Menorias y autobiografías

Quatrième de couverture :
Lorsque commence ce journal, en 1904, Katherine Mansfield n'a que seize ans. Pressent-elle qu'elle mourra jeune et qu'il lui reste moins de vingt ans à vivre ? Ces pages d'une rare maturité le laissent à penser.
Après avoir passé son enfance en Nouvelle-Zélande, Katherine Mansfield suit des études en Angeleterre. Elle retournera chez elle quelque temps avant de convaincre son père de la laisser partir à nouveau pour l'Europe.
Ce témoignage bouleversant est davantage une succession d'impressions fugitives, de réflexions sur la création, d'ébauches de nouvelles, qu'un récit au jour le jour. Son œuvre et sa vie qui furent intimement mêlées apparaissent ici par fragments. Mais, dès les premières lignes, on reconnaît la plume de l'écrivain, l'art de la nouvelliste de saisir en quelques mots une situation, une atmosphère.
Révoltée, angoissée, passionnée, Katherine Mansfield se révèle pleinement dans ce journal qui n'est pas sans rappeler un autre journal célèbre, celui de Virginia Woolf.

I'm really undecided about this one. It is the journal of Katherine Mansfield, with entries from 1904 to 1921. It's not a diary, in that there aren't entries for each day/date (although she does seem to start each new year more assiduously than she carries on), it also includes unfinished letters, starts of stories, even just paragraphs of stories, as well as a record of events.

And, while i like the way she writes, I found myself not liking her at all. I thought she was selfish and self absorbed, at times particularly cruel, particularly to people she owes thanks to, she thinks she is intellectually superior, yet undisciplined and seems to have little in the way of will power and self control. And then there are the times when she is clearly in a depression, thinks herself unable to write, thinks that she is of little worth. I suspect she would have been impossible to live with and wonder if that "artistic temperament" might well have been mental illness, possibly along the lines of manic depression.

And yet, in spite of not finding her an attractive person, I still find myself wanting to read her work. The passages of stories that were started and abandoned have such life and verve in them, that I can't help wanting to see more of that.

The edition I read was published in 1954, an updated version of the first edition of her journal published by her husband (who I don't envy one little bit) in 1927. ( )

Niente di meglio di un diario, per sbirciare nel fondo di un´anima