2
therefore exquisite. I could not read her latest. But
prejudice may be at work here too...
2
Il giudizio è senza dubbio severo ma, sotto l’atteggiamento di
distaccata superiorità, lascia comunque intuire l’ammirazione che
l’artista più matura nutre per il lavoro dell’altra, a cui dal
febbraio 1917, per quasi sei anni, l’ha unita un intenso legame
intellettuale nato dalla comune passione per la scrittura e
dall’analoga indagine estetica nelle aree della coscienza e
dell’esperienza; un legame che, malgrado i frequenti silenzi
dovuti alle rispettive malattie o a piccoli malintesi (“this
fragmentary intermittent intercourse of mine” lo chiama la
Woolf, consapevole che “one of the conditions unexpressed but
understood of our friendship has been precisely that it was almost
entirely founded on quicksands”),
3
trae tuttavia linfa da
stimolanti conversazioni sull’arte e la letteratura (dice ancora la
Woolf: “she is all kinds of interesting things underneath, and has
a passion for writing, so that we hold religious meetings together
2
The Letters of Virginia Woolf (ed. Nigel Nicholson & Joanne Trautmann, 6 vols; London:
The Hogarth Press, 1975-1980), 3:59 (30 luglio 1923). Prelude di Katherine Mansfield fu,
nel 1918, la seconda pubblicazione della appena nata Hogarth Press, la casa editrice fondata
da Leonard e Virginia Woolf; l’ultimo racconto mansfieldiano cui la Woolf fa invece
riferimento è “The Canary”, apparso postumo su Nation nell’aprile 1923.
3
The Diary of Virginia Woolf, op. cit., 2:46 (5 giugno 1920) e 1:243 (18 febbraio 1919);
nella sua biografia woolfiana, Hermione Lee afferma che “her extremely complicated
relationship with Katherine [...] was intimate but guarded, mutually inspiring but
competitive. [...] She was often snobbish and unkind about her. And Katherine too was
ambivalent and inconsistent.” (H. Lee, Virginia Woolf, London: Chatto & Windus, 1996, p.
386).
3
praising Shakespeare”; e “[I] had 2 hours priceless talk –
priceless in the sense that to no one else can I talk in the same
disembodied way about writing; without altering my thought
more than I alter it in writing here [...] We talked about books,
writing of course”).
4
Nel 1919, ad esempio, pur dispiaciuta per la
prolungata assenza di notizie da parte di Katherine ma non
conoscendo in effetti la reale gravità della sua malattia, Virginia
si reca a trovarla, registrando poi le sue impressioni sul diario:
The inscrutable woman remains inscrutable I’m glad
to say; no apologies, or sense of apologies due. At once
she flung down her pen & plunged, as if we’d been parted
for 10 minutes, into the question of Dorothy Richardson;
& so on with the greatest freedom & animation on both
sides until I had to catch my train [...] And again, as usual,
I find with Katherine what I don’t find with the other
clever women a sense of ease and interest, I suppose, due
to her caring so genuinely if so differently from the way I
care, about our precious art.
5
Sebbene diffidente verso la giovane “colonial”, frenata
talvolta dai pregiudizi sociali o dalla naturale imperscrutabilità di
Katherine, oppure, semplicemente, da un’istintiva avversione
personale (“she stinks like a – well civet cat that had taken to
street walking. In truth, I’m a little shocked by her commoness at
4
Letters of Virginia Woolf, op. cit., 2:383 (a Katherine Arnold-Forster, 12 agosto 1919); e
The Diary of Virginia Woolf, op. cit., 2:45 (5 giugno 1920).
5
The Diary of Virginia Woolf, op. cit., 1:257-8 (22 marzo 1919).
4
first sight; lines so hard and cheap”, aggiungendo però, poche
righe più sotto: “she is so intelligent & inscrutable that she repays
friendship”),
6
Virginia Woolf sa riconoscerne però con sincerità,
soprattutto quando dialoga con se stessa, le qualità intellettuali
(“Katherine was marmoreal, as usual, [...] as usual we came to an
oddly complete understanding. My theory is that I get down to
what is true rock in her, through the numerous vapours & pores
which sicken or bewilder most of our friends. It’s her love of
writing I think”),
7
e la rispetta profondamente per la completa
dedizione al lavoro e il perseguimento di fini artistici che sono
anche i suoi:
And then we talked about solitude, & I found her
expressing my feelings, as I never heard them expressed.
