Reading journal: Beauvoir & Kafka

I thought it best to sneak in a reading journal entry before sharing more book covers. The book cover entries are tempting because I don’t have to grab my camera and I would like to have some covers on the blog for future reference. If you were worried about the coronavirus pandemic preventing the publication of books, I think you can breathe calmly. Plenty of books are about to hit the shelves and let's hope the content is as promising as the covers.

Reading journal, № 14 reading list, 2 of 7:

· Letters to Friends, Family & Editors by Franz Kafka. This is the first collection of letters by Kafka that I read and own. I was in no hurry to finish it so once I had read enough letters to get a feel for his voice, I read a letter or two in bed. The letters show the reader different sides of Kafka, from his student years in Prague in the early 1900s to his final months at a sanatorium near Vienna in 1924, where he died from tuberculosis. In letters to friends, he is less formal, of course, especially when writing to Max Brod who collected Kafka’s letters after his death, and it is through these personal letters that we see his health deteriorating. A more formal tone characterises the letters to his editors where he discusses manuscripts and even book design and fonts before publication. Perhaps those are more appealing to scholars.

The women in his life, Felice Bauer, Milena Jesenská-Polak, Julie Wohryzek, and Dora Dymant, appear on the pages, but the letters to Felice and Milena are available in separate editions: Letters to Felice (I recently shared the book cover) and Letters to Milena. The one thing that bothered me during the reading relates to the book's layout: The notes are at the back instead of appearing in footnotes, which would have been more convenient for the reader. This was especially annoying when reading many letters in a setting and constantly having to look up the notes. [Schocken; translated by Richard and Clara Winston]

· The Prime of Life by Simone de Beauvoir – autobiography, 2nd vol. It's been a while since I finished this one, which covers the years 1929 to 1944, and lately I have been gliding over sections where I had left a mark on the margin. I liked this volume more than the first but have to add that in the first chapters Beauvoir was sometimes too keen on sharing details: It sometimes felt as if she had to mention and describe every person that crossed her path. It happened less as the story progressed and the second world war drew nearer.

On three pages (319-321) spanning the period from 1937 to 1938, war is coming and clearly, the situation has started to affect her mental well-being:

Indeed, I now passed through one of the most depressing periods of my whole life. I refused to admit that war was even possible, let alone imminent. But it was no use my playing the ostrich; the growing perils all around crushed me beneath their weight.

If the Spanish tragedy dismayed us, events in Germany scared us stiff. In September, at Nuremberg, before an audience of 300,000 Nazis and something like a million visitors, Hitler delivered his most aggressive speech yet.

For my own part I was still trying to delude myself, and refusing to face the facts. But the future had begun to open up under my very feet, and produced in me a sick feeling akin to real anguish. No doubt that is why I retain only a misty recollection of this entire year. Nor can I remember anything of outstanding interest in my private life.

When the Germans invade Poland, on 1 September 1939, her narrative becomes a diary that ends on 14 July 1940. On 14 September, for example, she goes to the cinema and reads Portrait of a Lady by Henry James in bed. She doesn’t write daily and nothing at all after the fall of Paris, on 14 June 1940. Despite the war, there is no shortage of discussion of literature and philosophy on the pages, and it should be noted that the book is dedicated to Jean-Paul Sartre, who was her soulmate. It's truly interesting to read about life in France, about Paris in wartime; about visits to Café de Flore, on the corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue Saint-Benoît, which she and Sartre frequented ('It was our own special resort. We felt at home there; it sheltered us from the outside world.'). In this volume the reader witnesses the birth of the author, but in 1943 her first novel, She Came to Stay (original title L’Invitée) was published. During the war, she also worked on other books such as the philosophical essay Pyrrhus et Cinéas and two novels: The Blood of Others (Le Sang des autres) and All Men Are Mortal (Tous les hommes sont mortels). [Penguin; translated by Peter Green]

