Diario

by Katherine Mansfield, Aránzazu Usandizaga (Translator)

Cuando el diario de Katherine Mansfield se publicó por primera vez en 1927, Dorothy Parker, que firmó la reseña para The New Yorker, acabó su artículo diciendo: «Lo que leemos es tan íntimo que casi me siento culpable de haber transitado por estas páginas. Es unlibro magnífico, pero creo que solo los grandes y tristes ojos de Katherine hubieran debido leer estas palabras». En efecto, el diario de Katherine Mansfield no es tal; la autora no lo escribió con esta intención, pero su marido, John M. Murry, que además fue su editor, al morir ella, en 1923, se dedicó a rescatar todos los documentos inéditos que Katherine había dejado desde 1914 hasta tres meses antes de su muerte -fragmentos de ficción, pequeñas notas personales, incluso los papeles donde Katherine apuntaba las cuentas domésticas- y construyó con ellos este magnífico testimonio, que muestra las emociones y pensamientos más íntimos de la autora, su manera de trabajar y su amor por la vida. Lleno de agudezas, cargado de ternura y de sentido del humor, este diario es un documento importante para entender el espíritu de las mujeres en el siglo XX. Quizá por eso, Irène Némirovsky, autora de Suite francesa, anotó en su propio diario estas palabras el día antes de ser arrestada: «Estoy rodeada de agujas de pino, sentada encima de mi cárdigan azul en medio de un océano de hojas... En el bolso llevo el segundo volumen de Ana Karenina, el Diario de Katherine Mansfield y una naranja».

Genres: Nonfiction, Classics, Biography, Womens, Diary, Memoir, Journal

296 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Kathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp) was a prominent New Zealand modernist writer of short fiction who wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield.

Katherine Mansfield is widely considered one of the best short story writers of her period. A number of her works, including "Miss Brill", "Prelude", "The Garden Party", "The Doll's House", and later works such as "The Fly", are frequently collected in short story anthologies. Mansfield also proved ahead of her time in her adoration of Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov, and incorporated some of his themes and techniques into her writing.

Katherine Mansfield was part of a "new dawn" in English literature with T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. She was associated with the brilliant group of writers who made the London of the period the centre of the literary world.

Nevertheless, Mansfield was a New Zealand writer - she could not have written as she did had she not gone to live in England and France, but she could not have done her best work if she had not had firm roots in her native land. She used her memories in her writing from the beginning, people, the places, even the colloquial speech of the country form the fabric of much of her best work.

Mansfield's stories were the first of significance in English to be written without a conventional plot. Supplanting the strictly structured plots of her predecessors in the genre (Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells), Mansfield concentrated on one moment, a crisis or a turning point, rather than on a sequence of events. The plot is secondary to mood and characters. The stories are innovative in many other ways. They feature simple things - a doll's house or a charwoman. Her imagery, frequently from nature, flowers, wind and colours, set the scene with which readers can identify easily.

Themes too are universal: human isolation, the questioning of traditional roles of men and women in society, the conflict between love and disillusionment, idealism and reality, beauty and ugliness, joy and suffering, and the inevitability of these paradoxes. Oblique narration (influenced by Chekhov but certainly developed by Mansfield) includes the use of symbolism - the doll's house lamp, the fly, the pear tree - hinting at the hidden layers of meaning. Suggestion and implication replace direct detail.

Reviews

[Violet wells · Rating 5 out of 5]

In July 1942 Irène Némirovsky, author of the now-bestselling Suite Française, wrote in her notebook on her last day of freedom before she was deported by the Nazis, "The pine woods all around me. I am sitting on my blue cardigan in the middle of an ocean of leaves, wet and rotting from last night's storm, as if I were on a raft, my legs tucked under me! In my bag I have put Volume II of Anna Karenina, the Journal of KM and an orange."

