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Katherine Mansfield and Cosmopolitanism admires: seriousness, impetuosity, simplicity, a love of animals.26 According to Richard Rorty, this elevation of common similarities over culturally-constructed differences is an acknowledgement of ‘human solidarity’, the recognition ‘that there is something within each of us – our essential humanity – which resonates to the presence of this same thing in other human beings’.27 French’s perceived bond with the unknown girl is a cosmopolitan one that takes into account ‘essential humanity’, rather than the specificities of their separate lives. One of the ways the text creates an opportunity for this recognition of ‘human solidarity’ is through an exploration of the spaces through which French moves. Jessica Berman describes the space in which individuals interact in Modernist Fiction, Cosmopolitanism, and the Politics of Community: ‘Before beginning the adjudication of rights and responsibilities, or the espousal of shared public values, we move in a realm of being-in-common that rests upon the border between “I’’ and “we,’’ a border that may not necessarily coincide with the political boundaries that surround us. In imagining this liminal zone as something other than simple statehood, the story of community comes into being’.28 Berman suggests that the ‘realm’ in which individuals form associations is not defined by sharply delineated boundaries. It relies instead on a more amorphous idea of ‘community’ in which one individual feels an affinity for another based on shared sensibilities. She uses the phrase ‘liminal zone’ to describe this space, and the idea of such an area was familiar to Mansfield. Liminality, according to Angela Smith, refers to ‘in-between places’, spaces without concrete boundaries or definitions, which, she argues, are for Mansfield ‘a source of pleasure’.29 In this story, Ian French and his unknown love are literally in their own ‘liminal zone’: while French leaves his artist compatriot ‘in the street below’, he and the French girl are ‘perched up in the air’ (130), the space between their two apartments forming a separate world above the city and its tangle of national ties. In contrast to the ‘world of grown-ups’ (133), Ian’s world with his imagined love is one of simple pleasures that are nonetheless governed by a structure and a worldview. While the rules that the narrator of ‘An Indiscreet Journey’ transgresses are very real and very serious, the ‘sworn statements’ that French makes for himself – ‘[n]ot to go to the side window before a certain hour’; ‘not to think about her until he had put away his painting things for the day’ (132) – are trivial in comparison. However, his purposeful shunning of those who share his cultural background in favour of a girl he has never met, his forsaking of the ‘world of grown-ups’ for the imagined community of his aerie, is, though irresponsible perhaps, a sign of a deeper dissatisfaction with

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Katherine Mansfield Studies what Berman would call ‘shared public values’. In creating his own world with his nameless love, French eschews an easy acceptance of the status quo for a cosmopolitan encounter with uncertain consequences. For just when it seems their relationship will be one purely of the imagination, French decides to force a meeting with the girl. After spending weeks memorizing her daily schedule, he finally decides to follow her on a shopping expedition, and, as in ‘An Indiscreet Journey’, a simple food item becomes the reason for, and symbol of, their cosmopolitan encounter. The girl ‘suddenly turned into the dairy and he saw her through the window buying an egg. She picked it out of the basket with such care – a brown one, a beautifully shaped one, the one he would have chosen’ (133). French views the girl’s choice of the egg as one more sign that she is his soul mate, and he uses it as an excuse to speak to her. After following her back to her apartment, the meeting to which the whole story has been building finally occurs: Blushing more crimson than ever, but looking at her severely he said, almost angrily: ‘Excuse me, Mademoiselle, you dropped this.’ And he handed her an egg. (134)

The sheer impossibility of offering his unknown love an unbroken egg, which he claims she had dropped, only heightens the moment’s poignancy. The egg becomes a symbol of the young people’s burgeoning relationship. Though the gesture marks the end of the story, it is actually the beginning of their interaction – an egg waiting to hatch, as the hard shell that had encased each in solitude, not unlike that of Mansfield’s beetle of which she wrote to Murry, may finally open to reveal a new life. Moreover, according to the ancient Greeks, the egg was seen to represent the universe, the origin of all life.30 In Mansfield’s text the object becomes the perfect symbol of a cosmopolitan encounter, representing not only French and the girl’s shared characteristics and interests, but the greater shared human need for sustenance, for contact, and for a place in the world. Similarly, in ‘Epilogue III: Bains Turcs’, a simple food item takes on greater significance when shared. Two blonde women in the Turkish bath capture the narrator’s interest, because they seem to set themselves apart from the other bathers: Before sitting down they glanced round the room, looked the other women up and down, turned to each other, grimaced, whispered something, and one of them said, offering the box, ‘Have a mandarin?’ At that they started laughing – they lay back and shook, and each time they caught sight of each other broke out afresh. ‘Ah, that was too

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Katherine Mansfield and Cosmopolitanism good,’ cried one, wiping her eyes very carefully, just at the corners. ‘You and I, coming in here, quite serious, you know, very correct – and looking round the room – and – as a result of our careful inspection – I offer you a mandarin. No, it’s too funny.’ (182)

After sizing up their fellow bathers, the two blondes come to the conclusion that there is no one else with whom they can share their fruit; that they are the only two who hold the same views. According to Hankin, the blonde women’s fruit is a sexual symbol: ‘Their shared act of handling and eating mandarins, as they scrutinise and discuss laughingly the bodies of the other bathers, accentuates their apparent intimacy’.31 In contrast to the pristine, seemingly inviolate egg Ian French offers his love, the ripe, juicy fruit of which the women partake suggests a more overtly sensual experience. However, I would argue that it is the ‘shared act’ of eating which is significant, as it becomes clear that the other bathers are unwilling or unable to breach the boundaries of difference that separate them from the two blondes. Along with the narrator and the two blondes is a German, whom the narrator names ‘Mackintosh Cap’, who takes an immediate antipathy to the women before her. She concentrates her scorn on what she claims are clearly visible signs of a socially unacceptable identity: ‘They’re not respectable women – you can tell at a glance. At least I can, any married woman can. They’re nothing but a couple of street women. I’ve never been so insulted in my life. Laughing at me, mind you! The great big fat pigs like that!’ (184). Though the text has established that all of the women are in the same state of undress – what could be considered their natural state – Mackintosh Cap claims to be able to ‘tell’ the difference between the French-speaking women and herself, suggesting that she has so internalised constructions of nationality, class, and gender as to be able to read them on what are essentially blank canvases. Indeed, Mackintosh Cap’s description of her own background reveals the significance she places in the invisible signs that separate one woman from another: To my rage and disgust Mackintosh Cap sidled up to me, smiled meaningly, and drew down her mouth. ‘I don’t care,’ she said, in her hideous German voice. ‘I shouldn’t lower myself by paying any attention to a couple of street women. If my husband knew he’d never get over it. Dreadful particular he is. We’ve been married six years. We come from Pfalzburg. It’s a nice town. Four children I have living.’ (184)

The German woman’s insistence on difference provokes the narrator’s scorn. Despite Mackintosh Cap’s claims to respectability – her marital

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Katherine Mansfield Studies status, motherhood, and provenance – the narrator feels only ‘rage and disgust’ for the seemingly superior party. Mackintosh Cap’s inability and unwillingness to communicate with the French speakers is implicitly coded as negative when compared with the narrator’s ability to understand both parties, and it is as much the ‘hideous German voice’, the sign of her nationality, as what it conveys that causes the narrator so much pain. Gilroy points out that ‘when national and ethnic identities are represented and projected as pure, exposure to difference threatens them with dilution and compromises their prized purities with the ever-present possibility of contamination’,32 and in the face of the perceived threat from the blonde women, the German attempts to bolster her sense of self by calling on markers of nationality and class in order to isolate herself from the others. Thus it becomes clear that the two blondes were correct in their assumption that there is no one amongst the other bathers with whom they can share their fruit and a cosmopolitan ‘conversation’. Neither the narrator, who observes only but does not interact, nor Mackintosh Cap, with her insistence on maintaining cultural differences in a space where all such indicators have literally been stripped away, is able to make a foray ‘across boundaries of identity’, as Appiah puts it. Both, however, indicate in their own ways a deference for the blonde women’s worldview. The narrator remarks how the respectable matron’s life pales in comparison to the ‘street women’, claiming, ‘I could not get out of my mind the ugly, wretched figure of the little German with a good husband and four children, railing against the two fresh beauties who had never peeled potatoes nor chosen the right meat’ (185). For the narrator, the ‘two fresh beauties’ resist categorisations, while the other woman’s insistence on her social standing cause her to be perceived as ‘ugly, wretched’ (185). Yet it is the final image of the German woman which is the most telling: ‘As the two walked out of the ante-room, Mackintosh Cap stared after them, her sallow face all mouth and eyes, like the face of a hungry child before a forbidden table’ (185). Despite all her protestations, the German woman, the text suggests, longs for the companionship of the very women she derides. While the two blondes share the fruit of a common understanding, she who rejects a cosmopolitan worldview goes ‘hungry’.

Conclusion Any discussion of Mansfield’s European stories would be incomplete without a mention of ‘Je Ne Parle Pas Français’ (1919). The story is

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Katherine Mansfield and Cosmopolitanism one of Mansfield’s best known, and it follows a young French narrator, Raoul Duquette, as he encounters an old English friend, Dick Harmon, and Dick’s fiancée in Paris. The fiancée, a young woman nicknamed Mouse, utters the title line, ‘Je ne parle pas français’ (157), a phrase which encapsulates her inability to adapt to her new surroundings. She insists on travelling with a library of heavy English books and on taking tea on her arrival (159–60). When she is abandoned first by Dick and then by Raoul, it is assumed that she will not survive alone in a strange country, and, indeed, the story ends with no definitive clues as to her fate. The story of Mouse and Raoul exemplifies a failure of what Appiah would call a cosmopolitan ‘conversation’: she cannot speak his language, and he refuses to reach beyond the boundaries of his own identity to help her out of her plight. As Perry Meisel argues, ‘What the reader knows in “Je Ne Parle Pas Français’’ are all the things that the story itself derides: an innate sense of compassion, a sense of human worth, a sense of human sharing’.33 By showing the very opposite of what Rorty calls ‘human solidarity’,34 Mansfield’s most famous European story cements the necessity of a cosmopolitan attitude. For, not only does cosmopolitanism presuppose an ability to both observe and appreciate different individual lives and collective ways of living, it also encompasses, according to Appiah, ‘the idea that we have obligations to others, obligations that stretch beyond those to whom we are related by the ties of kith and kind, or even the more formal ties of a shared citizenship’.35 While Raoul’s abandonment of Mouse and the subsequent tragedy that befalls marks a denial of the kind of ‘obligation’ to others that Appiah argues a cosmopolitan attitude requires, it forms a part of the interrogation into the way individuals interact in new surroundings that Mansfield’s earlier stories began. ‘An Indiscreet Journey’, ‘Feuille d’Album’, and ‘Epilogue III: Bains Turcs’ demonstrate not only the necessity of respecting and caring for fellow human beings regardless of nationality, class, or gender, but also the joy that can be found in sharing the company of likeminded individuals. As Mansfield wrote to her friend, the Scottish painter J. D. Fergusson, in 1918, ‘I thought last night it is a bad thing [. . . ] to be apart from the one or two people who do count in one’s life. After all we are not solitary palm trees in deserts – thank God – we are groups of two or three with a spring of sweet water between us and a piece of grassy shade’.36 Making connections no matter where one might be was the focus of both Mansfield’s life and her work, and these three stories demonstrate the urge to share that ‘spring of sweet water’ that is cosmopolitanism.

