Our friend, Jesuis, who is a professor of English in Spain, specializes in creating bilingual (Spanish and English) editions of poetry of famous authors who aren't particularly known for their poetry. His next project is the poetry of Katherine Mansfield so that rather piqued my interest in reading her stories again. I liked her a lot when I read her in university but now I realize she was absolutely brilliant. She was a "modernist" and even Virginia Woolf was jealous of her.
She was quite a rebel and unconventional. She struggled with TB and lived in Bandol, France, for quite some time in the winters to help that condition. There is a Katherine Mansfield Society in Bandol that we weren't aware of the many times when we were there enjoying the wonderful ambiance and weather of the south of France. There was a big Mansfield conference in 2018 in Bandol. I picked up a slide show from a presentation of places Mansfield visited in the area. We have seen every one!
I had read all the prose she had written even her first published collection "In a German Pension". Mansfield describes them as "immature". I felt they were pretty awful and have always wondered how someone could write so poorly initially and then write so wonderfully. Just out of inteest I looked up reactions on Goodreads and it mainly received four stars and positive comments. Go figure.
She died of TB at the age of 34 in 1923.
Her poetry isn't particularly good but interesting to read a bit of it and also to read a bit of her biography. Then back to the wonderful stories.
Butterfly Laughter
In the middle of our porridge plates
There was a blue butterfly painted
And each morning we tried who should reach the
butterfly first.
Then the Grandmother said: "Do not eat the poor
butterfly.
"
That made us laugh.
Always she said it and always it started us laughing.
It seemed such a sweet little joke.
I was certain that one fine morning
The butterfly would fly out of our plates,
Laughing the teeniest laugh in the world,
And perch on the Grandmother's lap.