KM's husband John Middleton Murry published this journal after her death and it went on to become a best seller. All the royalties went to him and he was accused of being jackal and became "the most hated man in England". I've just read a review here on GR of KM's scrapbook which Murry also published and the reviewer says: "The results of Katherine Mansfield willingly consigning her literary works, notebooks, letters, etc. to a self-serving contemptible man are unfortunate." It would appear "self-serving" and "contemptible" are monikers for Murry which are being somewhat thoughtlessly handed down from generation to generation. Was he really that bad? He certainly wasn't the ideal husband, but then KM was hardly the ideal wife ("I'd always rather be with people who loved me too little rather than with people who loved me too much") And I can think of much worse husbands - TS Eliot and Ted Hughes spring immediately to mind. Murry was essentially a blunderer rather than a monster. And it was fascinating to learn how this journal was put together. In truth this journal never existed. It was compiled by Murry from fragments of diary entries, unsent letters, notes for stories and various scraps - in other words anything dated which could be woven into a volume called a journal. Which to my mind makes it one of the most brilliant editorial feats in the history of literature. Needless to say he received no praise. In fact, his achievement continued to meet with a kind of sanctimonious prudery. Dorothy Parker, in her review, says: "It's a beautiful book and an invaluable one, but it is her own book and only her sad dark eyes should have read its words." (The garish sentimentality of that "her sad dark eyes" is a red flag that we're dealing with a suspect emotion here!) It's interesting no such moral outcry followed the publication of Virginia Woolf's diaries or letters or anyone else's for that matter. It's also worth noting that KM had an agreement at one point with her publisher to write a journal for publication. So some of the time - one could argue all the time as she always struck me as conscious of posterity and destroyed everything she didn't want read, even going to the lengths of buying back her old letters - she was aware her words would be read.

A wonderful added bonus of this edition is that it contains Virginia Woolf's review which is generally regarded as ambivalent and to my mind discloses the odd note of jealousy that marred her relationship with Katherine.

"The most distinguished writers of short stories in England are agreed, says Mr Murry, that as a writer of short stories Katherine Mansfield was hors concours. No one has succeeded her and no critic has been able to define her quality. But the reader of her journal is well content to let such questions be. It is not the quality of her writing or the degree of her fame that interests us in her diary, but the spectacle of a mind - a terribly sensitive mind - receiving one after another the haphazard impressions of eight years of life. Her diary was a mystical companion. "Come my unseen, my unknown, let us talk together," she says on beginning a new volume. In it she noted facts - the weather, an engagement; she sketched scenes; she analysed her character; she described a pigeon or a dream or a conversation, nothing could be more fragmentary; nothing more private. We feel we are watching a mind which is alone with itself; a mind which has so little thought of an audience (disagree with Virginia on this point!) that it will make use of a shorthand of its own now and then, or, as the mind in its loneliness tends to do, divide into two and talk to itself.

But then as he scraps accumulate we find ourselves giving them, or more probably receiving from Katherine Mansfield herself, a direction. From what point of view is she looking at life as she sits there, terribly sensitive (second time she's used this rather disparaging phrase!), registering one after another such diverse impressions? She is a writer; a born writer. Everything she feels and sees and hears is not fragmentary and separate; it belongs together as writing. Sometimes the note is directly made for a story. "Let me remember when I write about that fiddle how it runs up lightly and swings down sorrowful; how it searches,' she notes. Or 'Lumbargo. This is a very queer thing. So sudden, so painful, I must remember it when I write about an old man. The start to get up, the pause, the look of fury, and how, lying at night, one seems to get locked. ..'

Again, the moment itself suddenly puts on significance, and she traces the outline as if to preserve it. "It's raining but the air is soft, smoky, warm. Big drops patter on the languid leaves, the tobacco flowers lean over. Now there is a rustle in the ivy. Wingly has appeared from the garden next door; he bounds from the wall. And delicately, lifting his paws, pointing his ears, very afraid the big wave will overtake him, he wades over the lake of green grass.' The sister of Nazareth 'showing her pale gums and big discoloured teeth' asks for money. The thin dog. So thin that his body is like 'a cage on four wooden pegs', runs own the street. In some sense, she feels, the thin dog is the street. In all this we seem to be in the midst of unfinished stories; here is a beginning; here an end. They only need a loop of words thrown round them to be complete.

But then the diary is so private and so instinctive that it allows another self to break off from the self that writes and to stand apart watching it write. The writing self was a queer self; sometimes nothing would induce it to write. 'there is so much to do and I do so little. Life would almost be perfect here if only when I was pretending to work I always was working. Look at the stories that wait and wait just at the threshold. …next day. Yet take this morning for instance. I don't want to write anything. It's grey; it's heavy and dull. And short stories seem unreal and not worth doing. I don't want to write; I want to live. What does she mean by that? It's not easy to say. But there you are!'