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Katherine Mansfield Studies Notes 1. Martha C. Nussbaum, ‘Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism’ (1994), in For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism: Martha C. Nussbaum with Respondents, ed. by Joshua Cohen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), p. 15. 2. Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott, eds, The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984–2008), Vol. 2, p. 55. Hereafter referred to as Letters 2. 3. Paul Gilroy, Between Camps: Nations, Culture and the Allure of Race (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 17. 4. Paul Gilroy, After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 75. 5. Gilroy, Between Camps, p. 98. 6. Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (London: Penguin, 2007), p. xii. 7. Gilroy, After Empire, p. 75. 8. Amanda Anderson, The Powers of Distance: Cosmopolitanism and the Cultivation of Detachment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 31–2. 9. Katherine Anne Porter, ‘The Art of Katherine Mansfield’ (1937), in The Critical Response to Katherine Mansfield, ed. by Jan Pilditch (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), pp. 45–8 (p. 47). 10. Sydney Janet Kaplan, Katherine Mansfield and the Origins of Modernist Fiction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 12. 11. Appiah, p. 5. 12. Roger Robinson, ‘Introduction: In from the Margin’, in Katherine Mansfield: In from the Margin, ed. by Roger Robinson (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1994), pp. 1–8 (p. 5). 13. Katherine Mansfield, ‘An Indiscreet Journey’ (1915), in Selected Stories, ed. by Angela Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 60–73 (p. 62). Further references to Mansfield’s stories (apart from ‘Epilogue III: Bains Turcs’), are taken from this edition and placed directly after any quotation. 14. Katherine Mansfield, ‘Epilogue III: Bains Turcs’, in The Blue Review, 1 (July 1913), pp. 181–5 (p. 182). Further references to this story are placed directly after any quotation. 15. Gilroy, After Empire, p. 78. 16. See Katherine Mansfield, ‘An Indiscreet Journey’, Selected Stories, p. 64. The old woman travelling with the narrator declares of other women who have attempted to reach the front in order to rendezvous with soldiers: ‘they could not get into X. Mon Dieu, no! There is no question about that’ (64). 17. Richard Sennett, ‘Cosmopolitanism and the Social Experience of Cities’, in Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice, ed. by Stephen Vertovec and Robin Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 42–7 (p. 43). 18. C. A. Hankin, Katherine Mansfield and her Confessional Stories (London: Macmillan, 1983), p. 68. 19. Gilroy, Between Camps, p. 103. 20. Appiah, p. 85. 21. Hankin, pp. 130–1. 22. Patricia Moran, Word of Mouth: Body Language in Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), pp. 96–7. 23. David A. Hollinger, ‘Not Universalists, Not Pluralists: The New Cosmopolitans Find Their Own Way’, in Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice,

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24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36.

ed. by Stephen Vertovec and Robin Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 227–39 (p. 231). Appiah, p. 85. Patrick D. Morrow, Katherine Mansfield’s Fiction (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993), p. 64. See Mansfield, ‘Feuille d’Album’, Selected Stories, pp. 132–3. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 189. Jessica Berman, Modernist Fiction, Cosmopolitanism, and the Politics of Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 3–4. Angela Smith, Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf: A Public of Two (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), p. 4. See H. P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology (1877) (Los Angeles: The Theosophy Company, 1975), p. 56 ‘In the Orphic hymns, the Eros-Phanes evolves from the Spiritual Egg’. Hankin, p. 69. Gilroy, Between Camps, p. 105, Perry Meisel, ‘What the Reader Knows; or, The French One’ in Katherine Mansfield: In From the Margin, ed. by Roger Robinson (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1994), pp. 112–18 (p. 113). Rorty, p. 189. Appiah, p. xiii. Letters 2, p. 14.

DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000092

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CREATIVE WRITING

Wellington Journal Kirsty Gunn I have seen the little lamp. It was pretty much the first thing I did upon arriving back in Wellington after what feels like a lifetime away. I walked down Tinakori Road on a dark, windy winter’s afternoon, opened the front door of the buttermilk-coloured dollhouse shaped building that is the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace and stepped into the warm lace curtain shrouded rooms that Kezia leaves behind her in ‘The Aloe’ . . . I went inside. Into that same house that has within it a dolls house based upon the one in the story that we all love . . . And it was like coming upon something that was always there but has been hidden. Like a nut inside a shell, a seed inside a fruit, a tiny toy found like a treasure inside a special cake . . . This feeling is what I have come to Wellington for. When I was awarded the Randell Fellowship for a project on Thorndon, that part of New Zealand’s capital where, as every Wellingtonian knows, Mansfield was born and brought up, where I myself went to school and spent a great deal of time as a child, it was with great certainty that I set about structuring a piece of work that would be about returning, home-coming, re-discovery – and a kind of re-patriation. The idea for the project had started in London, in September the previous year, when a group of us met together at Birkbeck for the Katherine Mansfield International Centenary Conference. For me, one of the highlights of that time was listening to Vincent O’Sullivan’s elegiac and deeply moving paper given at the Conference’s close, in which he talked about the project he has been involved with all through these years, with Margaret Scott, of editing Mansfield’s letters – finishing with the last volume, the launch of which was concurrent with the Birkbeck event. Meeting with Professor O’Sullivan over that time and talking with him about the profound sense of home and homelessness that colonises and infuses so much of Katherine Mansfield’s art left me with a clear sense of imperative: to return ‘home’ myself, to the Thorndon where Mansfield had spent those crucial

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Wellington Journal early years, to uncover what lay behind its streets and housefronts, to open up the front of my past, let it swing wide open, and look inside. That was a feeling Mansfield herself understood all too well – of a Wellington and everything it holds as a lost place, a left behind place, but a never-to-be-forgotton place, in fact more intensely remembered because it is unchanged, not recovered in the present but preserved in intensely jewel bright memories that are fashioned into the stories that are her art – of the dark navy of the macrocarpas on the Tinakori Hills, the glance of the harbour caught around corners or from an unexpected rise in the street, of red roof tops crowded together in crevices and gullies . . . All those places and colours and sensations . . . memories . . . These I too bring to my work as a writer. These images of ‘home’. But where – in imagination or in life – is this place? And of what – sentence by sentence, memory by memory – is it made? Well, as in the story, I think its stuff may be of the most practical kind. Just as in ‘The Doll’s House’ the beautiful little building is constructed of painted wood and ‘solid little chimneys’, so home here for me has become something that is wonderfully suggestive and imaginative but also most ‘real’. The Randell residency is a generous six month period awarded to a writer of either French or New Zealand birth who wants to take the opportunity of living in a turn of the century cottage built at the same time as most of the rest of Thorndon was taking shape around it, in the grand, lace frilled style verandahs and gracious two storey homes with lawns and trees about them that made up Mansfield’s memory of her past and provided the setting for The Garden Party and Other Stories. It is like no other opportunity then – to be living and working here, in this particular place – to sink into Mansfield’s fiction and her life, to remember for myself the way the two worlds conjoin and blend into one richly detailed narrative – where every flower and gatepost seems to come embroidered with the memory from some story or other, fragment of a letter or journal entry, where every street I walk could take me from ‘The Music Lesson’ to ‘Her First Ball’. On the day when I first arrived, stepping out of that dark southerly wind into her home, the place where she was born, there immediately was the Victorian presence of old New Zealand to greet me. How close it pressed in. For here was a country formed in the image of the British Empire, its houses fashioned to look the same as houses on the

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Katherine Mansfield Studies other side of the world, with parlours and potted palms, tiny upright chairs and a dainty table set for tea . . . There were the chinoiserie and embroidered linens, the baize green cloth laid over the kitchen table where the Beauchamp girls and their little brother would have had their bread and milk before going upstairs to the nursery with its Rocking Horse and Noah’s Ark . . . A house crammed full of social and domestic details that together describe both a family’s material ambition and its ordinary day to day affairs, a richly domestic place where three generations talked and played and read and sewed and wrote . . . ‘Now I’ve seen the little lamp too’ said my daughter Millie, who is ten, not much older than the Kezia who saw it first. Her younger sister Katherine has seen it too. She wanted to put her hand right into the room to touch it, to handle all the things. It’s what I want to do myself, of course. To discover more about Katherine Mansfield’s life by somehow being inside it . . . We think we can understand the writer more, don’t we, by seeing for ourselves all the tiny details that touched the child’s imagination and fixed a memory there that she might draw upon later, to use as a moment of light and epiphany in the midst of a paragraph or as the basis for an entire story? My daughters were no different to me in wanting to reach into the doll’s house that way . . . Yet for my part it was also as though I was already inside. All it took was for me to sit on the first floor landing of the house in Tinakori Road, looking up at the high window and be completely alone, it seemed, on a stormy winter’s afternoon, the house hushed around me but for the fierceness of the southerly wind outside rattling at its beams and chimney, beating the flax and pohutukawa trees and manuka bushes with incessant rain . . . And I was there entirely, in a story of my own . . . . A story of a woman who, now that she is here, far away in the Southern Hemisphere on the other side of the world, can discover, simply by looking very closely at the things around her, much of where her own ideas come from. Who leaves the stair where she sits like a child, listening through the banisters to the sound of adult voices murmuring in the parlour, and is called by her Granny into the kitchen. It’s warm there, in that bright room. Her younger sister plays with a doll’s house in the corner while her grandmother does something at the cast iron stove and the woman sees them both, but they don’t acknowledge her or even seem to be aware of her presence. The little sister’s face is hidden by the fall of her fair hair as she plays, moving her dolls

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Wellington Journal from room to room and talking for them in tiny voices, making them sit on the sofa and chairs. Outside the kitchen window a motorway rushes past where once there would have been a gorge, thick with native bush – where now there is still planted some nikau and manuka and punga and cabbage trees – a steep gully dropping down to a little stream somewhere in the undergrowth. The woman says to herself: This is what Katherine Mansfield would have seen when she stood at this kitchen window . . . These trees, this sky . . . The child in the corner turns then, looks up. Her pale face shows something wrong. It is contorted into a cry – of fear? Shock? Despair? As though she has seen something she doesn’t want to see? A glimpse of the future perhaps? A figment of another story? As though she herself is a ghost, another version of another sister born in this same house who dies days later . . . The picture of her with her eyes closed lying stiff in her grandmother’s arms hangs in the dining room now . . . The woman sees all these things at once, remembers them, writes them down. Though the children are gone from the house. Though there’s a motorway outside instead of a steep gully. Though now is not then. Still, she wants to say to the little girl playing in the corner: Come with me! As if she could enter right in to the story, go into the past and be part of it again, take something out of it away. But the girl can’t see or hear. She has to stay where she is, in the kitchen, playing with her dolls. The wind lunges again at the window and shakes the frames, setting all the cups swinging slightly on the dresser, and the little house has not moved. The lamp sits on the table quite still. It hasn’t changed at all.

DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000109

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POETRY

Tea Chicken leg soup was France’s starter, then things picked up. A terrace, striped shade and a chaise longue spread with squirrels. Celebration with tea she cried at 3am on finishing ‘The Daughters’ and so they took it, she and LM, watching morning light through mimosa. JENNY BORNHOLDT

Love Affair (a given poem from Katherine Mansfield with thanks to Helen McNeish) You wrote the table was laid for two but nobody came so you dined opposite a white napkin.

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POETRY

Tea Chicken leg soup was France’s starter, then things picked up. A terrace, striped shade and a chaise longue spread with squirrels. Celebration with tea she cried at 3am on finishing ‘The Daughters’ and so they took it, she and LM, watching morning light through mimosa. JENNY BORNHOLDT

Love Affair (a given poem from Katherine Mansfield with thanks to Helen McNeish) You wrote the table was laid for two but nobody came so you dined opposite a white napkin.

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Poetry It’s called giving yourself to life. Through the window a quiet branch has the evening to itself also. RIEMKE ENSING

Visit to a German Pension Most stories spring from a wish to tell. Or an itch, a need, and even a compulsion. Then there is writing that’s simply there, beyond all ambition, as though it has willed itself. You ask yourself how those so clueless at making choices, can at the same time be so knowing with it? Excellence can be told, but never quite accounted for. You require a good pen to get away with it, a handy gift for words that’s only half craft, a dash of this and that, fizz in the brain, and a daring that simply keeps coming off. Illusions that flash by in the blink of an eye. KEVIN IRELAND

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Poetry It’s called giving yourself to life. Through the window a quiet branch has the evening to itself also. RIEMKE ENSING

Visit to a German Pension Most stories spring from a wish to tell. Or an itch, a need, and even a compulsion. Then there is writing that’s simply there, beyond all ambition, as though it has willed itself. You ask yourself how those so clueless at making choices, can at the same time be so knowing with it? Excellence can be told, but never quite accounted for. You require a good pen to get away with it, a handy gift for words that’s only half craft, a dash of this and that, fizz in the brain, and a daring that simply keeps coming off. Illusions that flash by in the blink of an eye. KEVIN IRELAND

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Katherine Mansfield Studies

Just a little corrupted The cold house in Ospedaletti decorated with a shawl, when Pa came a–visiting it wasn’t bare at all. Hardly room for all their glasses – four pairs for Pa, three for Connie and Jinnie. Try these, Jinnie, and Connie, try these. How yellow is the wall through Jinnie’s glasses, Connie? Can Jinnie read the Oxford Book of English Verses? Can Jinnie even see at all? The shawl, the glasses, the furs, the parcels, orchids in vases, daughter and Papa – later, in a letter they will all be thine. ANNA JACKSON

Visite–patrimoine – Villas It’s because of her I’m here at the signpost Avenue Katherine Mansfield bending from Villa Favourite on the Boulevard de Garavan down to the foreshore road where she spanked along in Harold’s motor, hands on the knee rug.

