11 Jan

11 January 1920

Casetta Deerholm, Ospedaletti - Italy

Worked from 9.30 to a quarter after midnight only stopping to eat. Finished the story. Lay awake then until 5.30 too excited to sleep. In the sea drowned souls sang all night. I thought of everything in my life and it all came back so vividly - all is connected with this feeling that J. and I are no longer as we were. I love him but he rejects my living love. This is anguish. These are the worst days of my whole life. [KM Notebooks]

My dear old Boy,
I owe you letters, thanks - Im in your debt all round and you must be thinking I am an ungrateful creature - to say the very least of it. But I feel as though Ive been on a voyage lately - on the high seas ­ out of sight of land, and though some albatross post has brought your news under its wing he never been able to detain the bird long enough to send an answer back. Forgive me.
[. . .]
I am working very hard just now. I cant walk or go out. Nearly all my days are spent in bed on a little sofa that always feels like lying in a railway carriage - a horrid little sofa. I have seen hardly any people at all since Ive been here - nobody to talk to. The one great talker is the sea. It never is quiet; one feels sometimes as if one were a shell filled with a hollow sound. God forbid that another should ever live the life I have known here and yet there are moments you know, old Boy, when after a dark day there comes a sunset - such a glowing gorgeous marvellous sky that one forgets all in the beauty of it - these are the moments when I am really writing. Whatever happens I have had these blissful, perfect moments and they are worth living for. I thought, when I left England, I could not love writing more than I did, but now I feel Ive never known what it is to be a writer until I came here.  [To Richard Murry in Collected Letters, c.12 January 1920]