What does she mean by that? No one felt more seriously the importance of writing than she did. In all the pages of her journal, instinctive, rapid as they are, her attitude toward her work is admirable, sane, caustic and austere. There is no literary gossip; no vanity; no jealousy. (Because Murry had edited these things out of the version VW read. Hermione Lee is much closer to the truth when she describes her as "malicious and chilling as she could be appealing and vulnerable.") Although during her last years she must have been aware of her success she makes no allusion to it. Her own comments upon her work are always penetrating and disparaging. Her stories wanted richness and depth; she was only 'skimming the top - no more'. But writing, the mere expression of things adequately and sensitively, is not enough. It is founded upon something unexpressed; and this something must be solid and entire. Under the desperate pressure of increasing illness she began a curious and difficult search, of which we catch glimpses only and those hard to interpret, after the crystal clearness which is needed if one is to write truthfully. 'Nothing of any worth can come of a disunited being,' she wrote. One must have health in one's self. After five years of struggle she gave up the search after physical health not in despair, but because she thought the malady was of the soul and that the cure lay not in any physical treatment, but in some such 'spiritual brotherhood' as that at Fontainebleau, in which the last months of her life were spent. But before she went she wrote the summing-up of her position with which the journal ends.

She wanted health, she wrote; but what did she mean by health? 'by health,' she wrote, 'I mean the power to lead a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love - the earth and the wonders thereof - the sea - the sun…then I want to work. At what? I want so to live that I work with my hands and my feeling and my brain. I want a garden, a small house, grass, animals, books, pictures, music. And of out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing.' The diary ends with the words 'All is well. And since she died three months later it is tempting to think that the words stood for some conclusion which illness and the intensity of her own nature drove her to find at an age when most of us are loitering easily among those appearances and impressions, those amusements and sensations, which none had loved better than she.

[lorinbocol · Rating 5 out of 5]

chiuso il libro riesco solo a desiderare fortissimamente di scivolare ancora, quando sarà, in pagine così febbrili. che pulsano di aneliti e vivono dell'attimo, riuscendo nell'instabilità della parola a restituirmelo: ogni attimo ferocemente, senza mezze misure.
katherine mansfield era frustata da ogni possibile percezione della vita, tipo una falesia dal vento e dalle onde. c'è un che di selvatico in lei, di talmente indomito, necessario e disarmante, una tale totalizzante e sgomenta tensione, che letti i diari posso incontrovertibilmente affermare di amare più ancora la donna dei suoi vividi racconti.
«vivo in mezzo al frastuono di un torrente che io sola posso udire». furiosa, isterica, urgente, adorabile kathleen.

[Raul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite resisting the urge to make comparisons between Katherine Mansfield’s journals and Virginia Woolf’s, the similarities are too glaring not to acknowledge. It’s not just that they knew each other and were on friendly terms, but both journals were edited and published by the husbands of both writers after their respective deaths, they recorded the struggles with their illnesses frankly, they were both critical of pretentious and pompous literature and didn’t really care for the establishment, were even petty on some level with these criticisms, but most prominently they both strove towards Truth with their writing, and the honesty with which they wrote of their frustrations, fears, and disappointments in their attempts to reach the Truth with their art.

For instance in Manfield’s case:

“I have begun to sleep badly again and I've decided to tear up everything that I've written and start again. I'm sure that is best. This misery persists, and I'm so crushed under it. If I could write with my old fluency for one day, the spell would be broken. It's the continual effort — the slow building-up of my idea and then, before my eyes and out of my power, its slow dissolving” Apr 2, 1914

“Whenever I have a conversation about Art which is more or less interesting I begin to wish to God I could destroy all that I have written and start again: it all seems like so many ‘false starts.’ Musically speaking, it is not — has not been — in the middle of the note — you know what I mean? When, on a cold morning perhaps, you’ve been playing and it has sounded all right — until suddenly, you realize you are warm — you have only just begun to play. Oh, how badly this is expressed! How confused and even ungrammatical!”

Despite disappointment in her own writing, Mansfield would draw strength to continue writing from what she felt was bad writing that was being published and acclaimed:

“Oh, if only I could make a celebration and do a bit of writing. I long and long to write, and the words just won’t come. It’s a queer business. Yet, when I read people like Gorky, for instance, I realise how streets ahead of them I be ….” May, 1914

“After reading the work of Octave Mirbeau “I must start writing again. They decide me. Something must be put up against this.
Ach, Tchehov! why are you dead?”