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Katherine Mansfield Studies

Just a little corrupted The cold house in Ospedaletti decorated with a shawl, when Pa came a–visiting it wasn’t bare at all. Hardly room for all their glasses – four pairs for Pa, three for Connie and Jinnie. Try these, Jinnie, and Connie, try these. How yellow is the wall through Jinnie’s glasses, Connie? Can Jinnie read the Oxford Book of English Verses? Can Jinnie even see at all? The shawl, the glasses, the furs, the parcels, orchids in vases, daughter and Papa – later, in a letter they will all be thine. ANNA JACKSON

Visite–patrimoine – Villas It’s because of her I’m here at the signpost Avenue Katherine Mansfield bending from Villa Favourite on the Boulevard de Garavan down to the foreshore road where she spanked along in Harold’s motor, hands on the knee rug.

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Poetry ‘It’s that villa she lived in, the one under the palm’ (a green catherine wheel against the sea), I tell the young guide who gets it all wrong; ‘& there where her cousins stayed’, (the Hotel Villa Louise, behind the Isola Bella amongst the trees). ‘What is the Babylonian Dream?’ I ask, as it swelters round me in the deluxe of renovated villas & Riviera tiles. Did Katy know it was being dreamt, as she conjured aloes with her pen? JAN KEMP

Doo–Da–Doo–Da Paris, March 1915 The trumpet sounds, the shutters moan the sky shrinks, a hole in the dark. I’ve never seen stars rush through evening like that – the Ultimate Fish: its flash of fins dive under the night’s soft skin. And the house stretching, rises to its toes, lifts its failing arms and scoops life as we’ve known it, always – People lean into the black and the Milky Way splaying her legs, her petticoats rising, her feathered hat, her muff and gloves gone –– Who says Romance is dead? When heads rush, bodies turn each to each steam rises from the cup, the kettle cries – the sky calls doo–da–doo–da –– In the aftermath, I think of you as a sneak of a pig. Not writing one ceases to exist among the literati, their blue swords poke about the fire, picking, flicking, their lovely tongues full of lovely dreams.

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Poetry ‘It’s that villa she lived in, the one under the palm’ (a green catherine wheel against the sea), I tell the young guide who gets it all wrong; ‘& there where her cousins stayed’, (the Hotel Villa Louise, behind the Isola Bella amongst the trees). ‘What is the Babylonian Dream?’ I ask, as it swelters round me in the deluxe of renovated villas & Riviera tiles. Did Katy know it was being dreamt, as she conjured aloes with her pen? JAN KEMP

Doo–Da–Doo–Da Paris, March 1915 The trumpet sounds, the shutters moan the sky shrinks, a hole in the dark. I’ve never seen stars rush through evening like that – the Ultimate Fish: its flash of fins dive under the night’s soft skin. And the house stretching, rises to its toes, lifts its failing arms and scoops life as we’ve known it, always – People lean into the black and the Milky Way splaying her legs, her petticoats rising, her feathered hat, her muff and gloves gone –– Who says Romance is dead? When heads rush, bodies turn each to each steam rises from the cup, the kettle cries – the sky calls doo–da–doo–da –– In the aftermath, I think of you as a sneak of a pig. Not writing one ceases to exist among the literati, their blue swords poke about the fire, picking, flicking, their lovely tongues full of lovely dreams.

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Katherine Mansfield Studies If Romance is dead Jaggle I’m a hatless fool, muffless, bare–bottomed fluttering silently across the night’s soft skin, the trumpet sounding the shutter’s low moan –– You’re a sneak of a pig. Ash-mouthed, rushing towards the literati dreaming the lovely, shivering and shawless, I scoop stars beneath my petticoat and imagine a flash of fin diving beneath my soft skin. The trumpet sounds, the shutter moans a few notes here and here a scarcity of words –– doo–da–doo da – doo da. . . KATH MACLEAN

The order in which waves reach the beach at Menton: the order of names in the Alpes–Maritime telephone directory the order of service at Chapelle St Michel the order of the collected stories of Katherine Mansfield the order of Sacred Mysteries, as arrayed along a pathway, Montee du Lutetia the order of untamed cats rolling between these Sacred Mysteries the order of books on a shelf, from Ezra Pound to Paul Klee to Apollinaire the order of musical notes as dispersed along the neck of a baroque violin the order of arrivals and departures at the palace of sand the order of short-lived husbands as distributed among the beauties of the Cote D’Azur the order of years passing, as they are disrupted by music the opposite order to that in which the waves reach the beach at Muriwai GREGORY O’BRIEN

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Katherine Mansfield Studies If Romance is dead Jaggle I’m a hatless fool, muffless, bare–bottomed fluttering silently across the night’s soft skin, the trumpet sounding the shutter’s low moan –– You’re a sneak of a pig. Ash-mouthed, rushing towards the literati dreaming the lovely, shivering and shawless, I scoop stars beneath my petticoat and imagine a flash of fin diving beneath my soft skin. The trumpet sounds, the shutter moans a few notes here and here a scarcity of words –– doo–da–doo da – doo da. . . KATH MACLEAN

The order in which waves reach the beach at Menton: the order of names in the Alpes–Maritime telephone directory the order of service at Chapelle St Michel the order of the collected stories of Katherine Mansfield the order of Sacred Mysteries, as arrayed along a pathway, Montee du Lutetia the order of untamed cats rolling between these Sacred Mysteries the order of books on a shelf, from Ezra Pound to Paul Klee to Apollinaire the order of musical notes as dispersed along the neck of a baroque violin the order of arrivals and departures at the palace of sand the order of short-lived husbands as distributed among the beauties of the Cote D’Azur the order of years passing, as they are disrupted by music the opposite order to that in which the waves reach the beach at Muriwai GREGORY O’BRIEN

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Poetry

Author’s Bluff It never stops in the famous story does it, the wind, the wind? It is there when the book is shut, pelting the house’s walls, pushing the pines the wrong way, making the girl’s skirts flounce like the edges of the streamed clouds, her heart riding the wind. No wonder the sea rings, throws salts at her lips, the street tilts its deck beneath the bright, flung stars. Open the book, only that will stop it. Open the book to let her through. VINCENT O’SULLIVAN

Today At The Villa Isola Bella Your memorial drive steeply climbed round / up to the gate closed to a stranger against a villa of orange stone. Open The windows are staring, over foliage, scented, green, at blue glass of sky into the afternoon at Menton. Today No entry here, for this stranger I am, to the Villa Isola Bella. No strangers, here, the lizards

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Poetry

Author’s Bluff It never stops in the famous story does it, the wind, the wind? It is there when the book is shut, pelting the house’s walls, pushing the pines the wrong way, making the girl’s skirts flounce like the edges of the streamed clouds, her heart riding the wind. No wonder the sea rings, throws salts at her lips, the street tilts its deck beneath the bright, flung stars. Open the book, only that will stop it. Open the book to let her through. VINCENT O’SULLIVAN

Today At The Villa Isola Bella Your memorial drive steeply climbed round / up to the gate closed to a stranger against a villa of orange stone. Open The windows are staring, over foliage, scented, green, at blue glass of sky into the afternoon at Menton. Today No entry here, for this stranger I am, to the Villa Isola Bella. No strangers, here, the lizards

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Katherine Mansfield Studies slide in and out of sight / flashing belonging/ not outsiders in this garden. Katherine, in the long shadows of your fame almost you might be writing here finding light in the shadowed room a secret / ‘Oh, what was it. . . ?’ / of a Buddha. Out of this rough grass an aloe planted grows here? in thorny flesh of leaves? not that magical aloe in the moon’s light of Prelude. Small garden of your personality, time shifts the emphasis today at the Villa Isola Bella. Your sowing was earlier. Katherine, shadowy one aloe floats flowers and occupies the air. Your aloe miraculous mystifies the glittering sea. HELEN SHAW

Isola Bella In the stony garden with the bronze plaque that misquotes her she called down from the terrace, ‘Friend or foe?’ She carried a parasol. Her hair was a shiny cap, her face a mask.

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Katherine Mansfield Studies slide in and out of sight / flashing belonging/ not outsiders in this garden. Katherine, in the long shadows of your fame almost you might be writing here finding light in the shadowed room a secret / ‘Oh, what was it. . . ?’ / of a Buddha. Out of this rough grass an aloe planted grows here? in thorny flesh of leaves? not that magical aloe in the moon’s light of Prelude. Small garden of your personality, time shifts the emphasis today at the Villa Isola Bella. Your sowing was earlier. Katherine, shadowy one aloe floats flowers and occupies the air. Your aloe miraculous mystifies the glittering sea. HELEN SHAW

Isola Bella In the stony garden with the bronze plaque that misquotes her she called down from the terrace, ‘Friend or foe?’ She carried a parasol. Her hair was a shiny cap, her face a mask.

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Poetry ‘Friend of friends,’ I answered––‘Lawrence. . . Carco. . . Bertie Russell. . . ’ At each name the mask half-revealed a halfsmile. Light struck up off the Baie de Garavan. It glittered in the palms and moulded cypress and pine. I wanted to tell her I knew her name for Jack was Deadly Poison. The villa’s yellow mimicked the shade of Alp–rock looming behind as a train went through, and the sea preened itself in the sky’s blue mirror. C. K. STEAD

DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000110

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REPORT

The Great Painting Penelope Jackson After a comfortable night’s sleep at the Headland Hotel, Looe, Cornwall, Katherine Mansfield penned a letter to her husband John Middleton Murry noting, ‘Anne came early & began the great painting – me in that brick red frock with flowers everywhere’.1 Dated 17 June 1918, the letter records the beginning of the Portrait of Katherine Mansfield (1918) by Anne Estelle Rice, now housed in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.2 The portrait has a rich history; what began as an artistic expression of close friendship would result in a painting with iconic status in the twenty-first century, both internationally and more especially in New Zealand. Anne Estelle Rice (1877–1959) and Mansfield first met in December 1912, while in Paris;3 they instantly warmed to each other and kept in touch, including the time they spent together in Cornwall in 1918. Perhaps the high point of their relationship was marked at this period by the artist painting the writer and writer writing about the artist. In the same letter to Murry of 17 June, Mansfield noted, ‘I painted her in my fashion as she painted me in hers. Her eyes . . . “little blue flowers plucked this morning’’ ’.4 Though Rice was eleven years her senior, she and Mansfield shared common ground; both were expatriate artists living abroad, Rice being an itinerant American. Stylistically Rice was a Fauvist and her Portrait of Katherine Mansfield, though painted a decade after the height of the Fauvist movement, is a fine example of her adaptation of that style. Rice’s Portrait of Katherine Mansfield signals a closeness and understanding between the artist and the sitter. It was possibly this sense of togetherness that Mansfield describes in her short story ‘Pic-Nic’: When the two women in white came down to the lonely beach – She threw away her paintbox – and She threw away her notebook. Down they sat on the sand [. . . ] Then She went off and dabbled her legs in a pool thinking about the colour of flesh under water. And She crawled into a dark cave and sat

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The Great Painting there thinking about her childhood. Then they came back to the beach and flung themselves down on their bellies, hiding their heads in their arms. They looked like two swans.5

