71 of 78 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"The War Against The Unregenerate Self Goes On", April 28, 2003
This review is from: Journal of a Solitude (Paperback)
Written over a period of twelve months, May Sarton's Journal Of A Solitude (1973) is a meditation on life, living alone, romantic love, and the creative process.
Composed in diary form, the book was produced while Sarton was living alone in a small village in rural New Hampshire. By 1973, Sarton was fifty-eight years of age and an established novelist and poet who had known and corresponded with such literary luminaries as Virginia Woolf and Hilda Doolittle.
Journal Of A Solitude is a warm, touching, very human book, which, after its successful publication, became the cornerstone upon which Sarton's uneasy reputation has settled. But Journal Of A Solitude also reveals Sarton to have been something of an odd duck modestly dressed in the clothing, mores, and mannerisms of a gentile Belgian lady.
Sadly, what Sarton seems determined not to come to terms with is that she was a tepid, literal - minded poet as well as a less than first- rate literary novelist; this is important, because the lack of critical attention her work received ("What I have not had is the respect due what is now a considerable opus") is a constant theme of the book and source of tension. As a result, "ornery" Sarton shifts continuously between states of creative over appraisal and damning self recrimination. Sarton's quoted poems clearly reveal a lack of lyrical skill and an absence of any visionary power whatsoever. Though she states, "Whatever peace I know rests in the natural world," Journal Of A Solitude also reveals a tender-hearted animal lover and enthusiastic gardener who nonetheless appears to lack a higher sense of nature as a symbol, sign, or metaphor for the transcendent forces evident in human reality.
Badly advised by friend and poet Louise Bogan to "keep the Hell" out of her work, Sarton, accepting Bogan's suggestion, struggles daily with a devastating, irrational temper, depression serious enough to drive her to suicidal states, loneliness, and, at only fifty-eight, a sense of herself as "old, dull, and useless." Sarton, who appears to have surprisingly little self-knowledge for a person of her maturity, is haunted by reoccurring image of "plants, bulbs, in the cellar, trying to grow without light, putting out white shoots that will inevitably wither," but doesn't consciously relate this image directly to herself or her difficult present. When a close friend visits for several days, Sarton is incensed when the woman makes an offhand comment about the faded state of a vase of flowers (though as the photographs included reveal, flower arranging was not among Sarton's talents). Clearly, some or most of Sarton's "hell" should have gone into and fueled her creative work, as it does in the case of most artists. Is appears that there were many things in her life that Sarton simply didn't want to confront or acknowledge.
Sarton makes contradictory statements about God and her religious beliefs, commenting first that writing poetry is her method of communicating with God, but later states, "I am not a believer." Though she frequently writes at length about the emancipation of women and the need for the abolition of gender roles, she also makes generalized statements like "nurturing is women's work," and believes that "blacks" have the "grace and instinct and intuitive understanding" necessary for the nursing profession. Today, Sarton's expression "we have so much to learn from them ("blacks")" sounds like well-intended but unconsciously smug pandering.
Sarton was not an intellectual, but the limited perspective cumulatively elaborated in her novels and poetry found a ready audience in "nice" like-minded women for whom more challenging authors like Muriel Spark, Isak Dinesen, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, Katherine Anne Porter, or Jane Bowles apparently represented an arduous uphill climb. What the book does illustrate is the danger of making an unquestioning habit of "impeccable" WASP manners and politeness over a lifetime. Sarton, her close friends, and colleagues all appear to exist in a brittle world where truthful communication and direct, honest criticism are to be strenuously avoided in the name of continued social niceties.
Sadly, the success of Journal Of A Solitude had an ultimately negative effect on Sarton's career, as she began producing journal volume after journal volume (Recovering, At Seventy, After The Stroke, Endgame: A Journal Of The Seventy-ninth Year, etc.), of which only The House By The Sea, which immediately followed the present volume, had the same freshness, integrity, and lack of self - consciousness. Sarton was soon to become a cottage industry for her publishers, turning out further volumes of banal poetry--"Moose In The Morning"--and, like Edith Sitwell in old age, simply publishing too much without due editorial consideration.
Journal Of A Solitude does reflect a genuine, shadow-casting human presence as well as a state of being which many people, especially the creative, the introverted, and those moving uncertainly towards later life may respond to fully. Sarton's moments of anxiety, despair, and doubt, as well as her stoicism, fortitude, and courage, are sincerely expressed, touching, and inspiring. Sarton accurately perceived herself to be country-loving, intelligent, and serenity-seeking individual who put a high premium on the simpler aspects of life. But for an author who had over twenty books published by 1973 and who was on a first-name basis with some of literature's most notoriously critical figures, Sarton was a surprisingly unsophisticated person. As a result, it is the fallible human being, and not the creative writer, who shines most brightly in Journal Of A Solitude.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