Whereupon we fell into step, & as usual, talked as easily
as though 8 months were minutes – [...] A queer effect she
produces of someone apart, entirely self-centered;
altogether concentrated upon her ‘art’: almost fierce to me
about it, I pretending I couldn’t write. “What else is there
to do? We have got to do it. Life – ” [...] Once more as
keenly as ever I feel a common certain understanding
between us – a queer sense of being ‘like’ – not only about
6
Ibidem, 1:58 (11 ottobre 1917). Si veda ancora H. Lee, op. cit. p.387: “Katherine
Mansfield was six years younger than Virginia Woolf, utterly different from her in looks
and temperament and experience, but with some strong affinities, like her fierce dedication
to her work [...] But her colonialism and her itinerant uprootedness were the opposite of
Virginia’s ancestral network. She had chosen exile from her prosperous middle-class New
Zealand family at the age of twenty, in 1908, [and was] sexually bold and adventurous in
ways that Virginia was not.”
7
The Diary of Virginia Woolf, op. cit., 1:150 (7 maggio 1918).
5
literature – & I think it’s independent of gratified vanity. I
can talk straight out to her.
8
Saralyn Daly esamina questo “sense of community” tra le due
scrittrici da una prospettiva prettamente tecnica, nel senso di un
loro adottare analoghe strategie formali per saggiare le capacità
espressive della prosa:
The two women display a kinship in craft as they
think about how to treat their materials: the extent of the
narrator’s knowledge, as well as what to make available to
and what to require of the reader; the increase of dramatic
quality in the use of particular details; the avoidance of
narrative passages; the increase of immediacy in the use of
interior monologue and the freedoms that device allows in
dealing with time. Each reflects the uncertainties of her
age: neither will, neither feels that she should, reach more
than implicit conclusions in her writing;
9
e in effetti entrambe sperimentano simili modalità di scrittura,
tentando di dare consistenza a quell’ineffabile “luminous halo”
che è la vita;
10
ma la loro affinità è in primo luogo personale ed
estetica (“their intuitive understanding of each other enabled their
intellectual sympathy”),
11
come dimostra di essere ben
8
Ibidem, 2:44-5 (31 maggio 1920).
9
Saralyn R. Daly, Katherine Mansfield (Revised Edition, New York: Twayne Publishers,
1994), p.115.
10
Cfr. Virginia Woolf, “Modern Fiction” (1919), in The Essays of Virginia Woolf (ed. by
A. MacNeillie, 6 vols.; London: The Hogarth Press, 1994), 3:160.
11
Angela Smith; Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf: A Public of Two (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1999), p. 41.
6
consapevole Virginia quando, durante l’ennesimo viaggio di
Katherine verso un clima più caldo nell’inutile tentativo di
contrastare la tubercolosi, si sorprende a sentire la mancanza
dell’amica lontana e a pensare quanto il confronto tra le rispettive
esperienze intellettuali sia stimolante per il suo lavoro:
And then, [...] of a sudden comes the blankness of not
having her to talk to [...] A woman caring as I care for
writing is rare enough I suppose to give me the queerest
sense of echo coming back to me from her mind the
second after I’ve spoken [...] I said how my own character
seemed to cut out a shape like a shadow in front of me.
This she understood (I give it as an example of her
understanding) & proved it by telling me that she thought
this bad: one ought to merge into things. Her senses are
amazingly acute–
12
Ed è un’affinità che la stessa Mansfield percepisce, se già
dopo i primi incontri ella può dire a sua volta: “I love to think of
you, Virginia, as my friend [...] Consider how rare is to find some
one with the same passion for writing that you have, who desires
to be so scrupulously truthful with you”; e, anche: “We have got
the same job, Virginia & it is really very curious & thrilling that
we should both, quite apart from each other, be after so very
12
The Diary of Virginia Woolf, op. cit., 2:61-2 (25 agosto 1920).
7
nearly the same thing. We are you know; there’s no denying it”;
13
sino ad ammettere l’altra nel proprio mondo privato (“I wonder
why I feel an intense joy that you are a writer – that you live for
writing – I do. You are immensely important in my world,
Virginia”), e a ribadirle più volte la sua stima, come in occasione
della pubblicazione del woolfiano “Modern Fiction”, quando
Katherine scrive: “You write so damned well, so devilish well ...
To tell you the truth – I am proud of your writing. I read & I
think ‘How she beats them’”.