Rice’s art education was undertaken at the School of Industrial Art of Pennsylvania Museum; having been awarded her Diploma, she embarked on further study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Following on from art school, Rice worked as an illustrator for several magazines in America, including Harper’s Bazaar. As with many women artists of her generation, illustration work was her livelihood; however by the time Rice left for Paris in 1906, she had discovered her painting style. This relocation further consolidated her leaning towards Fauvism and by early 1908 Rice was exhibiting in Paris, with a typically Fauvist palette, encouraged by her then relationship with the Scottish colourist J. D. Fergusson. Rice had an acute sense of design and this is demonstrated in her painting. Michael Sadler described her work has having the ‘rhythm’ associated with Fauvism – when reviewing her work in Rhythm in 1911, he noted that ‘her outlook is vigorous and personal, her methods definite and unhesitating’.6 As a young, emerging female artist, Rice can be viewed as adventurous in her choice of subject matter – and she would go on to contribute illustrations to the avant–garde magazine Rhythm (1911–13). Following her relationship with Fergusson, she eventually married, in 1913, O. Raymond Drey, a journalist and art and drama critic, and settled in London.7 The Portrait of Katherine Mansfield is a complex work. Rice made decisions concerning the painting, with input from Mansfield; for instance, it was Mansfield who chose the ‘brick-red’ dress. The intense redness of both the dress and the overall colour of the painting is symbolically significant. For the uninitiated, Mansfield may present as a young woman surrounded by a colourful array of flowers, signifying joy and happiness. The reality of Mansfield’s life at the time of the sitting, however, belies this simplistic reading. Mansfield, already seriously ill with tuberculosis and now occasionally haemorrhaging blood, had recently undergone an emotionally and physically exhausting trip from France, returning on 11 April. Her decree nisi from her first marriage having only just come through, she and Murry were married on 3 May at Kensington Register Office. However, it was immediately obvious that her health had seriously declined and that she could not remain in London. As Virginia Woolf noted in a letter on 24 May: ‘I saw Katherine Middleton Murry the other day – very ill, I thought, but very inscrutable and

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Katherine Mansfield Studies fascinating’.8 It was Rice who, concerned for the well-being of her friend, booked Mansfield into the Headland Hotel in Looe. Mansfield, initially grateful, was soon overcome by the anguish of being, once more, without Murry, and in yet another hotel. Ten days after arriving, this anguish spilled over into a letter to her absent husband: You see I was in the S. of F. [south of France] from December till April. What was it like on the whole – just HELL. As you know it nearly killed me. [. . . ] All my longings, all my desires [. . . ] had been just to [. . . ] come back to my home. [. . . ] Our marriage – You cannot imagine what that was to have meant to me. Its fantastic – I suppose. It was to have shone – apart from all else in my life – And it really was only part of the nightmare, after all. You never once held me in your arms and called me your wife.9

Looking again at the painting in the light of this deeply troubled and insecure period of Mansfield’s life, the symbolism seems all the more acute. The redness of the sitter’s dress contrasts sharply with the greyness of her neck skin tone, the red perhaps symbolising the blood associated with Mansfield’s illness. An abundance of flowers cascades across the background plane with an element of ambiguity – are they in a vase, on the wallpaper, embroidered on a shawl? This treatment and inclusion of the floral background in Rice’s work is reminiscent of the rhythm employed in the background in Matisse’s Red Room (Harmony in Red) of 1908.10 J. D. Fergusson’s Portrait of Anne Estelle Rice (1908),11 and Le Voile Persan (1908),12 painted a decade prior to Rice’s portrait, also have strong floral backdrops. Mansfield’s love of flowers did not go unnoticed by the artist. The floral surround was there from the painting’s inception, as Mansfield noted in her first mention of it to Murry, and, as typical of a Fauvist work, the rhythmic depiction of the flowers gives the work an overall fluidity of colour and form.13 Like Fergusson, who placed ‘figures in a Whistlerian decorative interior reinforc[ing] the merger he cultivated between his own decorative sensibility and that of his sitters’,14 Rice connected Mansfield and her environment, flowers being the vehicle to orchestrate this. The floral surround was there from the painting’s inception, as Mansfield noted in her first mention of it to Murry.15 Further similarities with Matisse’s work are also evident in Rice’s portrait. For instance, the same intensity of redness and the overall use of heavy dark outlines are to be found in Matisse’s 1908 painting, The Girl with Green Eyes.16 Previously in 1905, Matisse’s Portrait of Madame Matisse (Green Stripe) had announced a new way of presenting the individual.17 Matisse had abandoned representational modes and fashioned his wife in an

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The Great Painting altogether modern manner. The strong use of colour, as exemplified in Rice’s choice of jaundice-yellow for Mansfield’s right cheek, was part of this new wave of colouration consolidated by Matisse in the previous decade, such strong colour and sense of design, or rhythm, being integral to Fauvism. Sadler suggested Fauvism remedied the formlessness so imbedded in Impressionism, whilst sustaining its brilliance.18 The expression on Mansfield’s face is one of serious contemplation – her eyes in particular are painted with a dark intensity.19 The plainness and straight lines depicted in her dress and hairstyle contrast with the flowery background. Rice achieves a sculptural quality in Mansfield’s face, partly through the contrast of dark shadow and pale insipid skin, but also via the way in which she applies her paint – quite visible and block-like. This effect is augmented by the sitter’s hands, which are painted as if chiselled from stone or wood. Mansfield cradles a book in her lap; an object pertaining to the sitter’s occupation, or ‘tools of her trade’, is a typical trait of portraiture; Mansfield the ‘writer’ is consolidated through this means of identification. Rice’s painting arrived in Wellington, to join the National Art Gallery’s collection, in January 1946.20 The work had been purchased in 1940 and had been kept in storage for the duration of World War II, making its way to New Zealand at the war’s cessation.21 We know that the painting was begun in 1918. What we are not privy to is its completion date. When Ruth Mantz, an early biographer of Mansfield’s, met Rice in London in 1933, she urged the artist to complete the painting.22 And this Rice did. The portrait was never officially dated, though it was signed with her full name, and so consistently to date the painting to 1918 is misleading. I suspect that Rice signed it once a purchase had been secured. In other words, Rice made finishing touches to the painting and then signed it. It is possible to make the assumption that most of the painting was completed in Cornwall in 1918, given that the two friends were there for six weeks in total, and Mansfield began to make mention of the sitting, in June 1918. However, if we are to believe Mantz’s version of events then the work should more accurately be dated ‘1918–33’. Why was the portrait not completed in Mansfield’s lifetime? It is not known how many times Mansfield sat for the portrait, though her letters and diaries intimate only a few sessions. This being the case, Rice may have abandoned it for other work if she had not got too far with it. Though Mansfield’s first letter indicates the beginning of the project, it would not have been the start of the actual painting

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Katherine Mansfield Studies process. Rice may have made sketches to begin with, but at the very least she pencilled in her design on the canvas before painting, since her pencil underdrawing is still visible. With its lush colour, the surface of the painting gives the impression of being thick with a bright impasto palette. This is not the case, however. Not only does the pencil under-drawing show through, but so too do raw paint-free areas of canvas. Not only did Rice not prepare her canvas with a primer (which indicates she pencilled her composition in and then began painting directly onto the canvas), but she was quite economical with her paint. (This could perhaps be explained by the fact that she was working in situ with some urgency.) Given Mansfield’s health, and subsequent early death, Rice may have not had the heart to complete the work. The painting’s file at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa contains much correspondence, mainly pertaining to loans for the portrait’s inclusion in various exhibitions. The work continues to be popular to this day and most recently has been in included in Art at Te Papa (2009).23 Documents containing information surrounding the acquisition of the painting are occasionally misleading. For instance, there is some confusion over whether the price paid for the work was £150 or £196.16.9. In a list of funded works by the T. G. McCarthy Trust in New Zealand (who bought the painting for the New Zealand Gallery), the painting is listed as ‘Catherine Mansfield, portrait in oils by Ann Estelle Rice, £196.16.9’ [sic]. Miss Driscoll, of Thorndon, a friend of Mansfield’s is also recorded as having assisted in bringing both Mansfield’s shawl and the portrait to New Zealand (though there are no records confirming the degree to which Driscoll assisted). In 2003, Claire Tomalin recalled the painting’s earlier, and preNew Zealand, provenance. Supporters of Mansfield approached the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 1932 to suggest the addition of Rice’s portrait to the Gallery’s collection. Written support came from thirty-one writers and public figures, including Virginia Woolf and Michael Sadler. However, the proposal met was met with some negativity from the trustees, who, as Tomalin notes, clearly had not heard of, or read, Mansfield. It was at this stage in the early 1930s that the price of £150 for the painting was established between Rice and Theodora Bosanquet of the International Federation of University Women who initiated the proposed acquisition for the National Portrait Gallery.24 The portrait was not accepted by the trustees and was described by the Gallery’s director, Henry Hake, as unsatisfying.25

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The Great Painting (The National Portrait Gallery in London currently has three images of Mansfield, all photographs.)26 Official records pertaining to the painting’s possible date also continue to mislead. For instance, the 1969 retrospective exhibition catalogue of Rice’s work at the University of Hull, states, ‘The National Art Gallery has no record of when the portrait was painted or any details of its history’.27 This too is peculiar given there are records, including much correspondence, of the painting’s exhibiting history up to that date as well as the restoration undertaken on it after it was returned from Australia in 1967. It is on record that George Packwood of the National Art Gallery, Wellington, conserved the painting in October 1967.28 The specific detail of what appears to be quite extensive repair was recorded: Painting damaged in Australia while on loan to Department of External Affairs. Repaired in gallery October 1967 as follows – relined on new canvas, stretched on new stretcher frame, 3 punctures top left corner filled and repainted, varnished with Winton Matt varnish, frame repaired.29

In another file, in which the work’s details were recorded for The First Fifty Years of British Art, the date of the portrait was given as May 1918 with ‘n.d.’ [not dated] next to the date. How could someone be so specific about the date when clearly it is not dated? And yet in the catalogue for the exhibition under discussion, the date is given as 1918 and in the notes, ‘not dated’.30 In the same file, a handwritten note attributes the date of 1920 to the work as given in Malcolm Easton’s Connoisseur article.31 In Easton’s article, the date given in the caption to the painting is ‘1920?’32 Whether Rice finished the work in 1933, following Mantz’s visit, or in 1940 when the National Art Gallery purchased it, is ambiguous, as previously stated. One record card gives the work’s provenance as ‘Artist, London, 1918–40 (purchased with funds from the T. G. McCarthy Trust; price £150 UK).33 Given the doubt surrounding the completion date of the work, the date ‘1918–40’, seems the most appropriate. Now adorning numerous book covers, journals, posters and cards, the Portrait of Katherine Mansfield, is internationally well-known. On semi-permanent display at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the painting celebrates one of New Zealand’s greatest literary exports. As the only portrait of Mansfield worked from life, during her lifetime, it has become an iconic painting in New Zealand’s national collection.

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Katherine Mansfield Studies

Exhibition History (excluding National Art Gallery, Wellington and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington permanent displays). 1966 1967

1969 1985–6

1994 2001–2

City Hall, Ottawa, Canada. Australia National University, Canberra. University of Sydney. Reid Library, University of Western Australia, Perth. Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne. The University of Hull [Anne Estelle Rice Paintings]. Colour, Rhythm and Dance: Paintings and Drawings by J. D. Fergusson and His Circle in Paris 1910–1914. Kelvingrove, Glasgow. Dundee Art Gallery. Edinburgh City Art Centre. Aberdeen Art Gallery. Postal Portraits. National Art Gallery, Wellington. Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch. Sightlines: Looking into the Art Collection, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

Notes 1. Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott, eds., The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984–2008), Vol. 2, p. 245. Hereafter referred to as Letters 2. Mansfield was resident at the Headland Hotel from 17 May to 26 June 1918. 2. Accession number: 1940/9/1. See front cover of this journal for reproduction. 3. Malcolm Easton gives Rice’s year of birth as 1879 (‘The Art of Anne Estelle Rice’, Connoisseur 172, 1969, pp. 300–4). Claire Tomalin in, Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life, London: Viking, 1987), also gives Rice’s year of birth as 1879. However it is generally documented as 1877. 4. Letters 2, p. 245. 5. Margaret Scott, ed., The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks, 2 vols (Lincoln University Press and Daphne Brasell Associates, 1997), Vol. 2, p. 127. 6. Michael T. H. Sadler, ‘Fauvism and a Fauve’, Rhythm, 1:1, Summer 1911, pp. 1–18. 7. As discussed by Carol A. Nathanson, ‘Anne Estelle Rice: Theodore Dreiser’s “Ellen Adams Wrynn’’’, Woman’s Art Journal, Autumn 1992/Winter 1993, pp. 3–11. 8. Nigel Nicholson and Joanne Trautmann, eds., The Question of Things Happening. The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume 2, 1912–1922 (London: Hogarth Press, 1976), p. 243. Letter to Ottoline Morrell. 9. Letters 2, pp. 197–8, 27 May 1918. 10. Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. 11. Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. 12. Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow. 13. Letters 2, p. 245. 14. Mark Antliff, Inventing Bergson: Cultural Politics and the Avant–Garde (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 73.