On the fear of dying without having written “real” work:

“How unbearable it would be to die — leave “scraps”, “bits” … nothing real finished”

There are also humorous moments in her journals, such as this one when the person in the room neighbouring hers is also ill and both are engaged in a chorus of coughs:

“The man in the room next to mine has the same complaint as I. When I wake in the night I hear him turning. And then he coughs. And I cough. And after a silence I cough. And he coughs again. This goes on for a long time. Until I feel we are like two roosters calling to each other at false dawn. From far away hidden farms.”

The one feature of these journals that takes away from it being a more cohesive read was the lack of systematic journaling as was the case with Woolf. Bits of stories (fascinating to see the development and revisions and frustrations), lists, cryptic messages, letters not furnishing enough context, break into the recording of quotidian life. Despite that, this still makes for a good read especially if you’re interested in reading about the development of this artist.

[Yani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leer un diario como este da la misma sensación que estar espiando el alma de alguien. No todos los diarios deben despertar las mismas ganas de leerlos (por supuesto) pero Mansfield, por suerte, quería que la leyeran y eso es evidente. Así que no hay mucho de qué avergonzarse.

No se puede contar el argumento del diario porque no existe. Se tratan miles de temas (algunos triviales, otros decididamente trascendentales) en una pocas páginas, se cambia de a saltos, hay fragmentos de libros, anotaciones de sueños. Hay un mundo ahí dentro... y a veces se ven las miserias. Mansfield, que vivió escribiendo y viajando (y que, lamentablemente, murió joven), tiene una capacidad maravillosa para transmitir hechos y sentimientos que parecerían ser de importancia sólo para ella. Las últimas etapas del libro son un poco angustiantes porque también son los últimos días de su vida.

Me gustaron sus anotaciones de libros y las crisis compartidas, pero a la vez no pude dejar de sentir que, en algunos momentos, ella estaba tan dentro de sí misma que me expulsaba del diario. Algunos comentarios que Mansfield hace sobre ciertos temas me incomodaron.

Recomendaría Diario a los que estén interesados en la escritora porque ya leyeron algo de ella o simplemente porque sí. Es un buen acercamiento.

[Martyna Antonina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Katherine Mansfield dą-żyła. W swoich dziennikach robiła to bezustannie, z pełną namiętnością niemocy. Ta książka pełniła miejsce zarówno szkicownika noweli, pamiętnikarskiego utulenia sobie siebie, postrzępionych rozmów, szekspirowskich notatek i fascynującego w swojej autentyczności procesu urabiania i formatowania się ludzkiej myśli. Doskokowej, ostatecznej, żadnej, romantycznie przydługiej, gradientowej, stale kończącej się, ironicznej, doskonale-niedoskonale całkowitej i - pięknej. Tak rzetelnie pisać o tym, że ma się ucho na zewnątrz ściany, dość burżuazyjnych herbatek i strach o własne nieszczęście można chyba tylko jak ona (nie wspominając, że tak właśnie trzeba). Szorstką wrażliwością faktu, mylnie traktowaną kaprysami i wprawionym, bo literackim, narzekactwem. Krążeniem i wracaniem. Zawracaniem i wracaniem na powrót. Jak sama pisze: "Nie mogę nie wrócić". Nie może, wróciła. A nawet nie wiedziała, że ostatecznie miała dokąd. Do mnie. Tak się właśnie drąży, dąży, żyje - jak się wraca. A jak się pisze, że się wraca, to ucieka się do słów.

[Jowix · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spontaniczny zapis ogromnej i przepięknej wrażliwości, dziennik utkany z ulotnych fragmentów nowel, sprawozdania z leczenia, walki o życie, pisarskich zmagań i przenikliwych przemyśleń i wrażeń. Katie Mansfield była wyjątkową, przezabawną, przeinteligentną osobą i wspaniale było dostać dostęp do jej (wykreowanej ale jednak) prywatności. Nie mogę odżałować, że nie mamy więcej jej prac, jestem pewna, że każda byłaby doskonała, jak opowiadania i ten dziennik.

