Journal of a Solitude

May Sarton

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781497646339
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Biografie in ambito letterario

The poet and author's "beautiful... wise and warm" journal of time spent in her New Hampshire home alone with her garden, her books, the seasons, and herself (Eugenia Thornton, Cleveland Plain Dealer ).

"Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self." —May Sarton May Sarton's parrot chatters away as Sarton looks out the window at the rain and contemplates returning to her "real" life—not friends, not even love, but writing. In her bravest and most revealing memoir, Sarton casts her keenly observant eye on both the interior and exterior worlds. She shares insights about everyday life in the quiet New Hampshire village of Nelson, the desire for friends, and need for solitude—both an exhilarating and terrifying state. She likens writing to "cracking open the inner world again, " which sometimes plunges her into depression. She confesses her fears, her disappointments, her unresolved angers. Sarton's garden is her great, abiding joy, sustaining her through seasons of psychic and emotional pain. Journal of a Solitude is a moving and profound meditation on creativity, oneness with nature, and the courage it takes to be alone. Both uplifting and cathartic, it sweeps us along on Sarton's pilgrimage inward. This ebook features an extended biography of May Sarton.

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For permission to quote from personal letters thanks are due to: Sister Mary David, Mrs. Basil de Selincourt, Madame Eugenie Dubois, Madame Pierre Hepp (Camille Mayran).

Introduction by Humphry Trevelyan to Truth and Fantasy by Goethe. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, Ltd. © 1949.

“The Artificial Nigger” from A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories, by Flannery O’Connor. © 1955, Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, Inc. (First published in 1953 by The Kenyon Review.)

Journal d’un homrne de 30 ans by F. Mauriac. Librairie Ernest Flammarion.

Young Man Luther by Erik Erikson, W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. © 1958.

The Divine Milieu by Teilhard De Chardin, © 1960, Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.

The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, ed. by G. Alder, M. Fordham, and H. Read, trans. by R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XX, vol. 8, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (copyright © 1960, 1969 by Bollingen Foundation); vol. 9i, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (copyright © 1959, 1969 by Bollingen Foundation); vol. 11, Psychology and Religion: West and East (copyright © 1958, 1969 by Bollingen Foundation); vol. 13, Alchemical Studies (copyright © 1967 by Bollingen Foundation); vol. 14, Mysterium Coniunctionis (copyright © 1963 by Bollingen Foundation), reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press: short quotes from each volume.

Le Mal et la Souffrance by Louis Lavelle, Librarie Plon, © 1940.

The Collected Works of Paul Valery, ed. by Jackson Mathews, Bollingen Series XLV, vol. 10, History and Politics, trans, by Jackson Mathews and Denise Folliot (copyright © 1962 by Bollingen Foundation), reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press: quote from p. 561.

Clark E. Moustakas, Loneliness. © 1961. Reprinted by permission of Prentice Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

“Mist in the Valley” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poem. Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. © 1928, 1955 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. By permission of Norma Millay Ellis.

Haniel Long’s poem “If Our Great Fragile Cities,” from The Grist Mill...