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The Great Painting 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21.

22.

23. 24.

25. 26.

27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

Letters 2, p. 245. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen. Sadler, pp. 1–18. In her forthcoming new biography, Kathleen Jones describes Mansfield’s eyes, on her deathbed, as ‘beseeching’ http://www.katherinemansfield.net/biography/ chapter1.htm [accessed 9 June 2009]. The New Zealand National Art Gallery’s collection subsequently became part of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa’s collection when it opened in 1998. See Tomalin’s Guardian article for her research into how the National Portrait Gallery in London turned down the chance to acquire the painting in the 1930s: ‘It is clear that none of the trustees had heard of her, let alone read any of her work’. Claire Tomalin, ‘Never-ending Stories’, The Guardian, 29 November 2003, p. 31. http://www . guardian . co . uk/books/2003/nov/29/featuresreviews.guardianreview31/ print [accessed 25 July 2009]. The painting was stored by Bourlet and Sons (picture framers) ‘in the country’, England (National Art Gallery permanent collection record card, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Portrait of Katherine Mansfield file). Elizabeth Johnson and John R Payne, Katherine Mansfield: An Exhibition, September – November 1973, The University of Texas at Austin, Humanities Research Centre, p. 35. Victoria Robson, Art from Te Papa, ed. William McLoon (Wellington: Te Papa Press, 2009), p. 183. Theodora Bosanquet was Henry James’s secretary from 1907 to 1916. In 1924 her book Henry James at Work was published by Hogarth Press. From 1935 to 1958 Bosanquet was the literary editor, and later director, of the weekly political and literary review magazine, Time and Tide. Claire Tomalin, ‘Never–ending Stories’, p. 31. Of the three photographs in the National Portrait Gallery’s collection, the first was gifted in 1956 and the other two, purchased with help from the Friends of the National Libraries and the Dame Helen Gardner Bequest in 2003. The University of Hull, Anne Estelle Rice Paintings, 27 January 1969–15 February 1969. George Packwood (1916–90) was a painter of landscapes, former curator of the National Art Gallery, Wellington, and Director of the Petone Settlers Museum, Wellington. In 1958 George Packwood was awarded second prize for The Kelliher Art Competition, a major landscape painting competition. National Art Gallery permanent collection record card, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Portrait of Katherine Mansfield file. Anne Kirker, The First Fifty Years: British Art of the 20th Century: From the Collection of the National Art Gallery (New Zealand: Wellington, 1981), p. 82. Malcolm Easton, ‘The Art of Anne Estelle Rice’, Connoisseur, 172 (1969), pp. 300–304. Easton, p. 301. Thomas George Macarthy (1833–1912) was a Wellington brewer who provided funds to various institutions and charities. It was from the Thomas George Macarthy Trust that funds were made available for the purchase of Anne Estelle Rice’s Portrait of Katherine Mansfield by the National Art Gallery.

DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000122

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REVIEWS

Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott, eds., The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, vol. 5, 1922–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) 376 pp., £63. ISBN 9780198183990 This volume completes an epic editorial project which over the last two decades has transformed Mansfield studies, and for which all those who are interested in her work owe an immense debt of gratitude. Mansfield’s letters are held in a number of disparate locations and her handwriting is notoriously difficult to decipher, but she could not have had an editorial team better suited to the task of decoding and contextualising this mass of dispersed material. This volume covers the last year of Mansfield’s life, in which she underwent X-ray treatment for advanced tuberculosis and wrote her final stories, including ‘The Fly’ and ‘The Canary’. In the final six months of her life she abandoned fiction and instead took the journey which has attracted so much opprobrium, to join Georgei Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at Fontainebleau where she died on 9 January 1923. In his Introduction, Vincent O’Sullivan pays Mansfield the compliment, long overdue in Mansfield criticism, of taking this journey seriously. It is crucial to set this episode in context in order to understand that Mansfield was neither deluded nor eccentric in following this particular path. After the catastrophe of the war, there was a widespread feeling that as Middleton Murry wrote in 1919, ‘we are maimed in ways that we do not comprehend; materialism has failed us; we must turn instead to the cultivation of the inner “man’’’.1 Accordingly, in the 1920s, figures as disparate as Arthur Conan Doyle and Virginia Woolf became involved in debates about spirituality and psychic life. More pertinently in relation to Mansfield, her old mentor A. R. Orage was active in bringing together an eclectic group of writers and thinkers with an interest in the relationship between spirituality and psychoanalysis. This group formed part of a wider movement which built on the insights of psychoanalysis to suggest that spiritual insight would only be attained through the fullest realisation of the self. This too was the philosophy of Gurdjieff, who called his work a kind of ‘psycho analysis’ and whose broadly secular approach was intended to facilitate an understanding of the self in harmonious integration with the world. It is not difficult to see how

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Reviews such thinking would appeal to Mansfield, who had written in her journal in 1920 of the need to escape from false selves in order to experience that moment in which ‘we are alive – we are flowering for our moment upon the earth. . . the moment of direct feeling when we are most ourselves and least personal’.2 Of course, Mansfield talked to Orage and approached Gurdjieff not only because she was suffering from post-war angst but because she was aware of her own imminent death, which she faced with exemplary courage. In her letters we see her constantly screening others from the full details of her plight, but what nonetheless emerges powerfully is the arid, desolate quality of her life during the months of her last medical treatments. As she wrote in a letter to Murry in October 1922, ‘[a]s for my spirit – well, as a result of that life at the Victoria Palace [Hotel] I stopped being a writer’ (305). It is a painful paradox that Mansfield became established as a serious artist (when The Garden Party was published in 1922 to warm reviews), at precisely the point when she could no longer write. She could, however, still make the decision to join Gurdjieff’s Institute, in order to live as fully as possible before she died, to break away from her terrible sense of isolation and to act with others in the physical world. So at Fontainebleau she scraped carrots and onions, collected wood, mended torn trousers and, as ever, responded with quick vitality to the natural world around her, to the bright sunny days and the Christmas roses under the pear trees. Murry was not ready to join her in any aspect of this, which makes Mansfield’s courage in choosing this path all the more admirable. The letters of her last months may lack the extraordinary vividness of the earlier ones (which read, as C. K. Stead has remarked, ‘as if every sentence had been struck off first thing on a brilliant morning’,3 but they could not be more impressive in their clear-sighted record of a dying which, as O’Sullivan writes, was ‘heroic not only because she did it bravely, but because she refused to accept that her entire being must be dominated by how close finality was’ (x). Clare Hanson University of Southampton DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000134 Notes 1. John Middleton Murry, ‘The Republic of the Spirit’, reprinted in The Evolution of an Intellectual (London: Jonathan Cape, 1927), p. 222. 2. John Middleton Murry, ed., The Journal of Katherine Mansfield 1904–1922 (London: Constable 1954), p. 205. 3. C. K. Stead, ed., The Letters and Journals of Katherine Mansfield (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), p. 19.

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Katherine Mansfield Studies Nicole Seifert, Von Tagebüchern und Trugbildern: Die autobiographische Aufzeichnungen von Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf und Sylvia Plath [Of Diaries and Deceptions: The Autobiographical Writings of Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath] (Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2008) 260 pp., e19 / £16. ISBN 9783865990617 I want to strike immediately the main note of this review: high praise for a fine, scrupulous, insightful book, which conducts a thoroughly convincing comparison between three major twentieth century women writers through an examination of the posthumous publication of their diaries and the readings and misreadings of their work that have arisen as a result. A translation of this book into English is devoutly to be wished for. It would, I believe, find an appreciative audience in the anglophone world, not only amongst scholars interested in these writers and/or in the theory and practice of life writing, but also amongst non–specialists eager to find a balanced and judicious comparative account of the respective tragedies of Mansfield, Woolf and Plath and the way they have been presented and interpreted. The feature of this book that most particularly promotes its success is its crystalline structure. Like the music of the spheres, it is built on triads: there are three authors whose work is chiefly devoted to three separate literary genres dealt with in chronological order in three separate chapters, each of which is itself divided into three parts. First, Seifert explores in sharp empirical detail how each of the three surviving husbands, to a greater or lesser extent, ‘doctored’ the diaries of their deceased wives in order to promote a version of their lives and marital relationships consonant with their own conscious and unconscious personal needs. Second, she shows how the partial and misleading publication of the diaries has led readers to jump to conclusions about the authors and their work, which often turn out in the longer run to have been rather dubious. Third, in a surprise theoretical move that almost pulls the rug from beneath this particular empirical problematic, Seifert argues that no diary text, however scrupulously edited, can hope to capture the ‘true’ intimate self of the author. For diaries are not the spontaneous outpourings of a single inviolate identity that may provide biographical clues to the meaning of an author’s writings, but are deliberate creative textual acts addressed to an audience, and adopt the same kinds of rhetorical strategies designed to please and convince as other imaginative work. I have only two rather minor cavils about Seifert’s book, one at the empirical level, the other of a more theoretical nature. I found

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Reviews the Woolf section a little less convincing than the other two, because the urge to fit Leonard Woolf rather too neatly into a Procrustean bed, a criminal ‘gang of three’ husbands, seems to override the need here for discrimination and differentiation. Leonard certainly exercised ruthless selection in editing Woolf’s diaries, but it is less clear in his case that the reasons for this were self-serving. For one thing, he didn’t have as much need to protect himself from the searing criticisms of his wife, for Woolf stands out from the other two writers in her repeated clear expressions, in the suicide notes and elsewhere, of deep indebtedness and gratitude to her husband. Not to give this testimony its full weight, as many feminist critics do, surely runs the risk of a parallel, arguably even greater condescension and suppression of voice than any to be laid at the door of a mere male chauvinist. The other cavil is the relative absence of in-depth historical perspective on the diary form. I should like to have seen a sketch at least of the modern diary’s place in the history of the genre as a whole, and in particular its relation to the long tradition of ‘confessional’ spiritual autobiography and the diary. The inclusion of reference to such material would have helped underpin Seifert’s persuasive fundamental thesis that the modern, secular diary is very much a constructed genre at some remove from any notion of direct, unmediated sincerity of utterance. So on at last to the Mansfield section of the book. Though it is unlikely that Mansfield scholars will turn to it for startling new revelations (Seifert relies quite heavily on previous commentators – Ian Gordon, C. K. Stead, and in particular Margaret Scott), I want to end on the same note of praise by admiring, first, the range of reference and high level of scholarly accuracy and second, the many perceptive unobtrusive interpretative hints and suggestions. As elsewhere, Seifert steers a judicious middle way between extremes, recognising Vincent O’Sullivan’s emphasis on Mansfield’s deep love for Murry at the same time as seeking out sharp passages from the letters and notebooks in which she expresses her exasperation and disillusionment with him. She is customarily dismissive of those who inflate their case against either party with flatulent, overpitched rhetoric like that deployed in James Justus’s claim that Mansfield is ‘the most egocentric writer of her time’ (56). I liked, in particular, Seifert’s treatment of the myth of Mansfield’s Keatsian sainthood as promulgated by Murry – she simply quotes some of his Chadbandian rhetorical questions and lets them do the job of slyly mocking the pose of religiosity: ‘What has Jesus to do with Blake, with Keats, with Katherine Mansfield? He has everything to do with them’ (49). She enabled me to see Lytton Strachey’s famous misogynistic characterisation of Mansfield

