Review: Journal of a Solitude

When I was staying with Di in Belgium, I plucked a worn copy of May Sarton's Journal of a Solitude off her shelf, a book that she discovered when it was quoted by another blogger in her circle.

Di's copy had page corners turned down and passages marked throughout, and I hesitated to borrow a book I knew she loved so well. But she insisted and soon I was drawn into May Sarton's internal and external landscape.

May Sarton was a writer devoted to poetry, novels, and memoirs. She published 53 books in her lifetime, an astounding body of work that grew from her youth to her very final years. While some writers peak long before their deaths, May's reputation and her output were not diminished in old age. Her work is often on the reading list for academic programs in women's studies.

Journal of a Solitude was written in diary form over the course of a year when May was struggling with depression, embracing and analyzing her desire for solitude, her life as a woman and as a writer. Falling into Di's copy, I realized I would have to have my own because I was desperate to underline my favorite parts.

The book's wisdom is framed by everyday events in a small town in New Hampshire, and May's descriptions of her surroundings, her daily routines, and the people in her life fully engaged me. May was an avid gardener and in touch with the rhythm of the natural world. I share a similar bond with the outdoors and so relished every vivid depiction of weather, seasons, and the cycle of life. These form the backdrop for her thinking on women's issues, the creative process, and the benefits of solitude.

"My own belief is that one regards oneself, if one is a serious writer, as an instrument for experiencing. Life--all of it--flows through this instrument and is distilled through it into works of art. How one lives as a private person is intimately bound into the work. And at some point I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth. If we are to understand the human condition, and if we are to accept ourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt, extravagance of feeling, guilt, joy, the slow freeing of the self to its full capacity for action and creation, both as human being and as artist, we have to know all we can about each other, and we have to be willing to go naked."

I wonder what May would think of blogging?

Writers, artists, women, thinkers, feminists, creative spirits--all would enjoy Journal of a Solitude, which has never gone out of print since first being published in the early 70s. You can order a copy by clicking the link below: