Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Sunday — November 9, 1919

Sunday
November 9, 1919

The papers have come; I've been reading them. Then I've read the —–. The disgraceful dishonesty of it! The review of Dostoevsky and the one of —–! My God! what has happened to this age? It cannot have been like this before. Look here! we must be bold and beat these people. We must be dead straight in our reviews. If they don't care for what we say, it doesn't matter, but let us come bang out into the open while we have the chance and say it. I confess the world seems to me really too hideous. I felt after I had read the —–that it was all like Mrs. F.'s party (you remember, when we ran away). My blood is up. Let's up and at'em this page 278 winter. Send me as many books as you like. I'll do them. I have got my second wind from all this.

Blow me and my depression. What does my personal life matter! Let it go. It's hateful. But we matter: we have a chance to stand for something. Let's stand for it. Of course, I now see plainly that we shall never be successful writers—impossible. But let's be honest in the paper and give it them strong. There must be young people who see through this crabbed malice.

At the same time, I hate and loathe it all—these sets and dishonesties, don't you? I mean it is the stern daughter of the voice of God that makes one fight, not a joyful impulse. If it were not so tragic, it would be—no, it wouldn't.

As regards the—–, there has been no War, all is as it was before. What a crew!