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Katherine Mansfield Studies as a ‘foul mouthed, virulent, brazen-faced broomstick of a creature’ more fully as a protest as much against Murry and his hagiographical propensities than as a jibe at Mansfield. And finally, as someone with an interest in Mansfield’s debt to Dickens, she gave me a vital clue to understanding Edward Wagenknecht’s role as a pioneer in establishing this important literary connection. I had not known that Wagenknecht was a card-carrying member of Murry’s crew of Mansfield-sanitisers, and that his writing about Mansfield is of a piece with his vehement denunciation, in Dickens and the Scandalmongers, of Ada Nisbet’s detective work concerning Dickens’s relationship with Ellen Ternan. For Wagenknecht, Ternan and Mansfield were both casta divas, his take on the latter to be sampled in such assertions as this: ‘it was the spiritual aspect of her work in which she was primarily and over-whelmingly interested’ (47). Again, all Seifert needs to do to alert our nostrils to the whiff of the bogus here is to print that hyphenised ‘over-whelmingly’, for hers is a way that avoids sensationalism, scandalmongering and deception. Michael Hollington Former Professor of English Universities of Toulouse–Le Mirail and New South Wales DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000146

Gerri Kimber, Katherine Mansfield: The View from France (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008) 290 pp., £35 / e46.60. ISBN 9783039113927 Katherine Mansfield: The View from France is a careful and detailed study of Katherine Mansfield’s relationship with France. It examines both the influence of French literature on her work and her posthumous reception in the country in which she spent long periods of time, seeking relief from the symptoms of her tuberculosis. Noting that ‘Mansfield studies today centre, for the most part, on [. . .] a rereading of her narrative art from a feminist / modernist viewpoint, with little analysis of its historical roots’. (p. 23) Gerri Kimber explores literary exchanges and convergences between Britain and France at the turn of the century and stresses Proust’s influence and the impact of the Symbolists and Decadents upon Mansfield. Kimber highlights Mansfield’s ‘early symbiosis of specifically French fin de siècle techniques and themes’ (p. 98) and draws attention to her reading, in French, of a variety of authors, including ‘Maupassant, Balzac, Mérimée and Flaubert’ (p. 56). She sees in Baudelaire the origin of Mansfield’s recurrent use of flower symbolism and also considers the influence of Colette, especially her L’envers du music-hall (Music-Hall Sidelights),

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Katherine Mansfield Studies as a ‘foul mouthed, virulent, brazen-faced broomstick of a creature’ more fully as a protest as much against Murry and his hagiographical propensities than as a jibe at Mansfield. And finally, as someone with an interest in Mansfield’s debt to Dickens, she gave me a vital clue to understanding Edward Wagenknecht’s role as a pioneer in establishing this important literary connection. I had not known that Wagenknecht was a card-carrying member of Murry’s crew of Mansfield-sanitisers, and that his writing about Mansfield is of a piece with his vehement denunciation, in Dickens and the Scandalmongers, of Ada Nisbet’s detective work concerning Dickens’s relationship with Ellen Ternan. For Wagenknecht, Ternan and Mansfield were both casta divas, his take on the latter to be sampled in such assertions as this: ‘it was the spiritual aspect of her work in which she was primarily and over-whelmingly interested’ (47). Again, all Seifert needs to do to alert our nostrils to the whiff of the bogus here is to print that hyphenised ‘over-whelmingly’, for hers is a way that avoids sensationalism, scandalmongering and deception. Michael Hollington Former Professor of English Universities of Toulouse–Le Mirail and New South Wales DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000146

Gerri Kimber, Katherine Mansfield: The View from France (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008) 290 pp., £35 / e46.60. ISBN 9783039113927 Katherine Mansfield: The View from France is a careful and detailed study of Katherine Mansfield’s relationship with France. It examines both the influence of French literature on her work and her posthumous reception in the country in which she spent long periods of time, seeking relief from the symptoms of her tuberculosis. Noting that ‘Mansfield studies today centre, for the most part, on [. . .] a rereading of her narrative art from a feminist / modernist viewpoint, with little analysis of its historical roots’. (p. 23) Gerri Kimber explores literary exchanges and convergences between Britain and France at the turn of the century and stresses Proust’s influence and the impact of the Symbolists and Decadents upon Mansfield. Kimber highlights Mansfield’s ‘early symbiosis of specifically French fin de siècle techniques and themes’ (p. 98) and draws attention to her reading, in French, of a variety of authors, including ‘Maupassant, Balzac, Mérimée and Flaubert’ (p. 56). She sees in Baudelaire the origin of Mansfield’s recurrent use of flower symbolism and also considers the influence of Colette, especially her L’envers du music-hall (Music-Hall Sidelights),

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Reviews L’Entrave (The Shackle) and La Vagabonde (The Vagabond). Although Mansfield’s feelings concerning the French were mixed, her attraction to France never ceased and ‘The literary climate of innovation allowed experimental writers like Katherine Mansfield to flourish’ (p. 53). Mansfield’s amorous relationship with Francis Carco, the French poet and novelist, also directly inspired two stories, ‘An Indiscreet Journey’ and ‘Je ne parle pas français’. Kimber also contemplates the artistic influence on Mansfield of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: ‘The world according to Mansfield was not fixed or static, but fleeting, elusive, indefinite. Virginia Woolf . . . was to take up her friend’s “stream-of-consciousness’’ method and transform her own writing, but it was Mansfield who first initiated the experiment’ (p. 91). (And we should add Dorothy Richardson as another initiator of a stream of consciousness style, as employed in Pointed Roofs, the first volume of Pilgrimage, published in 1915.) Kimber identifies the influence of the symbolist movement above all in the ‘fluidity of rhythm, repetitions, echoes, and delicate evasions’ that also became ‘trademarks of Mansfield’s Modernist, narrative technique’ (p. 123). This question of rhythm is one that is effectively addressed in French translations of Mansfield’s work through the lengthening of the sentence or the line. However, other elements of Katherine Mansfield’s prose, such as its humour, are not conveyed in most French translations. Only one translator, Charles Mauron, meets this challenge, according to Kimber, whose detailed analysis of the problems raised by Mansfield’s work in translation I found particularly valuable. Other issues of reception also fostered a distorted critical view of Mansfield’s work in France and induced the development of a legend. Mansfield’s personality and work were falsified by ‘Catholic and reactionary’ critics who made her into an ethereal saint (p. 181). A myth was created which lasted well beyond the Second World War. In 1939, Gabriel Boissy proclaimed that Katherine Mansfield had a ‘Franciscan soul’ (p. 213). Some of these critics were true misogynists: ‘Le choix d’une femme s’exprime rarement par la logique,’ wrote Henri Daniel-Rops, a Catholic novelist (p. 218). ‘They all saw Mansfield as exemplifying their “ideal woman’’, and promoted her as such to the general French reading public’ comments Kimber: ‘Homogeneity, in the case of Katherine Mansfield in France, has led to a serious misrepresentation of a popular literary figure’ (p. 228). This lack of critical integrity is highly discouraging given the fact that, in France, the dividing line between religion and secularism

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Katherine Mansfield Studies has been very clear-cut since the separation of Church and State in 1905. In fact, Mansfield’s occasional references to God – I am thinking of ‘The Doll’s House’ for instance – have been subject to misinterpretation by both religious and non-religious critics, who overlook the central importance of time, memory, and repetition (Kierkegaard’s term) to Mansfield’s work (which, in my view, is ‘spiritual’ because it is existential and connects the present moment with eternity). Similarly, certain feminist critics have seized upon Mansfield’s writings as a systematic representation of their views, disregarding the work itself. We may hope that academic critics in France might show themselves less biased in the future and consider Mansfield’s work without prejudices or systematic straitjackets. A priority must be to provide a new French translation of Mansfield’s work. Anne Mounic Paris 3 Sorbonne nouvelle DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000158

Katie Roiphe, Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles: 1910–1939 (London: Virago, 2008) 343 pp., £12.99. ISBN 9781844082728 Katie Roiphe’s Uncommon Arrangements takes the innovative approach of examining London literary culture through the lens of the marriages and romantic liaisons of some of its central actors. The richness of this book lies in Roiphe’s attention to detail and meticulous research, made possible by the fact that her players articulated their thoughts and feelings about themselves, their lovers, their relationships and each other in their letters, journals and fiction. Roiphe exploits her historical perspective to draw together these sources and offer the reader an intimate view of relationships that in many instances would have been obscure to the people involved. Roiphe argues that her couples attempted to forge a new, modern approach to sex and love by variously adopting open marriages, quietly tolerating affairs, introducing third, fourth and sometimes fifth parties to fulfil sexual, emotional and intellectual needs, and countenancing escape if togetherness became untenable. Adherence to honesty, rather than propriety, was the new morality, as reflected in the attitudes of H. G. Wells and D. H. Lawrence to their lovers. As Roiphe puts it: ‘One didn’t have to behave well, one simply had to tell the truth about one’s bad behaviour’ (97). Yet many of the people concerned yearned for the security that the Victorian model of marriage seemed to offer, and

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Katherine Mansfield Studies has been very clear-cut since the separation of Church and State in 1905. In fact, Mansfield’s occasional references to God – I am thinking of ‘The Doll’s House’ for instance – have been subject to misinterpretation by both religious and non-religious critics, who overlook the central importance of time, memory, and repetition (Kierkegaard’s term) to Mansfield’s work (which, in my view, is ‘spiritual’ because it is existential and connects the present moment with eternity). Similarly, certain feminist critics have seized upon Mansfield’s writings as a systematic representation of their views, disregarding the work itself. We may hope that academic critics in France might show themselves less biased in the future and consider Mansfield’s work without prejudices or systematic straitjackets. A priority must be to provide a new French translation of Mansfield’s work. Anne Mounic Paris 3 Sorbonne nouvelle DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000158

Katie Roiphe, Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles: 1910–1939 (London: Virago, 2008) 343 pp., £12.99. ISBN 9781844082728 Katie Roiphe’s Uncommon Arrangements takes the innovative approach of examining London literary culture through the lens of the marriages and romantic liaisons of some of its central actors. The richness of this book lies in Roiphe’s attention to detail and meticulous research, made possible by the fact that her players articulated their thoughts and feelings about themselves, their lovers, their relationships and each other in their letters, journals and fiction. Roiphe exploits her historical perspective to draw together these sources and offer the reader an intimate view of relationships that in many instances would have been obscure to the people involved. Roiphe argues that her couples attempted to forge a new, modern approach to sex and love by variously adopting open marriages, quietly tolerating affairs, introducing third, fourth and sometimes fifth parties to fulfil sexual, emotional and intellectual needs, and countenancing escape if togetherness became untenable. Adherence to honesty, rather than propriety, was the new morality, as reflected in the attitudes of H. G. Wells and D. H. Lawrence to their lovers. As Roiphe puts it: ‘One didn’t have to behave well, one simply had to tell the truth about one’s bad behaviour’ (97). Yet many of the people concerned yearned for the security that the Victorian model of marriage seemed to offer, and

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Reviews a few ultimately preferred it. Roiphe contextualises these marriages in the contemporary politics of sex, marriage and feminism: ‘They were destined to construct their personal lives in that highly unstable spot, poised between an intense nostalgia for traditional ways of doing things and a great hunger for equality and progress’ (8). Their letters and journals reveal that they consciously participated in and even constructed this tension. There is much in Uncommon Arrangements for the Mansfield fan, and it is exciting to see her attract so much attention in this text. The introductory chapter ‘borrows’ its title from one of Mansfield’s most acclaimed stories, ‘Marriage à la Mode’, a phrase Roiphe uses to refer to this ‘certain type of progressive marriage’. Mansfield’s letter to Princess Bibesco asking her to stop writing ‘little love letters’ to her husband because it is one of the things that is ‘not done’ captures Roiphe’s thesis that these couples attempted to articulate new rules of marriage in their new world. Roiphe’s chapter on Mansfield and Murry highlights what she describes as the ‘childlike’ quality of their relationship and contends that Mansfield’s frustration with Murry’s refusal of adult responsibility led to the proliferation of ‘dashing, weakwilled men’ in her fiction (90). She argues that after Mansfield’s illness the couple’s ‘romantic dynamic was [. . .] largely structured around parting and being reunited’ (81), and likens the relationship to ‘a fat romance novel’ that never ends because the two protagonists are never united with any sense of permanent resolution. Writing – their telegrams, letter and journals – became their relationship, rather than simply a reflection of it. Roiphe’s account of the Mansfield/Murry marriage is interesting as it draws together so much of their mutual correspondence, but it fails to provide any real insight into their relationship. The complex nature of their marriage is simplified to fit the ‘childlike’ narrative she foregrounds. The elaborate yet transient nature of their domestic arrangements is presented as amusing and even ridiculous in place of attempting a more complex analysis or exploring other possible interpretations. Like many autobiographical accounts of Mansfield the chapter follows her declining health and nomadic existence, ending abruptly with her death. Ida Baker’s role is underexplored; indeed, the ‘morality of honesty’ argument Roiphe develops in relation to other marriages could have interesting applications to this friendship. The profound impact of this marriage on Murry, and Mansfield’s shadowy presence in his life after her death, also would have been worth pursuing. Roiphe’s discussion of this marriage is a little disappointing in comparison to the riveting accounts she gives of the love triangle