14
Nell’unico saggio critico espressamente dedicato alla
Mansfield, “A Terribly Sensitive Mind”, una recensione al suo
diario pubblicato nell’estate 1927, che per l’ambito
necessariamente circoscritto non rispecchia nella giusta
complessità l’atteggiamento ufficiale dell’autrice verso l’arte
mansfieldiana, la Woolf sottolinea comunque la speciale qualità
della sua prosa, la straordinaria sensibilità con cui sa cogliere
anche la minima sollecitazione esterna, la sua capacità di ovviare
a quella frammentarietà che invece le sembra così tipica degli
scrittori moderni: “She is a writer; a born writer. Everything she
13
The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield (ed. by Vincent O’Sullivan & Margaret
Scott, 4 vols; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984, 1987, 1993, 1996; d’ora in avanti citate come
KM Collected Letters), 1:313 (?24 giugno 1917) e 1:327 (c. 23 agosto 1917).
14
Ibidem, 2:288 (7 novembre 1918) e 2:311 (10 aprile 1919).
8
feels and hears and sees is not fragmentary and separate; it
belongs together as writing”. Katherine sa come rendere eterno
un istante: “the moment itself suddenly puts on significance, and
she traces the outline as if to preserve it”, per fissarlo per sempre
sulla carta: “No one felt more seriously the importance of writing
than she did”.
15
Eppure nelle pagine private woolfiane, al “queer sense of
being like”, e a sincere quanto inaspettate ammissioni di invidia
per il talento e i successi editoriali dell’amica,
16
si alternano
commenti estremamente pungenti sulla giovane neozelandese,
come donna e come artista. Oltre alla citata lettera a Raverat,
15
“A Terribly Sensitive Mind” (1927), in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, op. cit., 4:447-8. Il
saggio è una recensione al Journal of Katherine Mansfield: 1914-1922, uscito a quattro
anni dalla morte della scrittrice a cura del marito John Middleton Murry: non un vero e
proprio diario, bensì il risultato di un’arbitraria selezione operata senza un reale criterio
editoriale sull’immenso e quasi illegibile materiale di cui sono costituiti i notebooks
mansfieldiani, cinquantatré quaderni riempiti nel corso di più di venticinque anni con
annotazioni di ogni genere – riflessioni personali, appunti di viaggio, commenti e citazioni
da letture, abbozzi di racconti e romanzi, lettere non spedite, poesie, liste della spesa…. Nel
1939 Murry pubblica una seconda scelta di brani dal titolo The Scrapbook of Katherine
Mansfield, mentre nel 1954 esce il Journal of Katherine Mansfield: Definitive Edition, il
quale, nonostante integri il Journal del 1927 con passaggi dello Scrapbook e altro materiale
ancora inedito, non può però dirsi affatto definitivo. L’edizione finalmente completa degli
scritti informali mansfieldiani è apparsa soltanto nel 1997 a cura di Margaret Scott: The
Katherine Mansfield Notebooks (2 vols., Wellington and Canterbury, New Zealand:
Daphne Brasell Associates Ltd. and Lincoln University Press; d’ora in avanti citati come
KM Notebooks). È da notare come il titolo utilizzato da Virginia Woolf per la recensione
del 1927 sia una citazione dallo stesso diario mansfieldiano; in data 26 gennaio 1922
leggiamo infatti: “I am sure that meditation is one cure for the sickness of my mind i.e. its
lack of control. I have a terribly sensitive mind which receives every impression and that is
the reason why I am so carried away and borne under” (KM Notebooks, 2:320).
16
Si vedano, tra i diversi esempi, almeno la lettera dell‘1 agosto 1920 al critico d’arte e
amico Roger Fry: “I’m coming up tomorrow to say goodby to Katherine Murry. She goes
away for two years. Have you at all come round to her stories? I suppose I’m too jealous to
wish you to, yet I’m sure they have merit all the same. It’s awful to be afflicted by jealousy.
I think the only thing is to confess it.” (Letters of Virginia Woolf, op. cit., 2:438); e la
pagina del diario scritta una settimana dopo la morte della Mansfield: “And I was jealous of
her writing – the only writing I have ever been jealous of. This made it harder to write to
her; & I saw in it, perhaps from jealousy, all the qualities I disliked in her.” (The Diary of
Virginia Woolf, op. cit., 2:227, 16 gennaio 1923).
