Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume II

July 13, 1922

page 228

To Arnold Gibbons

I am appalled that I expressed myself so clumsily as to make it possible for you to use the word ‘plagiarism.’ I beg you to forgive me; it was far from my meaning. It was absorbed I meant. Perhaps you will agree that we all, as writers, to a certain extent, absorb each other when we love. (I am presuming that you love Tchehov.) Anatole France would say we eat each other, but perhaps nourish is the better word. For instance, Tchehov's talent was nourished by Tolstoi's Death of Ivan Ilyitch. It is very possible he never would have written as he did if he had not read that story. There is a deep division between the work he did before he read it and after… All I felt about your stories was that you had not yet made the ‘gift’ you had received from Tchehov your own. You had not yet, finally, made free with it and turned it to your own account. My dear colleague, I reproach myself for not having made this plainer…

I'd like, if I may, to discuss the other point in your letter. Let me see if I understand you. You mean you can only ‘care’ for such things as the little cat, the old man, the note of a bird, in the period of reaction against your belief in pain and a life of sacrifice and yourself. But as your belief is all-important to you that period of reaction means little. Am I right? Therefore the last of the five stories was the only one you really cared about for there you express your very self… I mean you are writing with real conviction. Do you know what I feel? To do this successfully you will have to do it more indirectly, you will have to leave the student out. Now there is a moment in that story where you succeed. It's where the little girl's throat works—she weeps—she wants the apple and is afraid she is not going to have it. (Always remember this is just my personal feeling.) Your student argues, explains too much. He ought perhaps to have said not a single word.

But I hope you will go on writing. The important page 229 thing is to write—to find yourself in losing yourself. (There is no truth profounder.) I do not know myself whether—this world being what it is—pain is not absolutely necessary. I do not see how we are to come by knowledge and love except through pain. That sounds too definite, expressed so baldly—if one were talking one would make reservations… Believe in pain I must.