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Katherine Mansfield Studies between Radclyffe Hall, Una Troubridge and Evguenia Souline, the romantic liaisons of Mansfield’s cousin Elizabeth Von Arnim and the complicated arrangements of Vanessa and Clive Bell, Roger Fry, Virginia Woolf and Duncan Grant. Roiphe is keenly aware of the dangers of writing generically about desire from a historical perspective. She strives to retain a neutral viewpoint and avoids judging the individuals involved. Yet the overwhelming evidence that it was the men rather than the women doing the sexual exploring leads Roiphe to favour the women’s perspective. In seeking to understand what motivated Jane Wells to accept her husband H. G. Wells’ marital terms, what possessed Mansfield to suffer such an inattentive husband and what persuaded Elizabeth Von Arnim to marry John Francis Russell, Roiphe tends to speculate beyond the scope of her evidence and project these women into popular mythologies of female desire: a magnetic attraction of literary genius and to powerful, misogynistic men, a desire to nurture and control, and a belief in the capacity for change after marriage. Roiphe’s preference for the women’s perspective also means that while she is acutely conscious of the feminist politics of the time she pays little attention to ideas about men and masculinity that emerged in the post-Victorian era. The gender model of the Victorian pater familias is fundamentally at odds with the personalities of many of these men, who were trying to forge an alternative masculine identity that was itself complicated by the new feminist politics. Roiphe describes Lawrence’s criticism that Murry should ‘be a man’ in relation to Mansfield’s affairs and even quotes Murry’s comment that ‘there was little indeed of the conquering male about [him]’, but does not investigate these ideas further. Although Uncommon Arrangements has these shortcomings, the energetic and celebratory tone of Roiphe’s writing and the innovative insight she provides into these individuals and their relationships renders her book truly enjoyable to read. It provides an entertaining and revealing perspective on life, sex and love in London’s literary circles during these years. Sarah Ailwood University of Canberra DOI: 10.3366/E204145010900016X

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REVIEW ARTICLE

An Overview of Mansfield’s Studies in Spain and a Review of Gerardo Rodríguez Salas’s Hijas de la Diosa Blanca. (Oviedo: Septem, 2007) 224 pp., 37e / £32. ISBN 9788496491311 There is a groundswell of Spanish writers and researchers working on Katherine Mansfield today, an author who, until recently, was regarded as being beyond the boundaries of so-called respectable, canonical literature and therefore deemed unworthy of scholarly study in Spain. Until the 1980s there was a significant scarcity of research works in Spanish on Mansfield, but in the last two decades there has been a notable upsurge of interest in her work, especially among young PhD students. One reason for the early neglect of Mansfield’s work in Spain has been the tendency among reputed scholars, as well as among young researchers, to focus on mainstream foreign authors – a practice that reinforces a causal relationship between the so-called pivotal figures of literature and scholarly recognition and prestige. A second, and perhaps more obvious reason for the neglect of her work, is the negotiation of the language barrier. To study the work of a foreign author inevitably involves trying to decode literary messages in the original language of these works that requires a confident handling of that language. A further reason for the marginal treatment of Mansfield by critics and scholars in the Spanish context is one unfortunately common among the most traditional sectors in this field, namely that she is a writer of short stories rather than novels. Neglect has been the preserve of many other short story writers, regardless of their geographical location or origins, such as O. Henry and Kate Chopin. The first attempt to approach Mansfield as a subject of doctoral research in Spain came in 1987, when Ma Isabel Carrera Suárez explored the recurrence of formal and thematic strategies in a sample of women’s short stories in English, including Mansfield’s, from a feminist perspective. Despite the fact that Mansfield’s works are included in the curriculum for the degree of English Philology in most Spanish universities, it was not until 2003 that Mansfield became the central focus of doctoral research in Gerardo Rodríguez Salas’s

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Katherine Mansfield Studies thesis on the ‘marginal element’ in Mansfield. Through a detailed analysis of her stories, Rodríguez Salas examines different feminist perspectives that interact in Mansfield’s work, along with the multifocal displacement suffered by Mansfield by virtue of her geographical origin, her gender, and the challenging innovations of her work. Mansfield’s work has also received only limited attention in the wider context of Spanish literary criticism. One of the early attempts to analyse her work is Carmen Bravo Villasante’s ‘Katherine Mansfield otra vez’ (‘Katherine Mansfield Again’, 1981) in which she highlights the ‘trivial elements’ that displace the significance of the plot in Mansfield’s stories. For Bravo Villasante, Mansfield’s stories are written in a poetic prose influenced by the Symbolist movement, as well as by authors, such as Anton Chekhov and Premio Azorín. A similar focus is adopted by Brian Hughes, in a 1998 article for Revista de Estudios Ingleses, which studies the lyrical element in Mansfield’s stories from a diachronic perspective, as well as highlighting the evolution and maturation of her narrative technique. In 1988, Ana María Navales read Mansfield through the major literary influences that are present in her work, whilst focusing on the tension between fiction and autobiography and her perceived tendency towards sentimentality in some of her stories. In 1995, Lugo Bertrán analysed female oppression under patriarchal tyranny in Mansfield and in the works of Spanish author Violeta López Suria, claiming Mansfield as a canonical modernist writer. In his substantial research, Rodríguez Salas focuses mainly on what he considers to be a chosen form of marginality in Mansfield. He attributes this to her decision to write in a genre that has been generally perceived as subsidiary to the dominant novel form, to the feminist vindications that are a constant in her work, and to what he sees as the postmodern aspects of her writing. In both ‘Diálogos para una voz: la narrativa experimental de Katherine Mansfield’ (‘Dialogues for One Voice: The Experimental Narrative of Katherine Mansfield’, 2005) and ‘The Postmodernist Katherine Mansfield: Beyond the Self of Modernism in “The Garden Party’’’ (2005), he identifies the formal and experimental aspects of Mansfield’s prose which move it beyond the boundaries of modernist writing and into the terrain of postmodernism. In El postmodernismo incipiente de una modernista renegada (The Emerging Post-Modernism of a Dissenting Modernist, 2009) he develops this analysis more fully. The issue of maternity in Mansfield has also been a central aspect of Rodríguez Salas’s research, as well as my own. In ‘Desenmascarando la maternidad: la imitación intencionada en Katherine Mansfield’

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An Overview of Mansfield’s Studies in Spain (‘Unmasking Maternity: Intentional Imitation in Katherine Mansfield’, 2004) he explores Mansfield’s use of parody and excess, as well as the presence of mimicry, or intentional imitation, and in ‘Doy vida a mis personajes: Maternidad agridulce y reescritura del cuerpo femenino en Katherine Mansfield’ (‘Sweet and Sour Maternity and Re-écriture of the Female Body in Katherine Mansfield’, 2007) he considers motherhood as a re-writing of the female body. Recently, Rodríguez Salas and I have aimed to shed light on a particular link between Mansfield and Virginia Woolf that goes beyond their literary friendship. There has been much speculation about the relationship between these two women, based on professional rivalry as much as on a mutual admiration, but a further connection is suggested in the way that they both use the imagery of the grotesque in order to portray the reality of female oppression and the paradoxical distribution of power in a society ruled by what they see as unfit males. Our forthcoming book, A Public Meal for Two: Cannibalism and the Female Grotesque in Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf (forthcoming, 2010), uses the idea of cannibalism, which is associated with the artistic and anthropological principles of carnival, to discuss maternity and power relations in works by Mansfield and Woolf. In a number of articles, Rodríguez Salas has reflected on Mansfield’s use of stereotypical images associated with the female. ‘“As Old as the Hills’’: La New Woman en la narrativa de Katherine Mansfield’ (‘“As Old as the Hills’’: The New Woman in Katherine Mansfield’s Narrative’) and ‘Adiós a Cenicienta: “The Tiredness of Rosabel’’ de Katherine Mansfield’ (‘Farewell to Cinderella: Katherine Mansfield’s “The Tiredness of Rosabel’’’), both published in 2006, offer a detailed insight into the image of the New Woman that emerges with renewed energy to contest masculine repression. A more radical version of the struggling female is unveiled in ‘Demystifying the Wickedness of Women: The Femme Fatale in Katherine Mansfield’ (2004), and this is also the focus of his 2007 Hijas de la Diosa Blanca (Daughters of the White Goddess), where, throughout its five chapters, Rodríguez Salas examines how two major currents of feminism, Gynocriticism and ‘Recuperative Feminism’, are interwoven in Mansfield’s short stories to the extent of forming a pattern through which the narratives progress. The study initially outlines what, for the author, are the significant details of Mansfield’s life, her relationship with other contemporary authors, such as Virginia Woolf, and offers a well-substantiated overview of some of the feminisms that are central to Rodríguez Salas’s analysis. It is in drawing on the plurality of feminist perspectives and taking into account their dynamic interaction that Rodríguez Salas is able to

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Katherine Mansfield Studies offer such a rich and multi-sided context for his analysis of Mansfield’s work. From Rodríguez Salas’s gynocritical perspective, Mansfield emerges as an author deeply concerned about patriarchal control over both literary creation and the social order, with a vehement desire to subvert the prevailing system. He draws on postmodern ideas which posit a lack of authorial hegemony in narrative to explore this further, and goes on to argue that Mansfield’s work can be seen to epitomise ideas and techniques central to post-structuralist feminism. He further argues that Mansfield’s use of ‘intentional imitation’ is one of the major subversive strategies through which she transgresses and questions conventional gender roles and hierarchies, drawing on parallels between the use of this technique and Julia Kristeva’s theories of masquerade. The idea of mimicry as an instrument used to erode deeply rooted gender stereotypes (embodied in figures such as the femme fatale, the New Woman, the lesbian, the typically feminine Angel in the House, the dominant male, the weakling, or the effeminate) is explored through a number of stories, employing techniques such as excess, parody, or imitation, in order to underpin Mansfield’s destabilization of gender stereotypes. Finally, Rodríguez Salas analyses Mansfield’s choice of the short story as a successful medium for the growth of her subversive intentionality. He believes Mansfield’s use of temporality plays a subversive role in her unconventional representations of marriage, maternity and sexuality, thus giving voice to a feminine perspective persistently silenced at this time. A final section of explanatory notes completes this ground-breaking exploration of femininity and narrative in which Rodríguez Salas unveils the most transgressive aspects of Mansfield’s writing and her personality. Thanks to the extensive research of Rodríguez Salas and Carrera, amongst others, it is now possible for readers in Spain to develop an understanding of a long-neglected female writer who mastered storytelling at a time when novel writing was deemed essential for professional recognition. Perhaps due to her increasing ill health, Mansfield transmitted in her stories the marvel of an existence beyond the boundaries of nationality, gender, and compositional rules. It is our hope that further Mansfield research and study will ensue in Spain, releasing Mansfield from the narrow precincts of misunderstood canonical writing. Isabel M. Andrés Cuevas University of Granada DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000171

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An Overview of Mansfield’s Studies in Spain Related Sources Andrés Cuevas, Isabel M. and Rodríguez Salas, Gerardo, A Public Meal for Two: Cannibalism and the Female Grotesque in Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf (Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, forthcoming 2010). Bravo Villasante, Carmen, ‘Katherine Mansfield otra vez’, Nueva Estafeta, 26 (1981), pp. 84–6. Bertrán, Dorian Lugo, ‘Percances de ocupación en Katherine Mansfield y Violeta López Suria’, Revista de Estudios Hipánicos, 22 (1995), pp. 359–78. Hughes, Brian, ‘Lyric Compression in the Stories of Katherine Mansfield’. Revista de Estudios Ingleses (1998), pp. 101–119. Navales, Ana María, ‘Una pasión literaria (en el centenario de Katherine Mansfield)’, Turia. Revista Cultural, 10 (1988), pp. 137–54. Rodríguez Salas, Gerardo, ‘Adiós a Cenicienta: ‘The Tiredness of Rosabel’ de Katherine Mansfield’, in Proceedings of the 29th AEDEAN Conference, eds. Alejandro Alcaraz Sintes et al. (Jaén: Universidad de Jaén, 2006), pp. 237–245. —— “‘As Old as the Hills’’: La New Woman en la narrativa de Katherine Mansfield’, in De habitaciones propias y otros espacios conquistados. Estudios sobre mujeres y literatura en lengua inglesa en homenaje a Blanca López Román, eds. Gerardo Rodríguez Salas et al. (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2006), pp. 75–87. —— ‘Demystifying the wickedness of women: the femme fatale in Katherine Mansfield’, in Considering Evil and Human Wickedness. At the Interface Series, vol. 3, eds. Daniel E. Keen and Pamela Rossi Keen (Oxford: Inter–Disciplinary Press, 2004), pp. 211–222. —— ‘Desenmascarando la maternidad: la imitación intencionada en Katherine Mansfield’, El Cuento en Red, 10 (2004), pp. 46–56 —— ‘Diálogos para una voz: la narrativa experimental de Katherine Mansfield’, in Towards an Understanding of the English Language: Past, Present and Future. Studies in Honour of Fernando Serrano Valverde, eds. Luis Quereda, Neil MacLaren, et al. (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2005), pp. 347–60. —— ‘Doy vida a mis personajes: Maternidad agridulce y reescritura del cuerpo femenino en Katherine Mansfield’, in Cuerpos de mujeres: miradas, representaciones e identidades, eds. Carmen Gregorio Gil et al. (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2007), pp. 367–380. —— Hijas de la Diosa Blanca. Ginocrítica y feminismo restaurador en la narrativa de Katherine Mansfield (Oviedo: Septem, 2007). —— Katherine Mansfield: El posmodernismo incipiente de una modernista renegada (Madrid: Verbum, 2009). —— ‘The Postmodernist Katherine Mansfield: Beyond the Self of Modernism in The Garden-Party’, Agora: A Humanities Online Journal, 3 : 2 (Spring, 2005), pp. 1–11.

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Sarah Ailwood is a lecturer at the University of Canberra. Her interest in Katherine Mansfield focuses on issues of gender and empire in her stories. Her other research interests include Jane Austen, men in women’s writing and women’s life narrative and the law. Isabel María Andrés Cuevas teaches English at the University of Granada, where she obtained her PhD with honours in 2006. She has published widely on Virginia Woolf, including Virginia Woolf and Her World; A Deformed Existence; Analysis of Carnival and the Grotesque in The Years; and A Public Meal for Two: Cannibalism and Gender in Mansfield and Woolf. Her interests are Modernism and contemporary women writers. Erika Baldt is an independent scholar who recently earned her PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her thesis is a comparative study of Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf, and their contemporaries of the Harlem Renaissance, Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen. She has published articles in The Virginia Woolf Miscellany and Interfaces. Jenny Bornholdt is a Wellington-based poet, whose most recent book is The Rocky Shore (Victoria University Press 2008). Her poems about her time in Menton during 2002 are collected in Summer (Victoria University Press 2003). Riemke Ensing is an Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Auckland where she taught for many years. Her poetry, art writings and essays have been published in New Zealand and overseas. She is currently working on a set of poems entitled ‘Oh Lucky Man’ to celebrate the Charles Brasch centennial. The poems will be hand set and printed by Tara McLeod, with images by Inge Doesburg, and published in a limited edition from Otakau Press, at the Otago University Special Collections Library in September/ October 2009.

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Notes on Contributors Kirsty Gunn is the author of several works of fiction, as well as 44 Things, a collection of memoirs, essays, short stories and poetry. She is the current Randell Cottage Resident in New Zealand, where she is working on a book called Thorndon, with Katherine Mansfield at its centre. She has a Chair in Writing at the University of Dundee. Clare Hanson has published widely on twentieth-century women’s writing. Her first book, co-authored with Andrew Gurr, was Katherine Mansfield, and she has also edited Mansfield’s critical writings and published books on the short story, on Virginia Woolf, and on the ‘woman’s novel’. Her most recent book was A Cultural History of Pregnancy and she is currently completing a study of eugenics in postwar Britain. Michael Hollington is a Former Professor of English at the Universities of Toulouse-Le Mirail and New South Wales. He is best known as a Dickensian, but he has also published books on Katherine Mansfield and Günter Grass, and edited John Milton. He is currently heavily involved in Dickens’ work, editing two books on Dickens and Italy and two volumes on the reception of Dickens in Europe. He is also preparing a study of Mansfield and Dickens. Kevin Ireland lives in Auckland, New Zealand. His eighteenth book of poems, Table Talk, will be published this year. His many other publications include two volumes of memoirs, five novels, a collection of short stories and a book on fishing. He was the second recipient of the Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry. Anna Jackson lives in Island Bay, Wellington, and lectures in English at Victoria University.Her most recent book of poetry is The Gas Leak (Auckland University Press, 2006). Publications in 2009 include Floating Worlds: Essays on Contemporary New Zealand Fiction, co-edited with Jane Stafford, and Diary Poetics, forthcoming from Routledge, which includes a chapter on Katherine Mansfield’s journals. Penelope Jackson is the curator of the Tauranga Art Gallery, New Zealand. Recent publications include Edward Bullmore: A Surrealist Odyssey (2008) and The Brown Years (2009), about artist Nigel Brown. She has contributed to the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Art New Zealand, UNO and Bravado magazines and recently submitted her PhD to the University of Queensland. Sydney Janet Kaplan is Professor of English at the University of Washington. Her publications include Feminine Consciousness in the Modern British Novel and Katherine Mansfield and the Origins of Modernist

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Katherine Mansfield Studies Fiction. Her current book project is Circulating Genius: John Middleton Murry, Katherine Mansfield and D.H. Lawrence. Janka Kašˇcáková is Assistant Professor at the Department of English language and literature at Catholic University in Ružomberok, Slovakia. She received her PhD in English literature from Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia in 2007. Her research interests include nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century English literature. Jan Kemp, a New Zealand-born poet, lives outside Frankfurt am Main, Germany, with her husband, the critic Dieter Riemenschneider. Co-editor of three double-CD anthologies, Classic, Contemporary and New NZ Poets in Performance (2006/7/8), she received an MNZM in 2005. A CD ‘Jan Kemp reading her poems’ is available from www.poetryarchive.org Kath MacLean is a Professor of English and creative writing and currently Writer in Residence at the Canadian Author’s Association. Since the publication of her award winning first book, For a Cappuccino on Bloor, her poetry, nonfiction and creative nonfiction have been generating critical acclaim across Canada. Anne Mounic is maître de conference/lecturer at the University Paris 3 – Sorbonne nouvelle. She is co-editor of the on-line literary review Temporel. Recent publications include Quand on a marché plusieurs années (a novel). Among her critical essays are ‘Psyché et le secret de Perséphone: Prose en métamorphose, mémoire et création (Katherine Mansfield, Catherine Pozzi, Anna Kavan, Djuna Barnes)’ (2004), and ‘Jacob ou l’être du possible’ (2009). Eiko Nakano is a lecturer in the Faculty of Cultural Studies, Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan. She received a PhD from the University of Stirling, Scotland, for her thesis, ‘One or Many: Bergsonian Readings of Katherine Mansfield’s Modernism’ in 2005. She has published several articles on Mansfield. Gregory O’Brien is a poet, essayist, artist and curator, whose recent publications include News of the Swimmer Reaches Shore, a book-length meditation on Menton and the Antipodes, and A Nest of Singing Birds; 100 Years of the NZ School Journal. Between 1996 and June 2009, he was a curator at City Gallery, Wellington. Vincent O’Sullivan, Professor Emeritus, Victoria University of Wellington, has edited, with Margaret Scott, the five volume edition of Katherine Mansfield’s Collected Letters, published by Oxford University

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Notes on Contributors Press. He is also widely published as a poet, fiction writer, playwright, and biographer. His most recent work is Further Convictions Pending: Poems 1998–2008. Helen Shaw was a poet, short-story writer and editor. She was born in Timaru, NZ, in 1913 and died in Auckland in 1985. She studied at Canterbury University and was married to Frank Hofmann, a photographer from Prague. Apart from her volumes of poetry and short stories, her published works included essays on Frank Sargeson and D’Arcy Cresswell. Angela Smith is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English Studies at the University of Stirling in Scotland. Her books include East African Writing in English (Macmillan 1989), Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf: A Public of Two (Clarendon 1999), and Katherine Mansfield: A Literary Life (Palgrave 2000). She is an associate editor for the new edition of the Oxford Companion to English Literature, to be published in 2009. C. K. Stead, Professor Emeritus, University of Auckland, is known as a critic of twentieth-century Modernism, and of New Zealand literature, including Mansfield. He is the author of a dozen novels, and as many volumes of poems recently gathered in Collected Poems, 1951–2006. He was awarded a CBE in 1985, and in 2007 his country’s highest award, the ONZ.

DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000183

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

‘Tea’ by Jenny Bornholdt was first published in Summer, Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2003. ‘Love Affair’ by Riemke Ensing, was first published in The K.M File and other poems with Katherine Mansfield, Hazard Press, Christchurch, 1993, and reprinted in Talking Pictures – Selected Poems, HeadworX, Wellington, 2000. ‘Five poems from Menton – Jan Kemp’ of which ‘Visite-patrimoine – Villas’ is part of No 2, was first published in Antipodes, no 5, 1999, pp. 49–52 by the Dept. of French Language and Literature in association with the Research Centre for NZ Studies, University of Otago, Dunedin. ‘Isola Bella’ by C. K. Stead, was first published in the New Yorker, August 2008, and subsequently published as a limited edition booklet by Kakapo Books, London, September 2008. ‘Today at the Villa Isola Bella’ by Helen Shaw, was first published in Time Told from a Tower, Nag’s Head Press, Christchurch, 1985, pp. 38–9.

DOI: 10.3366/E2041450109000195

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EUP JOURNALS ONLINE The Journal of Beckett Studies ISSN 0309-5207 eISSN

1759-7811

Two issues per year Find The Journal of Beckett Studies at www.eupjournals.com/JOBS The Journal of Beckett Studies has been the journal of record for the established and expanding field of Beckett studies for over thirty years. It has always been blind peer-reviewed and is recognised internationally as a scholarly journal of high standard. Early in 2008 a new team of editors came together with a view to renewing the journal and moving it into the age of electronic publishing. The central commitment of the new group is to producing two high-quality issues each year from 2009. The co-ordination of the journal is moving to the University of Western Sydney and the team is presently assessing the most effective means of relaunching and further developing the profile and subscription base of the journal. Each issue contains an introduction followed by a number of essays or notes. There are also review essays, reviews of books and reviews of performances in each issue, and letters of reply where such are required. In addition, photographs, diagrams, and images of manuscript material may be reproduced from time to time. The journal will alternate between themed issues, often overseen by guest editors, and general issues drawing upon non-themed contributions.

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EUP JOURNALS ONLINE The Oxford Literary Review ISSN

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1757-1642

Two issues per year Find the Oxford Literary Review at www.eupjournals.com/OLR Oxford Literary Review, founded in the 1970s, is Britain’s oldest journal of literary theory. It is concerned especially with the history and development of deconstructive thinking in all areas of intellectual, cultural and political life. In the past, Oxford Literary Review has published new work by Derrida, Blanchot, Barthes, Foucault, Lacoue-Labarthe, Nancy, Cixous and many others, and it continues to publish innovative and controversial work in the tradition and spirit of deconstruction. Planned issues include ‘ Telepathies’, ‘Writing and Immortality’ and ‘Deconstruction and Environmentalism’. The journal operates partly through special issues with a provocative theme (e.g. ‘The University in Ruins’, or ‘Disastrous Blanchot’) but also invites contributions across a wide range of intellectual disciplines on issues and writers belonging to or engaging the work of deconstructive thinking (such as Heidegger, Blanchot, Levinas, Irigaray and others). With the increase to two issues per year, Oxford Literary Review will alternate commissioned special issues, for which papers will be actively commissioned by the issue’s editor, with issues made up of unsolicited submissions usually relating to a specific theme. Calls inviting submissions for these non-commissioned issues will be announced via www.eupjournals.com/olr

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