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many years ago I found a copy of a totally pirated 1950s edition of this book in a second-hand bookshop in Malaga. The book had been printed in Cyprus, and was marked "not to be sold in the UK." Cause, like, we totally didn't have permission! Plus ça change, and all that. There were pirate copies of Shakespeare's plays floating around in the 17th century, with added scenes that Willy had nothing to do with.
I read my copy literally to pieces. I had never read any of Mansfield's work before that, except a short story in my highschool Eng Lit book (which we never had to read for class), Miss Brill. At the age of fourteen or whatever, it didn't make much of an impression.

Having re-read this edition of the Journal innumerable times, and indeed memorised passages through sheer familiarity, I was ready to appreciate her work. I have since acquired the masterly long version Katherine Mansfield Notebooks: Complete Edition as well as many of her stories. A member of the lost generation of the WW1 years, not one of her male friends who went to the front returned. She was also traumatised by the loss among them of her cherished younger brother.
It is sad that her worst fears came true: plagued by tuberculosis and the aftermath of venereal disease, she did indeed die leaving very little finished work. In many ways Mansfield must have been a difficult person; perhaps that is why I feel such an affinity with her.

ETA: Comparing this edition, put together by her husband J. M. Murray, with the edition collated from the original texts decades later, I realised just how self-serving Murray was. He cuts out many passages that reveal negative aspects of his personality and their relationship, rewords others, claims to be unable to read some that are very clear (and not complimentary to him)...and ends the journal before its actual end, with the words All is well.
All was not well, and he knew it, but I guess he chose to close it on an "uplifting" note.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admit, this diary (or at least this version of it) doesn't stand on it's own in the the way that Virginia Woolf's does, for instance. But, but, if you love Katherine, as I do, you'll cherish every stray fragment. Through all her suffering, she was nevertheless able to find beauty all around her, in a moth, a leaf, a cloudy day. With every turn of the page, one is more keenly aware that her days are/were numbered.

I wish I could read each entry on the appropriate day and keep a kind of correspondence in the margins. Alas, this is a library book! (Kelly will be so pleased!)

"And when I say 'I fear' -- don't let it disturb you, dearest heart. We all fear when we are in waiting-rooms. Yet we must pass beyond them, and if the other can keep calm, it is all the help we can give each other..."

[Claudia Pastor · Rating 5 out of 5]

¡Dios, qué libro! Lo he terminado ayer, pero no me sentía con los ánimos de escribir sobre este diario de Katherine Mansfield que me ha removido todas las emociones.

Estoy en la disyuntiva de recomendarlo, porque está cargado de una sensibilidad única, y no recomendarlo, porque es tan íntimo que una duda de que la autora hubiese querido que sea leído por otras personas (lo publicó su viudo, que casualmente era editor). Sin embargo, si eres fan de esta autora, creo que lo vas a atesorar como una de tus mejores lecturas, porque ese corazón que late intensamente en los cuentos de Mansfield lo ves convertirse en una luz que brilla pero que también se apaga a lo largo de los días y de los años que dura este diario.

Este libro no está conformado solo de textos en los que Mansfield reporta su día a día, sino también de fragmentos o ideas de cuentos, algunos de los cuales nunca fueron culminados. También, tiene cartas no enviadas, reflexiones sobre otros escritores o lecturas que realizaba la autora en ese momento. En ese sentido, es un libro que trasmite ese posible caos que probablemente era algunos días la mente de Katherine Mansfield, cargada del mayor entusiasmo por vivir y al mismo tiempo de desesperanza por lo cercana que estaba a la muerte.

He sufrido, he llorado intensamente con este diario durante un mes, y solo me queda el consuelo de seguir encontrando a este espíritu tan luminoso que fue Katherine Mansfield en algunos de sus cuentos que aún me quedan por leer.

[actuallymynamesssantiago · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Por último, me gustaría anotar todas mis impresiones en un pequeño libro de notas, y que se publique un día. Eso es todo."

Es un diario muy poco llamativo para lo súper cool que es Mansfield, y seguro se deba a que en realidad ella nunca tuvo diario, sino cuadernos con anotaciones sueltas que cuando ella murió su esposo decidió editar como diario: acá estamos.
Un diario es un compromiso, de tiempo —las entradas tienen que sucederse unas a otras, y tener cierta cercanía— y de honestidad. Al tratarse de anotaciones sueltas es todo un poco random, y muchas veces no tan interesante. No está presente la intensidad de los diarios de Woolf, Plath o Pizarnik; se nota que Mansfield no tenía diario concreto.
Destaco las opiniones que tiene sobre otros escritores. Es muy lúcida, acertada y no tiene miedo de decir que algo no está bien.

