A Writer's Diary Read Online Free PDF Page B

it is not a criticism to discourage. Perhaps intelligent criticism never is. All the same, I shirk writing it out, because I write so much criticism. What he said amounted to this:
N. and D.
is a strictly formal and classical work; that being so one requires, or he requires, a far greater degree of lovability in the characters than in a book like
V.O.,
which is vague and universal. None of the characters in
N. and D.
is lovable. He did not care how they sorted themselves out. Neither did he care for the characters in
V.O.,
but there he felt no need to care for them. Otherwise, he admired practically everything; his blame does not consist in saying that
N. and D.
is less remarkable than t'other. O and beauties it has in plenty—in fact, I see no reason to be depressed on his account. Sydney said he had been completely upset by it and was of opinion that I had on this occasion "brought it off." But what a bore I'm becoming! Yes, even old Virginia will skip a good deal of this; but at the moment it seems important. The
Cambridge Magazine
repeats what Morgan said about dislike of the characters; yet I am in the forefront of contemporary literature. I'm cynical about my figures, they say; but directly they go into detail, Morgan, who read the Review sitting over the gas fire, began to disagree. So all critics split off, and the wretched author who tries to keep control of them is torn asunder. For the first time this many years I walked along the river bank between ten and eleven. Yes, it's like the shut up house I once compared it to; the room with its dust sheets on the chairs. The fishermen are not out so early; an empty path; but a large aeroplane on business. We talked very rarely, the proof being that we (I anyhow) did not mind silences. Morgan has the artist's mind; he says the simple things that clever people don't say; I find him the best of critics for that reason. Suddenly out comes the obvious thing that one has overlooked. He is in trouble with a novel of his own, fingering the keys but only producing discords so far.

    Friday, December 5th
    Another of these skips, but I think the book draws its breath steadily if with deliberation. I reflect that I've not opened a Greek book since we came back; hardly read outside my review books, which proves that my time for writing has not been mine at all. I'm almost alarmed to find how intensely I'm specialised. My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child—wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry.
Night and Day
flutters about me still, and causes great loss of time. George Eliot would never read reviews, since talk of her books hampered her writing. I begin to see what she meant. I don't take praise or blame excessively to heart, but they interrupt, cast one's eyes backwards, make one wish to explain or investigate. Last week I had a cutting paragraph to myself in
Wayfarer;
this week Olive Heseltine applies balm. But I had rather write in my own way of
Four Passionate Snails
than be, as K. M. maintains, Jane Austen over again.

1920
    Monday, January 26th
    The day after my birthday; in fact I'm 38, well, I've no doubt I'm a great deal happier than I was at 28; and happier today than I was yesterday having this afternoon arrived at some idea of a new form for a new novel. Suppose one thing should open out of another—as in an unwritten novel—only not for 10 pages but 200 or so—doesn't that give the looseness and lightness I want; doesn't that get closer and yet keep form and speed, and enclose everything, everything? My doubt is how far it will enclose the human heart—Am I sufficiently mistress of my dialogue to net it there? For I figure that the approach will be entirely different this time: no scaffolding; scarcely a brick to be seen; all crepuscular, but the heart, the passion, humour, everything as bright as fire in the mist. Then I'll find room for so much—a gaiety—an