Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume II

Tuesday

Know that goldfinch I have tamed? He comes right into my bedroom now and eats breakfast crumbs beside the bed. He is a ravishing little bird. If only he were carpettrained. But I'm afraid you can't train birds. He seems just as surprised as I am. The sparrows, now that he has come in, grow bold and come as far as the parquet, too. But I won't have them. I aspire to having taught this goldfinch to present arms with my founting pen by the time you come—to do you honour. I also dream of its singing an address of welcome—holding the address, you know, in one claw.

During the past two nights I have read The Dynasts. page 115 Isn't it queer how a book eludes one, and then suddenly opens for you? I have looked into this book before now. But the night before last when I opened it I suddenly understood what the poet meant, and how he meant it should be read! The point of view which is like a light streaming from the imagination and over the imagination —over one's head as it were—the chorus and the aerial music. I am talking carelessly, because I am talking to you, and I am relying on you to more than understand me. But it did seem to me that if the poetic drama is still a possible ‘form’ it will be, in the future like The Dynasts— As if for the stage and yet not to be played. That will give it its freedom. Now when one reads The Dynasts it's always as though it were on the stage… But the stage is a different one—it is within us. This is all très vague… I long to talk about it.

Here I stopped. The doctor came. It's really funny. I must tell you. My chill is slightly better, but I have symptoms of whooping cough! Il ne manquait que a.