[Tabuyo · Rating 3 out of 5]

En este diario no solo habla de algunos detalles de su vida sino que también aparecen apuntes de pequeñas frases que quiere recordar para incorporarlas en su relatos.
Sientes el dolor constante que padecía y su frustración de querer escribir y no poder.

La pega que le encuentro es que creo que el marido, que es quien lo publicó a su muerte, ha quitado muchas partes. No sé, me da la impresión que Mansfield escribió mucho más de lo que aquí se encuentra.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange to rate a journal, isn't it? Almost shouldn't be allowed, and yet here it is. Many beautiful and tragic moments written, thankfully, by a beautiful and suffering mind.

[Pilar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Todo un tratado sobre el síndrome de la impostora.

[Paco Montañez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me encantaría decirle a Katherine que, mientras escribía este diario y pensaba estar perdiendo el tiempo y no dedicándose a su verdadero cometido vital (escribir), estaba escribiendo algunas de las páginas más bonitas que he leído

[stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Esta fue mi primera experiencia de lectura con esta autora y la verdad que no me decepcionó. Después de El diario de Ana Frank, es la segunda vez que me adentro a la lectura de un diario.

Estos contienen cosas que hacen de esta autora alguien muy interesante de conocer: su proceso con la enfermedad, sus sentimientos acerca de la escritura, relaciones interpersonales; pero también uno puede encontrar muchos manuscritos, reseñas de libros, cartas no enviadas y otras cosas más que le dan un toque exquisito.

Lo que decepciona es saber que sus diarios fueron editados por su esposo, el cuál recortó varias partes y también parte de su diario fue destruido por la misma autora, llamado «el inmenso diario de las quejas».

En fin, es una lectura super enriquecedora y que voy a buscar leer un poco más de sus cuentos.

[Raegan Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

She’s such a genius I weep

[Júlia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dolça, honesta i exigent. D'una sensibilitat absoluta.

[Starfish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since I was heading back to NZ, I thought it might be fitting to pack Katherine Mansfield's journal to take with me -- I didn't realise that this journal is made up mostly of material from the last years of her life where she is ill, worried about her writing and in large amounts of pain. Reading this while preparing for general anaesthetic, and again after the anaesthetic has worn off was a weird feeling to say the least.

That said, I love it. Mansfield's always been that little bit intimidating, but in her journal she reads like a real person, and a surprisingly modern one -- despite the changes, losses and difficulties of the war, most of what Mansfield uses her journal to reflect upon are just as interesting today -- writing and the role of truth, the struggle of mind, illness and body, looking for direction. This book was so much more than I thought it would be.

[soulAdmitted · Rating 3 out of 5]

Narrando i suoi giorni palesi e quelli nascosti e ormai vicina all'ultimo passaggio dimensionale, Katherine scrive:

"Da quando ha memoria di sé, ella ha trascorso una vita tipicamente falsa. Eppure, malgrado tutto, ella ha avuto momenti, attimi, sprazzi di luce che le han fatto sentire la possibilità di qualcosa di ben diverso".

In queste pagine si intravede un notevole potenziale inesploso, sì.
Mi tengo stretti gli sprazzi di luce, ma torno veloce ai miei venerati, ben diversi, incenDiari.

[Sofía Solustri · Rating 4 out of 5]

No había leído nada de ella antes, pero soy muy fan de leer diarios de escritores. Sus diarios están llenos de inspiración y reproches por no ser más prolífica. En muchos momentos me sentí identificada en la autoexigencia y el deber ser algo que no decepcione a los demás. Tiene muchas frases que me impactaron y que guardo para siempre. Me dejó con muchas ganas de leer sus cuentos. Kathy ya sos una de mis autores favoritas.

