“I think of these pages as a way of doing that. As she paints her life with words, her thoughts go deep, exposing the beauty around her but also the turmoil inside her:
Sarton’s journal covers one year and gives the reader a warm, intimate view into her life in rural Nelson, New Hampshire. It may be outwardly silent here but in the back of my mind is a clamor of human voices, too many needs, hopes, fears ….” I write too many letters and too few poems. I go up to Heaven and down to Hell in an hour, and keep alive only by imposing upon myself inexorable routines. My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there. I am an impossible creature, set apart by a temperament I have never learned to use as it could be used, thrown off by a word, a glance, a rainy day, or one drink too many. I will make every effort to find out the real person, but if I can’t, then I am upset and cross. But it is a waste of time to see people who have only a social surface to show. It is then that images float up and then that I plan my work. It is never a waste of time to be outdoors, and never a waste of time to lie down and rest even for a couple of hours. It is always expensive, and I will not waste my time. Why? I suppose because any meeting with another human being is collision for me now. I hate small talk with a passionate hatred. The things I cannot stand, that make me flare up like a cat making a fat tail, are pretentiousness, smugness, the coarse grain that often show itself in turn of phrase. “I am an ornery character, often hard to get along with. Sarton’s initial description holds a sincere, startling, simple candor: Sarton stated that in the latter novel, people felt that in her they had found an intimate friend, but with Journal, she attempted to shatter that image and produce a reality of herself that was stark and intense, yet honest. Published in 1973, Journal of a Solitude is a response to her novel Plant Dreaming Deep. As a writer, she wrote a number of novels, poems and memoirs, mostly a commentary on her life and experiences on aging, friendship, depression, lesbianism, doubt, failure, the simple pleasures of life, and other personal musings. Born in Belgium, when German troops invaded the country, Sarton’s family fled to England, then to Boston, Massachusetts. content, and being a Canadian I wasn’t at all familiar with May Sarton. I’m finding the remaining biographies heavy on U.S. Introducing Journal of a Solitude, another out-of-order book for my WEM Biographies Project.
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