1950 millibars, the lowest pressure recorded in the last 120 years. A long walk round the Ness to the power station; then up to the coastguard cottages, which I’ve never explored before. They are set in the middle of a moated mound which encloses a large area – once kitchen gardens.
It’s difficult to find a good vegetable garden; even in the marshes I came across only one last autumn, as I travelled round with my camera filming the countryside for War Requiem – the supermarkets have wiped them out. Once all these little cottages grew their own, before the road was constructed during the war. Now no-one does.
Derek Jarman
27 February
1814
There is something to me very softening in the presence of a woman – some strange influence, even if one is not in love with them – which I cannot at all account for, having no very high opinion of the sex. But yet, – I always feel in better humour with myself and every thing else, if there is a woman within ken. Even Mrs. Mule, my firelighter, – the most ancient and withered of her kind, – and (except to myself) not the best-tempered – always makes me laugh, – no difficult task when I am ‘i the vein’.
Lord Byron
1941
There is a rumour floating round today that we are going to a worse camp as a reprisal for the bad treatment of German prisoners at home – this from an officer. I can’t really credit it. Granted we have been treated exceptionally well here, I own, but if the intention is reprisals – which I don’t believe – this could equally well be made a Strafe Lager.
Scottie came into our room at 4.0 o’clock with news that we have to be packed by 9.0 a.m. tomorrow. Knowing Scottie, we took not the slightest notice – didn’t even look up – but it proved shortly to be true.
Captain John Mansel
1942 [Holland]
How rash to assert that man shapes his own destiny. All he can do is determine his inner responses. You cannot know another’s inner life from his circumstances. To know that you must know his dreams, his relationships, his moods, his sickness, and his death.
Very early on Wednesday morning a large group of us were crowded into the Gestapo hall, and at that moment the circumstances of all our lives were the same. All of us occupied the same space, the men behind the desk no less than those about to be questioned. What distinguished each one of us was only our inner attitudes. I noticed a young man with a sullen expression, who paced up and down looking driven and harassed and making no attempt to hide his irritation. He kept looking for pretexts to shout at the helpless Jews: ‘Take your hands out of your pockets’ and so on. I thought him more pitiable than those he shouted at, and those he shouted at I thought pitiable for being afraid of him. When it was my turn to stand in front of his desk, he bawled at me, ‘What the hell’s so funny?’ I wanted to say, ‘Nothing’s funny here except you,’ but refrained. ‘You’re still smirking,’ he bawled again. And I, in all innocence, ‘I didn’t mean to, it’s my usual expression.’ And he, ‘Don’t give me that, get the hell out of here,’ his face saying, ‘I’ll deal with you later.’ And that was presumably meant to scare me to death, but the device was too transparent.
I am not easily frightened. Not because I am brave, but because I know that I am dealing with human beings and that I must try as hard as I can to understand everything that anyone ever does. And that was the real import of this morning: not that a disgruntled young Gestapo officer yelled at me, but that I felt no indignation, rather a real compassion, and would have liked to ask, ‘Did you have a very unhappy childhood, has your girl-friend let you down?’ Yes, he looked harassed and driven, sullen and weak. I should have liked to start treating him there and then, for I know that pitiful young men like that are dangerous as soon as they are let loose on mankind. But all the blame must be put on the system that uses such people. What needs eradicating is the evil in man, not man himself.
Something else about this morning: the perception, very strongly borne in, that despite all the suffering and injustice I cannot hate others. All the appalling things that happen are no mysterious threats from afar, but arise from fellow beings very close to us. That makes these happenings more familiar, then, and not so frightening. The terrifying thing is that systems grow too big for men and hold them in a satanic grip, the builders no less than the victims of the system, much as large edifices and spires, created by men’s hands, tower high above us, dominate us, yet may collapse over our heads and bury us.
Etty Hillesum
1948
In Gide’s Journal I have just read again how he does not wish to write its pages slowly as he would the pages of a novel. He wants to train himself to rapid writing in it. It is just what I have always felt about this journal of mine. Don’t ponder, don’t grope – just plunge something down, and perhaps more clearness and quickness will come with practice.
Denton Welch
28 February
1805
Yesterday and today, I saw the lovable Mélanie. My love increased amazingly. Tonight it was my whole life. I believe that M. Blanc, far from keeping her, is merely a man of letters who talks over her roles with her, but has exacted secrecy. In that case, what an angelic soul! She was far from even imagining my suspicions, and how far my coarse words are from interpreting her delicacy! She’s in love with me and won’t tell me so; tomorrow, I should let her see that I’m sad.
I’m going to bed at half-past nine tonight because I feel che mi distruggo pensando a ella [that I am wearing myself out thinking about her].
Stendhal
1935
How did she hurt me? Was it the day when she raised her arm to wave at someone across the street? The day when no one came to open the door to me, and then she appeared with her hair all ruffled? The day when she was whispering with him on the embankment? The thousands of times she made me hurry here and there?
But this has nothing to do with aesthetics; this is grief. I wanted to count my memories of happy moments, and all I can remember is the pangs I suffered.
Never mind, they serve the same purpose. My love story with her is not made up of dramatic scenes but of moments filled with the subtlest perceptions. So should a poem be. But it is agony.
Cesare Pavese
1956
This morning I went with Cressida [his daughter] to the H.M.V. place in Oxford Street to buy records and the following amusing incident occurred:-
It was terribly crowded, and we had great difficulty in getting anybody to attend to us. However eventually I managed to get some records to try – jazz records – and we found a young girl – I think she can’t have been more than 17 – to shepherd us to a cubicle where one could play the records. She left me there to play the records while Cressida went off in search of other ones. As I was listening to the jazz, more or less dancing up and down to the rhythm, the door of the cubicle opened and who should put her head in but Elaine Burton, the Labour Member of Parliament for Coventry. Slightly embarrassed at being caught dancing on my own, I welcomed her. She said, ‘I must tell you what
