A child of sun
Katherine Mansfield
Why am I haunted every single day of my life by the nearness of death and its inevitability?
I am really diseased on that point! And I can’t speak of it. If I tell J. it makes him unhappy. If I don’t tell him, it leaves me to fight it. I am tired of the battle. No one knows how tired.
Tonight, when the evening star shore through the side-window and the pale mountains were so lovely, I sat there thinking of death. Of all there was to do-of life, which is so lovely—and of the fact that my body is a prison. But this state of mind is evil. It is only by acknowledging that I, being what I am, had to suffer this in order to do the work. I am here to perform—it is only by acknowledging it, by being thanks for that work was not taken away from me that I shall recover. I am weak where I must be strong.
Why must thinking and existing be ever on two different planes? Why will the attempt of Hegel to transform subjective processes into objective world-process not work out? “It is the special art and objective of thinking to attain existence by quite other methods than that of existence itself”. That is to say, reality cannot become the ideal, the dream; and it is not the business of the artist to grind an axe, to try to impose his vision; It is an attempt to create his own world in this world. That which suggests the subject to the artist is the unlikeness to what we accept as reality/ we single out—we bring into the light—we put up higher.
Now, Katherine, what do you mean by health? And what do you want it for?
Answer: By health I mean the power to live a full adult living, breathing life in close contract with what I love—the earth and the wonders thereof—the sea, the sun into it, to be part of it, to live in it, to learn from it; to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious, direct human being. I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming so that I may be a child of sun. About helping others, about carrying a light and so on, it seems false to say a single word. Let it be at that. A child of 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 out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing (Though I may write about cabmen. That’s no matter).
But warm, eager, living life—to be rooted in life—to learn, the desire to know, to feel, to think, to act. That is what I want…and nothing less. That is what I try for.
Why am I haunted every single day of my life by the nearness of death and its inevitability?
I am really diseased on that point! And I can’t speak of it. If I tell J. it makes him unhappy. If I don’t tell him, it leaves me to fight it. I am tired of the battle. No one knows how tired.
Tonight, when the evening star shore through the side-window and the pale mountains were so lovely, I sat there thinking of death. Of all there was to do-of life, which is so lovely—and of the fact that my body is a prison. But this state of mind is evil. It is only by acknowledging that I, being what I am, had to suffer this in order to do the work. I am here to perform—it is only by acknowledging it, by being thanks for that work was not taken away from me that I shall recover. I am weak where I must be strong.
Why must thinking and existing be ever on two different planes? Why will the attempt of Hegel to transform subjective processes into objective world-process not work out? “It is the special art and objective of thinking to attain existence by quite other methods than that of existence itself”. That is to say, reality cannot become the ideal, the dream; and it is not the business of the artist to grind an axe, to try to impose his vision; It is an attempt to create his own world in this world. That which suggests the subject to the artist is the unlikeness to what we accept as reality/ we single out—we bring into the light—we put up higher.
Now, Katherine, what do you mean by health? And what do you want it for?
Answer: By health I mean the power to live a full adult living, breathing life in close contract with what I love—the earth and the wonders thereof—the sea, the sun into it, to be part of it, to live in it, to learn from it; to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious, direct human being. I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming so that I may be a child of sun. About helping others, about carrying a light and so on, it seems false to say a single word. Let it be at that. A child of 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 out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing (Though I may write about cabmen. That’s no matter).
But warm, eager, living life—to be rooted in life—to learn, the desire to know, to feel, to think, to act. That is what I want…and nothing less. That is what I try for.
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