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e333mily's review
4.0
Truly felt like reading my own journals from when I was 18, 19, but infinitely more discerning and eloquent!
So incredibly nineteen, the way she spends pages writing about her joy (“I love myself passionately…I am happy to be what I am”) and then the next day’s entry begins “I am face to face with my awfully destitute self!” Also the way it’s full of promises to her self, resolutions to study more, read more widely, be kinder to her sister, get over Jacques, love Jacques again, get over him again….
Loved how she quoted her favourite authors in her entries and returned to the same lines, over and over again—Rivière’s “everything that happens to me is so important!” and Goethe’s “I love you. Does that concern you?” and Mauriac’s “Am I loved? Do I love?” So often the lines have started to live in me too. Loved also the 3 pages of Rilke quotes she wrote down after finishing Notebooks —“I would like to copy every page of this book by Rilke!” Same.
Very interesting to see the beginnings of her philosophy taking shape (before she even met Sartre!)—emphasis on inner life and feeling, the role of woman, purpose of marriage, contrast between self and Other.
And also this: an entry in May 1927 where she writes “I myself keep my emptiness inside of me, and this certainty that I am alone, that nothing can satisfy me, that my happiness will have to be willed so strongly, so severely that it will be more of a fatigue than a peace.” And then in the margins next to it she later adds “May 1929. Thank you, my nineteen-year-old sister, for having willed it so strongly that today, without anyone's help, it seems to me to be an unexpected gift."
—
“Above all, apply myself to feeling. (Easy!)”
“I am astounded that everyone is not like me. And I suffer from it.”
“O my self, I will be sincere, sincere to you, completely sincere.”
“Become attached to inner life, take it seriously and sacrifice everything for it.”
“I am not looking for anything. I have my strength within me. I love and keep myself. Oh! My strength that does not impede a great tenderness!”
So incredibly nineteen, the way she spends pages writing about her joy (“I love myself passionately…I am happy to be what I am”) and then the next day’s entry begins “I am face to face with my awfully destitute self!” Also the way it’s full of promises to her self, resolutions to study more, read more widely, be kinder to her sister, get over Jacques, love Jacques again, get over him again….
Loved how she quoted her favourite authors in her entries and returned to the same lines, over and over again—Rivière’s “everything that happens to me is so important!” and Goethe’s “I love you. Does that concern you?” and Mauriac’s “Am I loved? Do I love?” So often the lines have started to live in me too. Loved also the 3 pages of Rilke quotes she wrote down after finishing Notebooks —“I would like to copy every page of this book by Rilke!” Same.
Very interesting to see the beginnings of her philosophy taking shape (before she even met Sartre!)—emphasis on inner life and feeling, the role of woman, purpose of marriage, contrast between self and Other.
And also this: an entry in May 1927 where she writes “I myself keep my emptiness inside of me, and this certainty that I am alone, that nothing can satisfy me, that my happiness will have to be willed so strongly, so severely that it will be more of a fatigue than a peace.” And then in the margins next to it she later adds “May 1929. Thank you, my nineteen-year-old sister, for having willed it so strongly that today, without anyone's help, it seems to me to be an unexpected gift."
—
“Above all, apply myself to feeling. (Easy!)”
“I am astounded that everyone is not like me. And I suffer from it.”
“O my self, I will be sincere, sincere to you, completely sincere.”
“Become attached to inner life, take it seriously and sacrifice everything for it.”
“I am not looking for anything. I have my strength within me. I love and keep myself. Oh! My strength that does not impede a great tenderness!”
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