9
colpiscono riflessioni come questa del 25 gennaio 1921, annotata
poco tempo dopo la pubblicazione della seconda raccolta della
Mansfield, Bliss and Other Stories (1920): “K.M. (as the papers
call her) swims from triumph to triumph in the reviews; save that
Squire doubts her genius – so, I’m afraid, do I. These little
points, though so cleanly collected, don’t amount to much, I
think”;
17
oppure l’altra, caustica, scaturita proprio dalla lettura del
racconto che a quella raccolta dà il titolo, ma che esce
singolarmente già sulla English Review dell’agosto 1918:
I threw down ‘Bliss’ with the exclamation, “She’s
done for!” Indeed I dont see how much faith in her as a
woman or writer can survive that sort of story. I shall have
to accept the fact, I’m afraid, that her mind is a very thin
soil, laid an inch or two deep upon very barren rock. For
‘Bliss’ is long enough to give her a chance of going
deeper. Instead she is content with superficial smartness;
& the whole conception is poor, cheap, not the vision,
however imperfect, of an interesting mind. She writes
badly too. And the effect was as I say, to give me an
impression of her callousness & hardness as a human
being. I shall read it again; but I don’t suppose I shall
change. She’ll go on doing this sort of thing, perfectly to
her & Murry’s satisfaction: I’m relieved now that they
didn’t come. Or is it absurd to read all this criticism of her
personally into a story?
18
17
The Diary of Virginia Woolf, op. cit., 2:87 (25 gennaio 1921).
18
Ibidem, 1:179 (7 agosto 1918).
10
In realtà, proprio quest’ultima considerazione con l’accenno a
John Middleton Murry – scrittore, critico ed editor di riviste
letterarie, nonché per alcuni anni compagno e, dal maggio 1918,
marito della Mansfield – è una traccia importante per tentare di
comprendere da cosa in parte dipenda il disagio woolfiano nei
confronti della pur ammirata scrittrice emergente, ovvero il suo
coinvolgimento in quell’universo del giornalismo letterario
d’avanguardia che l’altera esponente del “Bloomsbury Group”
stigmatizza come “the Underworld”. Nelle parole di Quentin
Bell, nipote e biografo di Virginia Woolf,
she used this term with malicious intent and certainly
with a kind of snobbery, sometimes with a purely social
meaning, but also to classify those who were not so much
creative artists as critics and commentators – people who
could write a clever essay or a smart review; people who
were more interested in reputations than in talents. For
them the important thing was success; they would know
who was on the way up or the way down; they could
measure an author against another in terms of copies sold
and retail the latest scandal in the world of journalism or
of publishing. Their ambition was to be on the winning
side. [...] For her the perpetual president and oracle of the
Underworld was John Middleton Murry, for he added
another ingredient – a high moral tone, a pretentious
philosophy [...] which allowed the game to be played
11
under the cover of deep, manly, visceral feelings and
virtuous protestations.
19
È così che, ancora nel diario woolfiano, troviamo commenti
del tipo: “Upon Murry & Katherine rests to my feeling the
shadow of the underworld. You could put no trust in [them]; on
principle, I can imagine, [they are] unscrupolous”; oppure:
I think something or other is a little inharmonious in
both of them – in my arrogance, I suppose I feel them both
too much of the underworld, with all sorts of nostrums of
their own; & all this talk about being artists. I don’t
express what I mean. Perhaps all I mean is that they seem
suspicious – Beneath the surface I expect that they are
both very anxious for appreciation, not at all sure of
themselves, & Murry wrings his brains dry, & becomes
more & [more] hopeless of finding anything to believe in.
I dont like married couples where the husband admires the
wife’s work immensely.
20
19
Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf – A Biography, 2 vols. (London: Triad/Granada, 1976),
2:50. John Middleton Murry, di origini piccolo-borghesi e undergraduate a Oxford, ma
assai ansioso di diventare qualcuno negli ambienti intellettuali londinesi, è spesso fatto
oggetto di scherno tra le personalità del “Bloomsbury set”; valgano per tutti questi esempi
tratti dalla corrispondenza woolfiana (Letters of Virginia Woolf, op. cit.): “Poor little squint
eyed Murry [...]” (a Vanessa Bell, 13 aprile 1922, 2:520) “[...] is a posturing Byronic little
man; pale; penetrating: with bad teeth; histrionic; an egoist; not, I think, very honest; but a
good journalist, and works like a horse, and writes the poetry a very old hack might write”
(a Janet Case, 20 marzo 1922, 2:515): ne è un esempio “a little book of those clay-cold
castrated costive comatose poems which he has the impertinence to dedicate to Hardy in
terms which suggest that Hardy has adopted him as his spiritual son” (a Roger Fry, 17
ottobre 1921, 2:485); “I get frightfully depressed when I read Murry – and the creature
pullulates everywhere. I don’t think anything can stand up against the power of
muddleheaded mediocrity when combined with the manners of the servants hall and the
morality of a boarding school for officers widows – or is it a girls school I mean? – any
place full of spite and backbiting and gush and highmindedness will do” (a Roger Fry, 13
agosto 1922, 2:546); e via di questo passo per altre pagine ancora.
20
The Diary of Virginia Woolf, op. cit., 1:159 (24 giugno 1918) e 1:222 (30 novembre
1918).
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