The spirit of the narrative is mankind’s reflexive consciousness, or poetic genius ‒ our unique access to ourselves, our desperate endeavour “to be REAL”. It brings to light the dark unknown which is the zest of our lives; it gives shape to the tremor of our inner souls ‒ otherwise nearly imperceptible. “Ah, what is it? ‒ that I heard”, Katherine Mansfield wondered throughout her whole life and writings ‒ poems and stories, letters and notebooks. Through the metamorphic movement of her highly sensitive, perceptive mind, she highlights the deep ambivalence of light and dark, mirth and awe, fear and longing which is the keen feature of our naked existence. She sketches her epic motifs with a dedicated sense of wonder.
A true poet, she returns, as Baudelaire, Keats, Hopkins, Proust, or Shakespeare, to the origins of language ‒ this poignant contrast of light and dark following the alternate rhythm of night and day, of yielding to darkness and converting it into speech: “Let there be light.” Poetic language is performative. It means an everlasting questioning over the abyss ‒ with wings of wonder upon the face of the deep.
This volume will also be of interest to scholars and dedicated readers who wish to share in the current reassessment of Katherine Mansfield’s poetic achievement. Her awareness of the literary tradition and modernity, the utmost finesse of her artistic thought, the boldness of her temper make her a major twentieth-century poet.