[Merve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mansfield öyküleri kitapları hep okuma listemdeydi bir türlü fırsatını bulamıyordum. Kendi yazim tarzıyla güncesini okurken tanıştım. Sadece yazma biçimine değil, yaşama, insan ilişkilerine bakışına ve isyanına da tanık.oldum. öyle tanidik ki bazı hisler.
Bu kadın beni daha fazla yazmaya daha fazla okumaya kışkırtıyor. Tıpkı Susan Sontag gibi

[Cristina G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jurnal, jurnal, jurnal ... Ma intreb cum poate sa existe un rating pentru junale, memorii si corespondenta? Oare chiar este treaba noastra sa dam ”stelute” unor scrieri atat de personale, care, in cea mai mare parte, nu s-a dorit a fi publicate sub nicio forma?
”Jurnalul Trist” al Katherinei Mansfield nu a fost scris cu gandul de a ajunge pe masa publicului, la fel ca jurnalul Jenicai Acterian, s-a insistat sa fie distrus, dar ”neascultatorul” sot nu i-a indeplinit aceasta ultima dorinta, ferice noua.
Prin urmare, scrierile apartinatoare literaturii de frontiera ar trebui apreciate si nu jurizate, zic si eu.

”Ma distrez de minune numai cand sunt cu mine insami.”

”Nu-mi doresc decat sa am timp sa scriu despre toate acestea - timp sa-mi scriu cartile. Dupa aceea nu-mi pasa daca mor. Traiesc numai ca sa scriu.”

”Nu-mi ramane altceva decat munca. Dar cum pot lucra cand slabiciunea asta cumplita faca ca insusi condeiul sa-mi para greu ca un toiag.”

[Josefina Wagner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Birbirinden oldukça dağınık yazılmış derlemeler hem zaman hem mekan olarak. Güzel bir anlatım olmasına rağmen kesinlikle deneyimli bir yazarın bu günlükleri toparlayıp şekillendirmesi gerekirdi kesinlikle. Bir nostalji içinde yazmış çoğunu duyguları dolu dizgin gitmiş yazarı sevdim çok amma daha anlaşılır olmasını tercih ederdim yinede.

[Ona · Rating 4 out of 5]

posa en paraules les coses que jo no sé explicar (no sé fins quin punt és bo sentir que entenc tant aquesta pobra dona). cor trencat totalment💔

[ari · Rating 4 out of 5]

enjoyed this peek into KM’s life.

[Martine · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5
An incredibly beautiful and sensitive journey into illness, femininity, loneliness and longing for an elusive emotion.

[Meagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something poignantly lonely and lovely about this journal. Something desperately sad and impotent.

[claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

La voz de Katherine Mansfield siempre ha estado llena de vida a pesar de su condición física. Una mujer que viajaba tanto, que amaba aprender, que sentía todo a la vez. Me siento representada en su carácter, en su manera de afrontar la vida, sus ociosos días y sus tardes llenas de escritura.

Escritora de muchísimos relatos, algunos inacabados, era un alma sin tapujos. Atrapada dentro de una enfermedad cardiopulmonar que la tenía encerrada en sí misma. Y sin embargo ella seguía pensando que su psique tenía algo que ver con su corazón, que el alma y el órgano estaban unidos de alguna forma. Pienso que esa unión era la escritura. Cuánto más escribía más sentía fallecer.

Te he amado, K. M. No sabes lo mucho que me has acompañado estas semanas antes de la selectividad. Has sido una fiel lectora que me ha llevado a conocer nuevas obras y autores, y que además ha fortalecido mi ansia por escribir y por aprender como tú.

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was amused to find
that one of the words Katherine Mansfield really jelled with was..... "little".
It has a resonance that I have not encountered with any other writer.
"Seven Little Australians" by Ethel Turner probably comes the closest,
and it is only fitting seeing they were probably living in the same era,
definitely came from the same part of the Globe
- Mansfield from New Zealand and Turner from Australia -
and their sentimentality has the backing of an Iron Rod.
These girls could bite the bullet of Reality,
both in their Fiction and in their daily Lives.
For Mansfield it was finding her niche,
mixing with the Bloomsburys,
finding a difficult man or a difficult marriage...probably Both;
and World War One where she lost her brother.
(Virgina Stephen (Woolf) and her sister Vanessa Stephen(Bell)
were to lose their brother Thoby to illness in 190;
and Vanessa one of her sons, Julian,
in the late 1930's in the Spanish Civil War.
......to be continued

[Katherine Hoch · Rating 4 out of 5]

tiene momentos muy hermosos, pero también me pareció un diario muy repetitivo u,u