It is worth noting that some of Beauvoir's letters, published later, contradict the narrative of her autobiography. Finally, a few words about my copy which I hold dear. It was bought used, released in 1976, and is now so worn that it is falling apart. Gracing its cover is one of artist Matisse's blue cut-outs, Blue Nude with Flowing Hair, 1952.

images by me, appeared on Instagram 08/03/2018 and 11/07/2017

Astrid Lindgren's war diaries: A World Gone Mad

One of the books on a reading list I shared in March was A World Gone Mad: The Diaries of Astrid Lindgren, 1939-45, published last autumn in English by Pushkin Press (translated by Sarah Death). Astrid Lindgren was a Swedish author who wrote fantastic books for children. When we lived in the UK it seemed as if people only knew Pippi Longstocking and not the other wonderful characters she created. I still remember moments in primary school when the teacher read Seacrow Island during breaks; one of the books from childhood that I have read countless times and hold dear is The Brothers Lionheart. I doubt children think much about the personal life of an author, they simply forget themselves in the world he or she has created, thus the war diaries showed me a side to the author I knew nothing about: Lindgren as a young mother trying to grasp the horrors of the war, not without the feeling of guilt in a neutral Sweden.

Do Lindgren's war diaries have anything to add to what already has been written about the Second World War? What I found interesting is that she is barely 32 years old when the war breaks out and clearly feels the need to record its progress. She collects press cuttings and writes entries of various lengths in leather-bound journals, a total of seventeen which were found in her home in Dalagatan in Stockholm after her death in 2002 (published in Sweden in 2015). The book only contains the entries, and some illustrations, and it surprised me how thorough she was in her accounts. I thought I was about to read Lindgren's personal thoughts but soon realised that this was a book about the war in layman's terms.

Lindgren comes straight to the point without overdramatising, although she naturally experiences fear and anger. The first entry is written on the 1st of September 1939 when the Germans invade Poland. With a constant voice she compares the peaceful life in wartime Sweden - where there was no conflict, only the effects of rationing - to the horror elsewhere in Europe, especially in the neighbouring countries Finland and Norway. When she starts working for the Swedish Intelligence Agency, in its postal control division reading overseas mail, the war gets closer; she mentions this one 'profoundly sad Jewish letter' from the Continent to a friend in Sweden.

By Christmas 1944 the reader realises that something serious has taken place, she has experienced a breakdown which many who don't know her story could interpret as a consequence of the war and her work: 'I've had a hell of a six months this second half of 1944 and the ground beneath me has been shaken to its very foundation; I'm disconsolate, down, disappointed, often melancholy - but I'm not really unhappy.' She never writes in the diary what exactly is the cause but those who have read about her life know of troubles in her marriage. Her husband had met someone else and had asked for a divorce, which he then didn't go through with.

The diaries predate Lindgren's fiction writing but on its pages we witness the birth of an author; during the war she is writing her first children's books: 'I'm the happiest when I write.' However, the book is not a diary of an author, as I have heard people say, that is, hers is not a diary with entries about fiction writing and style. Her first book, about a girl called Britt-Mari, was published in 1944 and for that one she received an award. In March 1944, when her daughter is bedridden with measles, Lindgren is working on the first book about Pippi Longstocking: The last pages include an illustration of the rejection letter she received after submitting the manuscript in April 1944. A year later she talks about Pippi again, about rewriting - 'to see if I can make anything of that bad child.' We all know how that turned out.

I can recommend the book, which is very readable and, as stated above, showed me a new side to my favourite author from childhood. My quibbles have to do with the book not containing more illustrations. It has photos of Lindgren and her family but I would have liked to see more photos of the diary entries and press cuttings, particularly those relating to some key battles that Lindgren writes about in her entries. It would have helped to connect more visually with her experience of the war.

A World Gone Mad: The Diaries of Astrid Lindgren, 1939-45
By Astrid Lindgren
Pushkin Press
Hardcover, 240 pages, illustrated
Buy here